The Best Dish Since Sliced Cheese

Roasted Cauliflower Cheese and my Top Three Cheeses you can eat...

Look, most of the time, what I want to eat are The Classics. You may have noticed if you have been reading me shoot the bull for a while now that I am not exactly reinventing any cookery wheel here. I prefer to eat The Classics so I prefer to cook The Classics, and today is an example of how I like to treat a Classic right. Leave your saucepan at the door because my next hype is Roasted Cauliflower Cheese.

I don’t know about you, but boiled cauliflower is not something I like to eat. It tastes bad, and I think that’s why we collectively learnt to pour molten cheese sauce all over it, and why the extent of that vegetable’s library of hits in the UK stops there.

Well, how about we give that cauliflower the treatment it deserves? In this subtle twist on everyone’s favourite homely cheese dish, we roast the vegetable, leaves and all, in a hot oven, until golden and almost tender. Then we dress it all up with a blue-cheese spiked sauce, and have ourselves a meal that actually makes the most out of the bulbous thing instead of trying to disguise it.

It’s time for sweet, nutty, florets and a rich and savoury sauce. Put your choufleur in the air like you just don’t care.

Roasted Cauliflower Cheese

2 tbsp olive oil
1 medium cauliflower , broken into florets, leaves reserved
60g butter
3 tbsp flour
600ml milk
60g blue cheese (Stilton is good)
100g Cheddar
30g Asiago (I get it from Lidl) or more cheddar
Nutmeg, to grate
¼ tsp mustard powder
Black pepper

1. Heat your oven to 200°c. Toss the florets of cauliflower in oil, season with salt and pepper and spread them out on a baking tray. Roast for 20 minutes, turning them once. Make an incision in the thick stem of the larger cauli leaves and then add all of them to the roasting tray and roast for a further 8 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, melt the butter in a heavy bottomed pot then add the flour and stir, cooking for 2 minutes until it bubbles and appears lacy. Gradually add in the milk, then all the cheeses, and whisk until they have melted and the sauce has become thick. Season with plenty of salt, pepper, the mustard powder and a grating of nutmeg.

3. Pour all the sauce over the roasted cauliflower, it should cover it well, you want a lot of sauce. Bake on the top shelf of the oven for 25-30 minutes until golden brown. Serve with a jacket potato, or on the side of your roast dinner. It’s particularly good with a nut roast.

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Cheeses

For about 5 years, I worked “in cheese”. People who didn’t work “in cheese” thought this sounded like I meant I worked inside a wheel of cheese itself. But what I mean is in the cheese industry, flogging cheese - you get what I’m saying. Evidence:

It’s fair to say that like most people who are not vegan, I find enjoyment in the stuff. So here are My Top Three cheeses that you can eat. I am not afraid to admit that they are all really quite similar - which is to say, semi-hard, acidic and tangy. That’s the cheese that speaks to me. Sorry ‘bout it. 

Put them on a plate together, though, and you’ll find they’re actually really quite different in their own ways.

• Cotherstone
  
  This is the best cheese in the world, in my opinion. Made in County Durham, by a woman who will give her recipe away to no one, it’s one of the lesser known British Territorial cheeses. Probably most closely related to Wensleydale, it is moist yet crumbly, often bouncy in texture, and yogurty in flavour, with a slight sourness. The sweet milkiness balances the sourness and of course, like any cheese, it has enough salt to keep the bugs at bay. If ever you see this cheese on sale my advice is: buy it. 
  

• Kirkham’s Lancashire
  
  Made by the most charming man in British cheese, and his team of talented women and men, Kirkham’s Lancashire is the most well-rounded cheese I know, and if I could afford to I would eat it every day. It’s so good to cook with, and if you haven’t tried Simon Hopkinsons’ Lancashire tart from this book, what are you waiting for??? Try a slab with a mince pie, too. Eat it any which way you like because it’s fundamentally good stuff.
  

• Payoyo (Semi Curado)
  
  Because I am NOT a nationalist, and because it is genuinely my third favourite cheese, old mate Payoyo gets spot number 3. A firm Spanish goats’ cheese from Cadiz with similarities to Manchego, Payoyo is creamier and more moist, possessing the acidity associated with goats’ cheese but a sweet, white chocolatey note that makes it mellower. And with a name like that, I think we should all give this cheese a chance.

Thanks for reading! See you in December!