I ate my first ever homegrown cauliflower tonight. Given that it's been comprehensively neglected this year, I was amazed to find two very photogenic, acid green spires on the two plants that managed to germinate and grow despite my best efforts to completely ignore them.
They really are marvellous to photograph as well as to eat: all those fractals!
This is probably completely verboten but I turned the cauliflower into a cauliflower cheese. Not very sexy, but deliciously comforting on a wet Sunday night ....
The variety? An unusual autumn-maturing Romanesco called Ottobrino, available from the Real Seed Catalogue (scroll to the bottom).
Tangentially, I must say that learning how to make a good roux - the basis of my white sauce for the cauliflower cheese - was one of the most useful lessons my mum ever taught me. I must have been about eight or nine, and as I stood by the stove she showed me how to melt the butter in the pan, add just enough flour, and gently stir while it "honeycombed". Then add the milk, gradually, stirring all the time and watch it thicken. Magic.
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