We served up a pretty white dinner the other night - chicken, onions and cauliflower. Not the prettiest dinner, but it was mighty tasty. We used a poulet rouge chicken - they're locally grown and although I was a skeptic at first, it was one of the tastiest chickens we've ever had. The onions were roasted with the chicken so they had picked up a great caramelized flavor. The cauliflower, however, was the main star of this particular evening's dinner.
For a long time, I was a failure at making a white sauce. For whatever reason, it seemed like an unattainable pinnacle of cooking. The first break-through was making soufflee. Following the recipe in Mastering the Art of French Cooking made it easy. So when I saw a cauliflower in white sauce recipe on a cooking show, I figured we were ready to tackle this dish.
Equal parts flour and butter are the key, along with having your milk ready to go. I heat the milk (1 cup) in the microwave, simple and quick. Then it's ready to be stirred into the butter and flour (2 TB each) after they've cooked for a couple of minutes. It thickened right up, see?
It cooked for a couple of minutes, then we turned off the heat, stirred in some grated swiss cheese, pepper, salt, nutmet and red pepper flakes, and poured it over our cauliflower.
The cauliflower had been microwaved ahead of time until it was mostly cooked. Sauce and store-bought breadcrumbs topped the florets and we put it in the over for about 20 minutes, along with the chicken, to bubble up and brown.
As you can see, there were no leftovers on this one!
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