I usually do a menu plan and make use of my many cookery books and food magazines. Last night I had planned to make an alternative cauliflower cheese, with a few modifications. The recipe included pickled onions, which neither I nor Paul like, and also home-pickled walnuts, which I was planning to prepare. However, as I started cooking last night, I realised that this was a very cheffy recipe and much better suited to entertaining. So I took the basic idea and some of the ingredients, such as walnuts, and shallots (instead of the pickled onions) to create something of my own. The writer of the recipe was promoting using the whole cauliflower, including leaves. Well I have for a long time now been using cauliflower leaves. Just be careful not to let them burn if you roast them rather than boiling them. They don’t need as long in the oven as the cauliflower florets.
So my recipe was to roast the caulflower and then cover it with a lovely cheese sauce. I made an all-in-one sauce with full cream milk on this occasion. Sometimes I just mix creme fraiche with ricotta and cheddar as a short-cut. I then roasted new potatoes to serve with it. To this roast mixture I added shallots. For about 10 minutes at the end of the roasting time I added walnuts and the cauliflower leaves. To my mind this was a good compromise and another nice variation on the ever popular cauliflower cheese.
See the photo below for the complete dish:
