What I'm cooking and eating

06 February 2011

Cauliflower cheese

Everybody has their own version of this, but this is mine:

1 small cauliflower, split into florets
2 hard-boiled eggs
1 heaped tsp plain flour
250 ml milk
(Optional) About 1 tbs cooking oil or, preferably, 20g butter
60 g cheese (or maybe a little more), grated
200 g frozen sweetcorn
1-2 tomatoes, thinly sliced (if liked!)

Steam the cauliflower until it is cooked as you like it (I do prefer it well done!). Put in oven-proof dish with shelled hard-boiled eggs.

Whisk the flour into the milk with salt, pepper, and a little dry mustard powder; some people like a pinch of nutmeg in this. If using fat, heat it gently in a saucepan, and pour on the milk mixture. Stir continuously until it comes to the boil and thickens. Turn off the heat and add the sweetcorn and half the grated cheese. Pour over the cauliflower mixture.

If you have time or energy, top this with mashed potatoes, but in any case the sliced tomatoes (if using) and the rest of the grated cheese go on the top. Or you could make a "crumble top" with a couple of slices of wholemeal bread whizzed in a food processor with the cheese, and maybe a tablespoonful of sesame seeds stirred in. Putting mashed potatoes on the top does make it a one-dish meal, though; you will need some form of carbohydrate to go with it, whatever.

Food diary for Saturday 5 February

Early tea
2 slices home-made bread with lemon curd, peanut butter, honey and butter. Coffee.

Bacon and avocado sandwich. Mini-lolly.

Tea; slice bread and Nutella; orange; Babybel.

Sausages, mashed potato, leeks, baked beans; natural yoghurt with a teaspoonful of Nutella (it was, after all, World Nutella Day!).

1 comment:

  1. Cauliflower cheese has always been one of my very favourite things, and I've been making a lot of it lately, because I'm forbidden anything crunchy or chewy while I recover from surgery to fix a broken jaw.
    But it has never occurred to me to include hard-boiled eggs.
    That is a truly excellent wheeze, which I shall adopt forthwith!
    I'm not so immediately sold on the idea of adding sweetcorn, nor of topping it with mash, but I shall certainly give those a try, too.

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