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    An Easy Recipe: Creamy Cauliflower, Grana Padano cheese and Peas

    Group 393Easy
    Group 3824 people
    T450 min

    Lottie Bedlow – @lottiegotcake

    Cauliflower cheese is a staple of any good roast dinner. It is a heavenly side but can also hold its own as the main event. And, as was true in my case, it could even be baby’s first taste of solid food. Cauliflower cheese in a jar really was my first real meal. In fact, it was the only solid food I would eat for months – my poor mother… Nowadays, the prospect of cauliflower cheese in a jar is a much less appealing thought. I will be honest and say that I went off the dish for a very long time. Too much of a good thing, I guess. But, more recently, I started to wonder if the secret to rediscovering my love of the dish might have been hiding in plain sight all along, right there in the name: cheese.

    Grana Padano is the hero ingredient of so many of my favourite dishes and so I decided to work with the Grana Padano Riserva 20-month to create my own, perfect cauliflower cheese. The process of reading through existing methods, experimenting with different flavours, and tweaking here and there has resulted in one of my favourite recipes yet. The nuttiness of the Grana Padano works perfectly to create exactly the kind of velvety cheese sauce you won’t be able to resist on a cosy evening when it’s a little colder outside.
    Cheese is obviously just one half of the name of the dish. But – if I am being truly honest – this recipe would taste just as good with broccoli, or (ideally) even with macaroni. We don’t pick the dish for ‘cavolfiore’ or ‘cabbage flower’ (a vegetable that ultimately smells too much like your food compost bin). On its own it is just not appealing. This dish is all about the sauce.

    Ingredients

    • For the cauliflower
    • 1 medium cauliflower, chopped into small florets
    • Large pinch of salt
    • ⁠1 tsp garlic granules
    • ⁠1 tsp smoked paprika
    • ⁠⁠Drizzle of olive oil (I used garlic infused)
    • 25 g Grana Padano PDO, grated
    • 150 g petit pois, cooked
    • 1 shallot, sliced thinly to make rings
    • Oil for frying

    • For the sauce
    • ⁠50 g salted butter
    • 40 g plain flour, plus more for sprinkling on the shallots
    • ⁠650 ml whole milk
    • ⁠250g Grana Padano, grated (chunks take longer to melt it turns out)
    • ⁠1/2 tsp yeast extract
    • ⁠Lots of cracked black pepper

    Preparation

    STEP 1

    Put the cauliflower florets into a high sided baking dish, sprinkle with salt, garlic granules, paprika and Grana Padano. Drizzle over the olive oil and toss with your hands until the cauliflower is coated.

    STEP 2

    Bake at 190C fan for 30 minutes, giving them a little shake in the middle of cooking time to ensure they cook evenly.
    Whilst this is baking, make the crispy shallots by sprinkling the rings with a little flour and then frying in oil over a high heat until just golden. Set aside.

    STEP 3

    To make the sauce, melt the butter in a saucepan until bubbling, then stir in flour to make a paste. Cook for a few minutes until the flour is frothy, before gradually adding the milk, stirring continually over a medium heat. Once all the milk is added, bring to the boil and stir until thickened. Remove the pan from the heat, and stir in 200g of Grana Padano.

    STEP 4

    Tip the peas into the cauliflower dish and top with the sauce. Sprinkle with black pepper and the remaining Grana Padano.

    STEP 5

    Bake for 20 minutes, at 190C fan. Scatter with onions and serve.