Another cheesy night in!

It's this time of the year again, we can feel the winter coming already. Although, to be honest, it's felt like winter all summer long... Still, the days are getting shorter, the trees are losing their leaves and it's time to light the fire again.
I subscribe to a veg basket. And recently I have received one cauliflower a week. I have to admit that cauliflower is not on my favourite veg list. So for the past few weeks, the cauliflowers have been piling up in my fridge. I mean I took four of them and a romanesco (mix between broccoli and cauliflower) out of the fridge this evening! How ridiculous is that. So I decided to tackle my cauliflower problem.
The thing about cauliflower is that I couldn't think of any recipes apart from the obvious cauliflower cheese. So, I set upon making the cauliflower cheese dish.
I remembered that a while back, in the same way, I had attempted to get rid of a glut of cauliflowers already. I made cauliflower cheese but with some really pungent French cheese, freshly brought back from France. And to my surprise, it was beautiful. The pungent cheese, once melted, was actually a little nutty and sweet and was perfect to counterbalance the bitterness of cauliflowers. It reminded me of lovely days spent in the Alps skiing... and eating melted cheese dishes!
So, I decided to try that recipe again, just to be sure my finding wasn't just a one off chance. And guess what, it was absolutely delicious, I think I ate the equivalent of a full cauliflower by myself this evening. That and a slice of crusty sourdough bread and a nice tangy salad... Cheesy heaven!!!

So here is my recipe for  Cauliflower cheese.

Cauliflower Cheese

Ingredients:
- 4 medium cauliflowers
- 1 romanesco
- 500 ml of milk
- 50 gr of butter
- 50 gr of plain flour
- 100 gr of grated Swiss Gruyère or other pungent cheese (don't worry, once melted it doesn't smell any more!), ask your cheesemonger's. Be brave, it really is worth it!
- Pinch of nutmeg
- Good pinch of salt
- Some black pepper

1. Preheat the oven at 200°C.
2. Remove the outer leaves of the cauliflowers and the romanesco, keep them whole though and steam them for 8-10 minutes.
3. In the meantime, melt the butter in a saucepan, once melted, add the flour and whisk until you get a kind of paste.
4. Then, add the milk, salt, nutmeg and black pepper. Keep whisking on the heat until the sauce thickens. Remove from the heat once thickened.
5. By now, your cauliflower and romanesco should be ready. Remove them from the pan and carefully cut them into florets (use a tea-towel to protect your fingers from the heat) into a baking dish.
6. Cover with the sauce, add the grated cheese on top. Bake for about 30 minutes or until golden.

I served mine with a green salad with a mustard dressing and crusty sourdough bread to mop up that cheesy sauce!

Bon appétit!

Answer to the previous poll... at last

Hello all,

I have been quite busy recently and unable to blog as much as I wanted. The good thing, though, is that I am now going to be able to blog again! Not sure whether this is such a good thing or not.
Anyway, the other reason I have not been able to blog is that the last poll I posted was about dessert and I was asked to post an easy and/or chocolate recipe. The problem is that, as I am mostly on my own, I tend not to cook desserts and especially chocolate dessert. If I do, I end up eating chocolate for the rest of the week. Now that the winter is on our doorstep again, I don't mind so much. I need the calories! And on top of that, I thought of an idea to make a dessert that lasts for a while. I decided to make ice-cream!
So, I did make that easy chocolate dessert two days ago: I made white chocolate ice-cream.

White chocolate ice-cream

Ingredients:
- 250 ml of cream
- 250 ml of full-fat milk
- 6 egg yolks
- 75 gr caster sugar
- The seeds of a vanilla pod

- 100 gr of good quality white chocolate, cut into squares
- White chocolate drops


Procedure:
1. Heat up the milk and the cream in a saucepan until very hot (do not boil).
2. Whisk the egg yolks with the sugar together.
3. Pour the milk-cream mixture into the egg-sugar mix whisking.
4. Pour the mixture into a saucepan with the vanilla and heat up slowly until the mix coats the back of a wooden spoon.
5. Take the mixture off the heat when it's reached the proper consistency. Put the white chocolate squares into it and mix well until melted. Let the mixture cool. Once cooled, add the white chocolate drops into it.
6. Pour into an ice-cream maker or a plastic box and freeze.

Et voilà!


Serving suggestions:
As you can see on the picture, I served the white chocolate ice-cream with praline crumbs and dark chocolate sauce.
This evening, we had some of the ice-cream with fresh strawberries, strawberry coulis and meringue. It was gorgeous!