Cauliflower Bake

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!

Monday Night: Soufflé

It’s Monday night: work meeting night.

Sunday night I was wondering what I would make for dinner – it’s always a tight fit between 5 and 7 – and soufflé rose to the top of the list. I know that sounds crazy – 2000s xanax meets 50’s housewife crazy - and that’s what I would have thought a couple of months ago too. But then I read this article about soufflés.

It was written by someone who lived in France and she waxed eloquent about the joys of her soufflé nights in the home of an ordinary-working-woman-French-host-mother. Could this be the French equivalent of pizza? I was intrigued. So, a Saturday a while back, I gave it a whirl.


The article appealed to me for a several reasons. I lived in France for a year in high-school and have fond memories of the (sometimes interminable) meals, the conversations and…the food. Another reason? I have chickens, 4 of them, and I am always looking for ways to use up eggs. My son is an avowed egg-hater, so anything that could tempt him into eating eggs would be a boon.

The best reason though? It’s a soufflé. I have this unexplained attraction to things that puff and morph in the oven, that have to be served immediately and the challenge cinches the deal.

Turns out, the basic cheese soufflé is not all that hard.

And it’s a great dish with kids. Even my son loves soufflé. Perhaps because (in his words) “you have to eat it as soon as it’s done!” or perhaps because of the cheese.

My daughter is an egg-separating fiend. I taught her how to tip the cracked egg into her hand and let the white fall through her fingers. Amazingly for a child who doesn’t particularly like to have her fingers dirty, this is a pleasure.  So we whipped up some eggs.

Following the recipe exactly the few times, it came out just fine. I don’t have a soufflé dish, we used a small dutch oven and that worked just fine. We’ve experimented a bit with spices and different cheeses and it’s been a success each time.

This evening, I took a cue from the French host mother I never met and pulled it off. The 25 minutes it takes to cook provided just enough time to clean the dishes and we were ready to eat. Some salad and a yogurt with jam for dessert and Voila! Monday night was a success.

I wouldn’t try this on a deadline for the first time, but if it falls flat, we’ll call it a quiche.