A cheesy saga

Once, two siblings of the brassica (aka cabbage) family were living a bucolic existence. She was complex and beautiful – fractal even at times.

 

Unashamedly romanesco, she also had rather intellectual leanings – given her rustic background.

He was sturdier and simpler, with a taste for far less challenging pursuits.

But despite their differences, they were family, they were organic and everything in the garden was lovely. Sometimes life really was a bed of roses.

Other times were just green and idyllic.

Then one day they both drowned – deliciously – in cheese sauce. The end.

The magic moral of this tragic tale is that even cauliflower and broccoli become heavenly when coated in cheese sauce. The same goes for that most horrid of pastas: macaroni. The weird thing is that cauliflower and macaroni taste yummier in cheese sauce than regular nice foods do. The trick is to go heavy on the sauce, light on the stuff inside it and generous with the browning on top. Here’s how you make the sauce.

Cheese sauce

Takes about 15 minutes and coats enough pasta and/or vegetables for about three main-course servings.

Ingredients

• 2 ounces or 100 grammes of butter
• 2 ounces or 100 grammes of plain flour
• 1 pint (an ye olde worlde British pint, which is 20 fluid ounces) or just over half a litre of milk
• 4 ounces or 200 grammes of grated cheese (as strong as possible) – plus an extra ounce or two to give your dish a brown, bubbling topping… mmmm
• salt, pepper and optional spoonful of mustard to taste

Melt the butter on a low to medium heat.

Stir in the flour to make a paste and cook gently for a minute or two.

Now pour in a sploosh of milk and stir into the paste until it’s smooth again. Now pour in another sploosh and repeat. Repeat again. And again.

Carrying on doing this until all the milk is absorbed and the mixture is too liquid to be called sauce. This is fairly tedious, especially at the beginning. Sometimes at the beginning too, the paste gets thicker before it gets thinner (some science-defying kitchen magic that I don’t quite understand). But towards the end each sploosh is easy and quick.

Once the milk is all in the pan, heat gently stirring occasionally – or heat more vigorously stirring all the time – until the sauce thickens. Then simmer gently for a minute or so.

Now, like a good fifties housewife, you know how to make a white sauce. Or, as we know it in foodier, less housewifely times béchamel sauce (of lasagne fame).

You can turn your béchamel into cheese sauce by stirring in the grated cheese (and some mustard if you like). Or you can turn it into parsley sauce by mixing in – you guessed it – chopped parsley. Or simply grate in some nutmeg for a slightly sophisticated flavour. But only cheese sauce can be used to make cauliflower or macaroni cheese, which you do as follows…

Take some vegetables or macaroni. The one-pint-of-milk sauce recipe is enough for a large cauliflower (ordinary or romanesco) and a stump of broccoli. Or it will do 300 grammes of macaroni. Alternatively 200 grammes of macaroni and a stump of broccoli will make broccaroni cheese, which is a healthy compromise. The method is obvious, but I’ll tell you anyway.

Cook your florets of vegetables and/or macaroni in boiling water (save time by doing it while you make your sauce). Timings are about 5 minutes for broccoli, up to 10 minutes for cauliflower (depends on how big you make your florets) and as on the packet for the pasta. Then put them in an ovenproof dish, pour over the sauce, stir to mix/coat if necessary and top with the additional grated cheese (and breadcrumbs if you want to add a bit of crunch). Heat in a hot oven for about 15 to 20 minutes. Or bubble under the grill for about 5 mins, keeping a watchful eye over it.

Thank you for being a saucier’s apprentice.

In next week’s brassic classic…

Marcel Sprout goes in search of the Turnip Perdu.

Tip of the week

Speed up your sauce-making and reduce the likelihood of lumps by heating the milk first. And if it does go lumpy, simply deploy the magic wand that is your hand blender.