Step by step cheese sauce – comedy cauliflower optional
So one of my happier experiments in the garden were these little beauties. They did have a name, but I’ve bloody forgotten now, although I’m sure Poppy’s Mum or GrowUp, my gardening gurus, will let me know in due course. Yesterday, then, we decided to pick one and test it out.
‘Ooh’, said #1, ‘cauliflower cheese!’.
‘Yum’, said I.
‘Bleurgh’, said the other two.
There’s no pleasing some people.
Here, then, are step by step guidelines to making your own creamy, cheesy sauce. What you do with it is entirely up to you: stir it through pasta and bake for easy mac and cheese, use it to layer through your lasagne, pile it on thick toast and grill it…. frankly, you can smother yourself in it from head to toe if you like… be my guest. Anyhoo, digressing. Here she blows, then:
Firstly, make the cheese sauce:
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp plain flour
About 200g random cheese: I used Wexford Cheddar and Parmesan
400ml milk (ish)
Salt and pepper
Okay, so I know this is all sounding a bit random, but honestly it’s pretty hard to get this wrong. Just melt a nice big tablespoon of butter in a saucepan on a low heat:
Then whop in your tablespoon of plain flour. Keep stirring over a low heat while you ‘cook out’ the flour and make a nice smooth paste (or ‘roux’ if you’re feeling a bit cheffy):
Now slowly mix in the milk, stirring all the time. As it bubbles, the mixture will thicken. If it’s too thick, add a little more milk. Season with a little salt and pepper (purists use white pepper so there’s no black bits) and that’s your basic white sauce. To make it into a cheese sauce, just chop up and add in some random cheese:
I used Cheddar and Parmigiano, but you can use whatever takes your fancy. Red Leicester makes it a pretty colour, and blue cheese makes a ridiculously good sauce for steak or pasta. Word of advice, here, people, courtesy as usual of English Grandma: don’t grate the cheese – you’ll end up with a big clump that takes ages to melt – chunks melt far easier (I’m a mine of useless information, me).
Now, for cauliflower cheese, blanch your comedy vegetable by plunging into some boiling, salted water until just tender:
…pop into an ovenproof dish, pour over your cheesy sauce of choice, top with a little more grated cheese, and bake in the oven at good ol’ 180 degrees/gas 4 for about 20 minutes or until golden and bubbling:
Serve with some big, fat spicy sausages, or a roast dinner, or just on its own as an easy supper. If you’re going for the full body masque, though, go steady on the pepper.
28 Responses to “Step by step cheese sauce – comedy cauliflower optional”
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Your recipes looks decidedly yummy, am hungry now.
) Hugs.
PS. Am thrilled to learn the nifty whisk is coming in handy – brilliant. Double hugs.
xx
Oh and I still think it smells dodgy though! x
Very interested in chopping the cheese rather than grating it, I hate grating cheese!
And I love that veg thing!
If a vegetable was a mathematical equation, that cauliflower would be it.
We call them Veronica cauliflower over here.
They are so yummy!