My Favourite Vegi Meal…

is Cauliflower Cheese! You have to admit the sedate cauliflower needs a little help to elevate itself from being a side covered in gravy to a full meal. A friend of mine gave me some white stilton cheese the other day and I thought that it would be just the thing to put the zing into my favourite vegi dish. Of course helped out with some English mustard and cracked black pepper and a little sea salt.

Turn the oven on to 200C/GM 6/400F so it gets to heat and is ready when we have assembled the dish. My favourite cooker for this is VisiCook SuperChef Multifunction Wave Oven which is efficient and uses all three types of heating: convection, infrared and conduction all at the same time.

We need a large cauliflower

Remove the outer leaves and cut into florets. Get the steamer out and steam the cauliflower for 8 minutes. Remember if the water in your area is hard use bottled water to steam so you do not affect the vegetable with the water.
Steamed Cauliflower

While that is steaming it is time to prepare the sauce and cheese:

175g white stilton – for flavour
75g Jarlsberg – for texture
Cut into cubes
Cubed White Stilton and Jarlsberg

For the sauce collect together:

500ml Milk (fat content is up to you but I like “FULL ON” with this recipe)
25g butter
25g plain flour
1 tsp English Mustard
1 tsp Black Pepper
½ tsp Sea Salt

In a frying pan melt the butter over a medium low heat. When it is all melted, then sprinkle in the flour stirring constantly. It should form paste. When all the flour is incorporated add some milk, not all just a tip from the jug. Stir that in and when it is gone add two tips of milk and stir that in. When all of the milk is incorporated then add 3 tips etc. until you have a smooth white sauce.

Now to give this sauce some flavour. Add the mustard, pepper, salt and cheese. Turn the heat down until you have steam coming off of the pan, but a only a very few bubbles as we want to reduce the sauce and not boil it.
Cheese Sauce