Healthier Mac & Cheese with Cauliflower White Sauce

Tags

bechamel, cauliflower, cheese, cheese sauce, Mac & Cheese, pasta bake, vegetarian, white sauce

With many thanks to The Collector for the French antique plate, c. 1875-1891

I’ve started and re-started this post a couple of too many times now; it’s just not happening. Maybe I should leave it, and wait till some inspiration decides to return to my brain. I’m sure that would be the right thing to do. However, I really want to share this recipe with you all.

I made this dish a couple of weeks ago, after an impulse buy of a head of cauliflower at the supermarket. What’s that you say? The words cauliflower and impulse don’t belong in the same sentence? I know. It just looked so nice! And hey, it’s cheaper than a pair of Manolos. This version of Mac & Cheese is made with a thick white sauce, just like the classic, but with a twist. The white sauce is in fact a thick, gooey, creamy, cauliflower soup. Clever, isn’t it? The idea came from this Alfredo Pasta recipe on A Pinch of Yum. I tried it a while ago and really liked it, but thought I could take it up a notch in tastiness (and down a notch in healthiness) by adding a whole load of cheese to it. Baked Cauliflower Cheese was one of our favourite meals as kids, so combining that with pasta was a no-brainer really!

I’ve simplified the recipe for the sauce so the Mac & Cheese is fairly quick to throw together, but for a super fast meal, make the sauce the day (or a couple of days) before. Then you can just mix in some cheese and cooked pasta, sprinkle with breadcrumbs and pop it in the oven. In future I might even try replacing béchamel sauce in other recipes with this cauliflower sauce; for example it would probably be lovely in a veggie lasagna with spinach. But first I’ll have to convince The Mister to have a teeny weeny try. I know he’d like it but just the mention of the main ingredient sends him running to the souvlaki shop.

Healthier Mac & Cheese with Cauliflower White Sauce (Bechamel)

Serves 4

Ingredients

For the Cauliflower White Sauce (Bechamel)

1 small head of cauliflower (approx. 700-800g)
2 cups broth or stock, whatever type you prefer
White pepper, to taste
Nutmeg, to taste
Salt, to taste
1 Tbs cream
1 Tbs olive oil

For the Mac & Cheese

375g pasta (I used penne)
100g mature cheddar, grated
100g cheese of your choice, grated (choose one that melts well, mozzarella or gouda would be good – I used Greek Kaseri)
60g cheese for topping, grated (same as above, or Parmesan, or anything in the fridge that needs eating up! I used Kaseri again)
½ cup breadcrumbs for topping (or enough to cover your mac)
½ tsp Italian seasoning (or a mixture of any dried herbs you fancy)
White pepper, to taste
Salt, a good pinch
Cauliflower white sauce (I used most of the sauce made with the above ingredients – it depends how gooey/runny you like your Mac & Cheese)

Instructions

Cauliflower White Sauce

1. Cut the cauliflower into florets and boil it in the stock, covered, for about 30 minutes or until very tender.
2. Pour out 1 cup of the stock and set aside.
3. Using a stick blender, blend the cauliflower and remaining stock until smooth. Add the olive oil, cream, seasoning and the rest of the stock back in and continue to blend till very smooth (if you find that your sauce is already runny, just add as much of the reserved stock as necessary till it reaches the desired consistency. You want it thick and creamy, like béchamel. Mine was perfect with the 2 cups of stock).
4. Continue with the Mac & Cheese recipe or let it cool and refrigerate until needed.

Mac & Cheese with Cauliflower White Sauce

1. Preheat your oven to 180C.
2. Boil the pasta in plenty of salty water but stop just before it’s completely done (about 2 minutes less than you would normally cook it). Drain the pasta reserving ½ a cup of water.
3. Return the pasta to the saucepan and add the white sauce and cheeses (except the cheese for the topping). Stir well to combine. If it’s too thick you can thin it out with some pasta stock. I didn’t need to do this.
4. Now you can add some seasoning to the mixture if you want. I forgot to do this, so I just added the salt and pepper to the breadcrumbs. It worked for me because I liked the bursts of saltiness that came in the crunchy topping. If you prefer a mellower taste add the salt to the mixture.
5. Transfer mixture to an oven proof dish.
6. Mix the herbs (and seasoning if not already used) with the breadcrumbs and remaining cheese, and sprinkle over the mixture.
7. Bake for about 40 minutes or until the top is golden and the sides are bubbling a bit. If the sauce was in the fridge this might take a bit longer.
8. Let the Mac & Cheese rest for a while before cutting into it. Serve with a tomato or green salad.

Other Cool Cauliflower Recipes from around the Blogosphere
Cauliflower Cheese by The English Kitchen
Pureed Cauliflower by Kalyn’s Kitchen
Bacon Cheddar Cauliflower Chowder by Iowa Girl Eats
Cauliflower Crust Pizza with Fried Eggs by Love & Lemons
CrockPot Roasted Cauliflower Soup with Curry and Honey by A Year of Slow Cooking

New Year Goodies – Beer Bread, Savoury Chocolate Biscuits and Ginger Snaps

Tags

beer bread, biscuits, brunch, cheese, cookies, ginger, savoury biscuits, snack

The beautiful antique plate is Minton’s China Aster dating from 1861. Many thanks to The Collector for the kind loan.

Happy New Year everyone! It’s the first week of 2013 and I’m wondering what it has in store for us. The New Year finds me in the middle of a huge change, as I’ve packed in my “proper” job (you know, one that actually pays me a salary at the end of the month) to go off and work for a friend of mine who is starting his own company. Yes, a startup. A very popular word nowadays! There are people out there who surely think I’m nuts, especially since my job was with the British civil service. In these days of “The Crisis” the advice one tends to hear is “if you have a job stay put”. Well, I don’t really agree. Actually I think it’s kind of a miserable approach towards the one activity that takes up the largest chunk of our day – and our life for that matter. And we have enough misery around us, just by turning on the news. Of course not all situations are the same, and yes, I have the luxury of a support network, but I truly believe everyone should try their hardest to do something they are happy with. Don’t get me wrong, I spent 5 happy years working for an organization I have a lot of respect for, but the time was slowly arriving when I’d be ready for a change. So when the opportunity presented itself I grabbed it.

What will I be doing? Well, I’m going to keep you in suspense for a while. I have to work out what I can say here and when. Some elements have to be kept secret for a bit.  Gosh doesn’t that sound interesting?!

So for now I’ll stick to these gorgeous recipes. This is a platter of goodies I put together on New Year’s Day, most of which I spent lying in bed reading a good detective novel, drinking tea and snacking! I made these on New Year’s Eve, during a sudden urge to bake; they are perfect for midmorning snacking as they’re all somewhere between sweet and savoury and can be enjoyed as either. The chocolate biscuits are really interesting as you get the satisfaction of chocolate without too much sweetness and they can be paired fabulously with mature cheddar – just as Pigling Bland suggests in her Tales. It’s made me seriously rethink the amount of sugar I normally use in cookies; do I really need it? The ginger snaps are pure heaven smeared with a bit of butter – a discovery made by my mum the previous evening – but are also lovely dunked in tea. The strong ginger taste combined with the hot tea gives your mouth a sort of burning feeling but in a good way. Try taking a bite, chewing a bit, then washing it down with a gulp of hot tea. Aaahh. Can’t describe it.

Finally, the beer bread tipped the scales a bit further towards the savoury, creating a perfect balance. Again, butter makes it better. But what isn’t made better with butter? (I think I’ve got a bit of a slogan going there…). I remember seeing something on a blog, or maybe it was Twitter, about an apron that said on the front “Life is short, eat the damn butter”. I want that apron! The original recipe calls for pouring melted butter over the bread when it comes out of the oven. Surprisingly I haven’t tried that yet, but will do soon. This is my own version and it turned out great, but check my “Next Time” notes for my thoughts on improving it.

As I didn’t really make any changes to the first two recipes, I’ll just link back to the original sites. So we have:

• Savoury Chocolate Biscuits (Cookies) by Tales of Pigling Bland. I didn’t have poppy seeds so I left them out, thus not using the egg wash either. They would have been prettier with the seeds.
• Ginger Snaps by Alton Brown on the Food Network. I couldn’t be bothered to grate fresh ginger so left that out. The biscuits were gingery enough, but if you like them proper gingery then take the time do it. Or maybe add more dried ginger.

Top right: beer bread, bottom: ginger snaps, top left: savoury chocolate biscuits

Beer Bread with Sundried Tomatoes and Amfilochia Cheese

Adapted from Beer Bread, 4 Ways by Bake at 350

Ingredients

3 cups self-raising flour
5 Tbs (60gr) chopped sundried tomatoes
3 Tbs sugar
1 ½ tsp dried oregano
330ml (about 12oz) Newcastle Brown Ale
1 cup Graviera Amfilochias (a strong Greek cheese, substitute with Parmesan or Pecorino or Grana Padano)

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 180C. Grease and line a loaf pan with grease proof paper (parchment).
2. Put the flour in a large bowl. Spoon a little bit onto a plate and add the chopped sundried tomatoes. Mix them up so the tomato pieces are coated with the flour. Set aside.
3. Mix the sugar and oregano into the flour in the bowl.
4. Add the beer and stir.
5. Mix in the cheese and sundried tomatoes, folding until you can’t see any flour. Don’t over mix.
6. Spoon the mixture into the loaf pan (it will be thick, level as best you can) and bake for approx. 1 hour.

Next time:
I will use a lighter tasting beer. Newcastle Brown is quite strong, and although I like the taste it leaves, I have a feeling it’s overpowering the cheese. I will try it with a lager as well, just to see what happens. I will also use more sundried tomatoes, maybe 100gr.

Before I go, I want to say a huge thank you to everyone who has nominated me for blogger awards during the past few months. I have been really useless at reciprocating and I’m sorry for that. I will try to do something about it!