French Cauliflower Cheese Pie

Written in my baby book, that my mum started and never really finished, is my favourite food; Cauliflower Cheese. To this day, it remains one of my all time favourite dishes, it’s less about the cauliflower and more (read all) about the cheese sauce. Butter, milk, cheese… not for the vegans or dairy free of us out there I’m afraid. Not if you want the real deal anyway. It’s rich, creamy and decadent. The perfect autumn winter dish.

Then in the middle of the night because I had been woken up by a storm outside, a genius idea came to me. Cauliflower cheese crossed with fish pie! It needed refining from my midnight hazy dream, so I decided to ditch the fish and make the cauliflower the star. I think this is the perfect addition to a roast chicken or a tray of sausages, for all your sides in one easy dish. This one serves two people, but could easily scale up to 4 or 6.

Ingredients

Solid dependable British ingredients are what you need here, cabbage and cauliflower. Not much on their own, but they let the cheese and garlic really shine. That is why broccoli cheese isn’t the same. Broccoli tries to steal the show, and its fronds are just a bit too wilty when confronted with sauce. Cauliflower is beautifully sturdy and stands up to the thickest of cheese sauces.

I’ve added cabbage for an extra vegetable element here. When I’m cooking for just me, I can rarely be bothered to make two separate vegetable dishes. I do however know that I should be eating a variety of vegetables to aid my gut microbiome and have my five a day and all that. So as I had some to hand I added cabbage. You could leave out or replace for the less robust broccoli if so desired.

Calling this dish French is a stretch, but it contains white wine, cream and garlic, and feels slightly like a dish you’d eat in some alpine chalet, so I’m sticking with it. Your white wine does not have to be French though. If you wanted to, you could add a French hard cheese here such as Comte or Gruyere. Cheddar cheese, the backbone of my childhood cauli cheese is my preferred choice.

Prep & Cooking

This couldn’t be simpler to make. Slice your cabbage in around 1cm lengths, and chop your cauliflower into similar sized florets. Finely dice the garlic. You’ll want to pre-cook the cabbage and cauliflower so boil for 3 minutes or so, until you can easily stab the stalk of a cauliflower floret with a knife.

Making the sauce includes making a béchamel and then adding some extras. Once you know how to make a white sauce, the world is your oyster. Melt your butter, and add the garlic to cook. Then add the flour. Stir the flour and butter together and then let them froth up. This cooks off the flour, so it doesn’t leave a raw flour taste in the sauce. Slowly add the milk, whisking as you go. I generally find a whisk is the best to break up the lumps of the sauce. I like to add the milk stir until smooth and thick, add more milk stir until smooth and thick and so on, until its the consistency I want. It means I don’t get a runny sauce, but it does mean a lot of whisking out lumps. Once all the milk is added and you’ve stirred out the lumps add the cream, cheese and white wine, and whisk to combine. Then leave to simmer on a low heat for around 5 minutes.

Lastly peel and chunk your potatoes. As you’re mashing the potato, make the chunks small and it will cook quicker, eliminating any lumpy mash! Boil in water for 10 minutes. When you stab a chunk of potato it should break apart. Strain off the water and add back to the hot saucepan with the lid off to steam off the rest of the water. Because the sauce is so rich I only add milk to the mash. I also don’t actually own a potato masher, because every time I make mash I realise I don’t have one, only to forget as soon as I finish making the dish. However, a whisk with well cooked potato works just as well! So whisk your potatoes with the milk and a teaspoon of salt.

You’ll add the veg to your ovenproof dish, then pour over the sauce. Then with your whisk you can pick up blobs of mash and add to the top! Pop on a baking sheet, because it will bubble over, and cook in the oven for 45 minutes.

Final Notes

This is honestly a triumph. Its warming and garlicy with a beautiful crispy potato top. I can’t state enough how much you need to try this!

It reheats well in the same ovenproof dish, although any scrapings along the bottom of the empty part will burn, just be aware. Nothing a good soak can’t solve though.

Make this for everyone, I promise you, you won’t regret it.

Recipe

Serves 2 – 30 mins – 1 saucepan & 1 small ovenproof dish

Half a cauliflower

1/4 of sweetheart cabbage

3 garlic cloves

25g butter

25g flour

250ml semi skimmed milk

25ml single cream

splash white wine

30g cheddar cheese grated

2 Maris piper potatoes

Chunk the cauliflower and slice the cabbage into 1cm ribbons

Finely dice the garlic cloves

Add the cabbage to a saucepan and top with the cabbage. Add boiling water so it covers the cauliflower. This steams the cabbage and boils the cauliflower. Boil for 5 minutes.

Drain vegetables and add to your ovenproof dish.

Melt butter in the saucepan.

Add garlic and cook over a low heat until fragrant.

Add flour and stir in, let cook for 2 minutes

Add 1/4 of the milk and whisk, add the next 1/4 and whisk.

Add final 1/2 of the milk and whisk until all lumps are gone

Add cream and white wine and cheese and whisk

Let the sauce simmer for 2 minutes.

Pour the sauce over the vegetables

Wash up the saucepan

Preheat the oven to 200C

Peel and chunk the potatoes into small pieces and add to the saucepan

Cover with boiling water and boil for 10 mins, or until you stab the potato and it breaks apart.

Drain the potatoes and add back to saucepan to steam off.

Add milk and salt and whisk or mash until smooth

Add to top of the vegetables in sauce in blobs until the top is covered.

Put on baking sheet and into the oven for 45 minutes.

Take out and enjoy!

Love,