Squirrel brains?

Chou-Fleur A La Mornay, Gratine - Cauliflower au Gratin with Cheese

Can't get your kids to eat cauliflower? I bet you've never served it to them this way! Besides, don't tell them they are eating cauliflower -- just tell them they're going to have a little Chou-Fleur A La Mornay, Gratine for dinner! My photography skills simply couldn't do this one justice for a couple of reasons: 1. The finished dish photo at the top just doesn't seem to show what this is. To me it seems to look like a dish with white gravy covered with some dirt and dried grass. Okay, I admit I need to work on my presentation skills as well as my photography skills but I did follow the recipe to produce this. 2. I was simply having sooooooo much fun at the beginning when I started making this that I forgot to take any pictures until I was already making the sauce. Sheesh. I suppose I'll have to tell you about it then, eh?

I don't think I've ever actually taken apart a fresh cauliflower before. I thought cauliflower grew as little 1-2" little munchies that look kind of like albino squirrel brains (admit it, you've thought that before). The only place cauliflower appears is either frozen in bags at the grocery store freezer section (perhaps they're white because they grow on the ice of Antarctica?) or they appear in those little snack trays with carrots, broccoli, and cauliflower surrounding a tub of Ranch Dip! Guess what, that's not where it comes from! Cauliflower come in a big old head like a cabbage with all of those little white squirrel brains held tightly together by the central stem.

I did have a lot of fun figuring out how to take apart the two cauliflower heads. I definitely was able to put my knife collection to use - chef's knife to cut off the main stem and my paring knife to work on the small stems to separate everything. By the way, did you know the stems that get trimmed off are pretty tasty too? Julia recommends hanging onto them to make a soup -- maybe next time. So, the cauliflower heads were broken down into individual "florets."

After that, my good friend Blanche visited the kitchen again and the cauliflower was quickly blanched for 9 minutes. A couple of things I should point out here. First of all, when your water is getting nice and warm and then you realize it isn't getting any warmer after 15 minutes, be sure to check the stove setting. I'm not a huge fan of electric stoves because you can't see the flame. My sweet sous chef, Elizabeth, however is a fan of electric stoves and because this is her kitchen I suppose she gets to decide. Apparently at some point the stove's knob got bumped just a little -- it looked like it was on high but it was actually just past that point and had turned off the burner. Aaaaagh. I turned it back to high and in about two minutes had nice boiling water. I think that stove tricks me like that on purpose.

The other thing about blanching for this dish is that I think Julia had it wrong. She said to blanch the cauliflower for 9 to 12 minutes. I found that 9 minutes was actually too long and made it a bit softer than I'd like. Perhaps the French don't like to chew their food much but I'm thinking about 9 minutes will work better.

As soon as the blanching was done, the cauliflower was quickly dumped into a collander and rinsed with cold water to stop the cooking.

Then I set out to make my first Sauce Mornay . It started out with the same Sauce Bechamel I've made before using Julia's technique that works realllllllly well. If you're going to make a white sauce, this is the way to do it -- no lumps and a nice thick sauce made in just a few minutes. Making the Sauce Mornay actually only took about 5 minutes to make about 2 cups of sauce. First, 2 tablespoons of butter was melted in the saucepan over a low heat and then 3 tablespoons of flour was stirred in. I kept stirring until the mixture began to froth together and then let it continue to froth (while stirring) for 2 minutes -- not letting it start to color.

At this point it was officially a "white roux." While this was going on, I had 2 cups of milk brought to a boil -- this is Julia's secret, using boiling hot milk and not cold milk. The roux was removed from the heat and the hot milk was added to the roux all at once and "beat vigorously with a whisk" to mix everything together. After thoroughly mixed, the pan was put over moderate heat while being stirred with the whisk while being brought to a boil. After boiling for 1 minute it was taken from heat and salt and pepper were added. This was now officially a "Sauce Bechamel" (white sauce). Turning the Sauce Bechamel into "Sauce Mornay" was a cinch -- All I had to do was stir in 1/2 cup of grated Swiss cheese. This was an awesome cheese sauce!

About 1/3 of the sauce was put into the baking dish and the cauliflower arranged evenly on top of the sauce. The remainder of the sauce was poured over that and then bred crumbs and grated parmesan cheese were sprinkled all over the top. That's what ended up looking kind of like dirt and dried grass clippings -- any suggestions on how to properly pretty this up? The dish was then baked at 375 degrees for about 30 minutes -- just enough to heat up the cauliflower that had been cooled and melt the cheese on top a bit.

As I mentioned in the beginning, kids may fall in love with cauliflower when you serve it this way -- I know my grandkids did. We didn't have any leftovers from this dish. Personally, I won't mind if kids don't like this cauliflower, it'll leave more for me!!

Bon Appetit!