Easy Eats for Hard Times
Cauliflower is an often overlooked vegetable. Its pretty little flowerlets and its distinctive mild flavor take well to a variety of treatments: raw in salads, whirled in the blender for soups (good use for leftover mashed potatoes, too), in a marinara sauce with pasta, and here, your mom’s basic cauliflower with white sauce spiced up as a curry. This dish is fancy and delicious enough for company, and cheap enough for family. And you’ll have half a cauliflower left over for stir-fries that will use up other lonesome veggies in the crisper.
- 4 cloves garlic, chopped
- 3 tbsp. fresh ginger, chopped
- 1/2 large head cauliflower, cut in small flowerlets
- 1 cup frozen peas
- 1/2 red bell pepper, if on sale, diced
- 3 tbsp. flour
- 3 tbsp. butter
- 2 cups milk
- 1 cup shredded white cheese, like jack or white cheddar
- 4 tbsp. curry powder (or more to taste)
- 1/2 cup coarse bread crumbs
- 1/2 cup chopped cashews
Steam cauliflower until just tender. Drain. Make a white sauce, stir in cheese. Saute garlic, ginger, and curry powder, add cauliflower. Butter a baking dish. Pour in the cauliflower, add salt and pepper, top with cheese sauce, stir in peas and bell pepper. Sprinkle crumbs and nuts on top. Bake at 400 until top is browned (about ten minutes).
—Patty C. of Fallbrook, Calif.
