My cauliflower cheese

When I was thinking this recipe through, I realised that it's such an heirloom that I don't know exact ingredients. I just - well - make it. No measuring, no weighing. So this is what I do.
Take one fine cauli and cut out the thick stem. Break into flourets. Grate your cheese - tonight I used Lord of the Hundreds, a lovely hard sheep's cheese, some gruyere and Keen's chedder - about a third of each.

Add a glass of milk to a pan of simmering water so that the liquid will just cover the flourets. While you're waiting for it to come up to the boil, add a large knob of butter to a seperate saucepan and when the butter's melted, add a hefty spoonful of plain flour. Mix well and keep over the heat for a couple of minutes, stirring all the while. By now the milk/water mix should be on the boil - add the flourets. Turn off the heat under the flour roux, and start adding a ladleful of the boiling cauli liquid to the roux and stir well to combine. Using hot liquid means that the roux will thicken immediately - keep adding liquid until the roux has the consistency of double cream. This takes me about five minutes, by which time I drain the cauli flourets and tip them into a warmed bowl. I add paprika or cayenne to the sauce, plus a few gloops of Worcestershire sauce.

Put the sauce back on the heat and let it simmer for five minutes. Then turn off the heat and tip in the cheese. Another stir to amalgamate. Then pour the sauce over the cauliflower flourets and add a handful of cheese over the top. Bung in an oven, gas mark 6, until the top is golden and bubbling - around 20 mins.

Serve with crusty bread - this evening I heated some sesame encrusted Turkish bread in the oven for a few minutes to eat alongside the cauliflower cheese. Perfect comfort food.

The joy of cauliflower

I'm always pleased to see a cauli in my veg box - it's a veg I love. Sometimes it gets the salad treatment but this evening it'll be time for that old standby, cauliflower cheese. I've always adored this dish - my mum made it every once in a while, and I think I pretty much stick to her recipe. She always added a pinch of paprika to the cheese sauce - a lot of today's recipes call for mustard or mustard powder in the bechemel, but I add Lea and Perrins, like my mum. Some of the recipes online add (to my mind) some strange ingredients, like onion and pasta.
I'm pretty sure that mum's recipe came from an old Good Housekeeping recipe book that was her kitchen bible. One alteration I've made is to have equal quantities of gruyere and chedder - I love the smoothness and extra cheesiness that the gruyere adds. Another change came after I'd read Mark Hix's recipe - he boils the cauli in milk rather than water, so that you get instant cauli-enriched liquid for the bechemel. I've always added some of the water I've boiled the cauli in to the sauce, but now I use a milk/water combo to cook the cauli.
Pics and recipe later when I get cooking.

Tomatoes by the gallon

Seedlings at home

Spent a sunny afternoon potting up more tomatoes. At the last count, I have over 50 seedlings...the little darlings have had an astonishing germination rate. I'm a bit tomato bonkers, and this year I'm growing:

• Gardener's Delight - always a favourite, and last year's from the allotment were the best I've ever tasted


• Tigerella - another lottie hit from last year


• Sungold - my favourite yellow/orange cherry


• Sun Cherry - meant to be even better than Sungold - we shall see


• Golden Sweet - another orange contender


• San Marzano - didn't do too well in the damp of 2008


• Costulutto - ditto


• Black Russian - new for me this year


• Black Cherry - so is this one


• Rosada - top in the RHS taste trials last year, so I'm looking forward to tasting this one


• Millefleur - lots of tiny yellow fruit and no pinching out


• Bicolour - huge yellow/red fruit - another new one for me


• Amish Paste - another heirloom and apparently grows very big

Seeds are from Thomson and Morgan and The Real Seed Catalogue. Real Seeds are great - all heirlooms and none are hybrids so seed can be saved for next year. They do amazing veg, including the Fat Baby exploding cucumber and Dead Fingers chilli - both waiting in my pop-up greenhouse to be potted on.
I thought that 13 varieties of tom was enough until Big Bro showed me the Plants of Distinction catalogue - I was smacked gobless by their collection of tom seeds, which is the best I've ever seen. Lots of varieties from the US and eastern Europe and many I'd never heard of before. So even though it's nearly May, I went a bit mad and ordered their black tomato collection, comprising Chocolate Cherry, Black Sea Man, Cherokee Purple, Black Krim, Japanese Trifle Black and Nyagous. Please let it be a long hot summer so that all these little beauties do well.

Food things to do this week...

• Check what's in tomorrow's veg box from the excellent Abel and Cole. Sometimes I like the anticipation of not knowing what will land on my doorstep, but this week feels like a knowledge week.
• Check out the Turkish baker on West Green road that Erika alerted me to
• See if the lovely Indian spice shop on Drummond street has alphonso mangoes in
• Take some photos of my tomatoes - 14 varieties this year!

Wild wild garlic

On Friday, Big Bro and I headed over to Gloucestershire to see cousin Jane, visit Jekka's herb farm and grab lunch. Big Bro drove, so I could keep my eyes peeled for wild garlic - something that you don't see very often in the bosky groves of north London. BB remembered from last year that we'd seen some on the hill leading down towards the M5 and sure enough, there was the gorgeous snow white stinky carpet. But nowhere to park. Joy of joys, when we got to Jekka's, there was a pot of a fully-grown wild garlic plant for sale. Perfect.

The open day at Jekka's was good - rows and rows of herbs for us to browse (laid out on the black sheets in the picture above). BB bought two trays-worth for his new allotment. I was more restrained and got Morrocan and buddlia mint, and two types of thyme.

After lunch came what turned out to be the highlight of the day: a visit to Purton, on the banks of the Severn estuary. I'd never heard of it, but Jane has known it all her life.

On the banks of the estuary are the last remnants of ships beached here to stop erosion, and the most stunning views out over the mud flats at low tide. BB was in bird heaven, reeling off names of waders. Jane pointed over to the missing railway bridge at Sharpness, blown away after two tankers collided one foggy night in 1960. Five died. The bridge was never replaced so the railway link to the Forest of Dean was gone forever.

Obama and the G20 menu

President Obama and Michelle are in town! And I've been busy getting info for Eddie and her wonderful blog ObamaFoodorama. The Downing Street press office mailed me the menu for tonight's G20 supper, and it looks great:

"Jamie Oliver has created a special menu for today’s (Wednesday 1st April 2009) Downing Street dinner, attended by the leaders of the G-20 group of nations, which shows of the best of British seasonal produce as well as the skills of the young chefs – graduates or apprentices of Fifteen London – who will be helping prepare the meal.

Oliver and his team have gone to great lengths to find the best ingredients available. 'I’m very, very proud of my country and its food traditions,' says Oliver, 'and I know that the guests at Downing Street will be in for a real treat.'

The starter includes fresh organic farmed salmon from Shetland served with foraged samphire and sea kale and a selection of early vegetables from Secrett’s Farms in Sussex, Surrey and Kent, wild garlic from Elwy Valley in Wales and home-made Irish soda bread freshly baked on the day using Gloucestershire-based Shipton Mill organic flour.

For the main course, Oliver has chosen shoulder of lamb from the Elwy Valley in North Wales, the earliest delicious Jersey Royal potatoes, fresh asparagus from the Wye valley and foraged wild St. George mushrooms. Mint sauce and gravy will be freshly made on the day using British herbs and vegetables.

Dessert is a traditional British favourite, Bakewell Tart which Jamie’s team will make on the day using a mixture of home-made jams and Grasmere ginger shortbread. Fresh custard is being made with free-range eggs from the Duchy of Cornwall farms.

There will also be a selection of fresh breads baked by The Flour Station and home-made butter 'made with our own fair hands', freshly churned at Fifteen London using organic cream from Ivy Farm in Somerset and smoked sea salt from Halen Mon in Wales."

Brynsiencyn, Anglesey...where the salt comes from, looking over the Menai Straits

Anglesey sea salt! I've a tub of their celery salt on the go. They're based just outside Bryn, where my sister used to live.