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.