Necessity is the mother of invention. In other words, when someone really, really needs something, he or she will figure out a way to do or get it. Sometimes, I’ll be in the middle of making a recipe and realize that I’m missing an ingredient.  Actually, this happens a lot, since I’m not exactly the best organized person in the world. So, I’ll have two choices: scrap the whole thing, or find something else to use instead.  I hate to waste food, therefore, scrapping is not an option.  Usually, after rummaging around a bit, I’ll find something that works, and .

This idiom also comes into play when I have too much of a particular ingredient and I’m struggling to find ways to use it.  Case in point – all of that fresh, beautiful zucchini from the garden I was telling you about a few weeks ago.  Now, I know that there are zillions of different ways to prepare zucchini.  But, given the fact that the temperatures here have been topping out in the 90′s every day, my viable options are limited.  That’s HOT, people! The last thing I want to be doing is spending any more time hovering over my stove than absolutely necessary.  Since no one around here is fond of eating raw zucchini, and Mr. SGCC appears to be allergic to his grill, my next best solution is a recipe that requires very little cooking time – like these Cheesy Zucchini Latkes.  

Latkes are savory fried pancakes made with grated vegetables that are bound together by egg, bread crumbs and often, flour.  Traditionally made with potatoes, they’re a popular dish at Hanukkah time.   We’re not Jewish, but my mother used to make latkes a lot, though she called them potato pancakes.  But really, you can make great latkes with any kind of firm, gratable vegetables – like zucchini.

In my latkes, I’ve used a base of coarsely grated zucchini and onion, panko crumbs and eggs.   A lot of latke recipes call for flour.  I don’t think they need it, so I leave it out.  If your latke mixture seems too loose, you can certainly add a few tablespoons of all purpose flour to “tighten” it up.

I’ve also added a pile of shredded pepper jack cheese to my latkes.  It makes them all melty and gooey inside.  Just like with butter, everything is better with cheese!  You don’t often find cheese in traditional versions of latkes, as it isn’t pareve.  But if you don’t follow Jewish dietary laws, you’re as golden as these latkes are.  Hey!  At least I didn’t add bacon, although, I was tempted to.

Latkes are super easy to prepare and have a mercifully short cooking time.  Once you have your ingredients all mixed together,  all you need to do is scoop them into golf ball-sized blobs and fry them in a mix of butter and oil.   It only takes a few minutes on each side to get that burnished, crispy, crunchy outer shell, and gooey, molten cheesiness on the inside.

These zucchini latkes or pancakes or whatever you want to call them make a great accompaniment to any kind of meat, poultry or fish.  They are truly lip smacking delicious.  I topped mine with a schmear of some sweet and spicy red pepper jelly that I found at my local farmers market, and finished each of them off with a tiny dollop of crème fraiche.  They would also be fab served with a little applesauce on the side.

So, if you’re still hiding under a mountain of zucchini, or even if you’re not, try making some Cheesy Zucchini Latkes.   You’ll be glad you did.

This week, I scored some gorgeous English green peas in my basket from SunCoast Organics.  To say I was excited is an understatement.  I love fresh English peas!  I love them so much, that I even eat them raw – right out of the pod.  When I saw how lovely and perfect these were, I knew exactly what I wanted to make with them.   This Minted Spring Pea Soup is bright and vibrant, and would be a delightful addition to your Easter table.

English green peas and mint are very simpatico.   Lucky for me, the mint in my garden is growing wild right now.   I can’t use it up fast enough!  So of course, I had to pair them together in this soup.

Soups like this one are so easy to make.  A whole delicious, herbaceous batch can be pulled together in about thirty minutes.  The most time consuming part of the process is shelling your peas.  And, most of the ingredients you’ll need are probably already lurking in your pantry.

Aren’t these little guys cute?  They’re pea soup “shooters”.   “Pea” “shooters”.  Get it?  Hehe!   Sometimes, I crack myself up!   I topped them with a smidge of crème fraiche and a sprinkle of smoked paprika.

My original recipe calls for a little heavy cream.  But, you don’t really need it.  I didn’t use any in this batch.  The soup is very velvety and luxurious all on its own.   And without the cream, the bright, fresh flavor of the peas and mint really shine through.

I want to tell you that you can substitute frozen peas to make this soup – and you can.  But, I have to be honest.  It’s just not the same.  You can, however, make this soup with edamame.  It doesn’t have the same subtle sweetness as with the peas, but it is very good all the same.

I absolutely adore Thai green papaya salad, or Som Tam.  I always order it when I see it on a restaurant menu.  In fact, I have actually dined at certain restaurants solely because I’d heard that their green papaya salad was amazing.  My favorite Asian market sometimes carries their own homemade version of it, and it is really something special.   Sadly, I haven’t seen it there in quite a while.

The best way I can think of to describe green papaya salad is as a crunchy, sweet and salty take on Western coleslaw.   It’s a lively party of many textures and flavors, like garlic, chili, lime and fish sauce, and it is just plain delicious.  The main ingredient of traditional Som Tam is of course, shredded “green” papaya, which is basically the flesh of the raw, unripened fruit.  While I can easily find ripe, yellow papayas in my local markets, the unripe ones are more elusive.  And, when I have a craving for green papaya salad, that just won’t do!

When I made my Asian Wedding Soup, aka faux pho, a few weeks ago, I desperately wanted a bowl of green papaya salad to serve alongside it.   But, I also didn’t want to go crazy looking for all of the ingredients I would need.  So, I put on my food ninja thinking cap, and tried to figure out a way to achieve the “personality” of the dish with what was readily available to me.  Sometimes, you just have to think outside the box.  What I came up with was a  creative and very tasty (if I do say so myself) take on this Thai classic.   Instead of green papaya  as the base for my salad, I used….. 

BROCCOLI SLAW!

Yup.  That’s right.  I used a bag of good old broccoli slaw plucked from the produce aisle of my local supermarket.    It was already julienned.  It was crisp.  It was crunchy.  It was easy.  And, it was even green!   But, the most important thing was that, when it was all dolled up in its fancy, exotic dressing, it gave me the same essence of that green papaya salad that I love so much.   I can’t believe I’d never thought if it before!

To prepare my salad, I whisked up my dressing, dumped the broccoli slaw in a bowl along with some chopped tomatoes and scallions, and mixed them all together.  Then, I sprinkled some chopped, dry roasted peanuts on top for a little extra crunch.  That was it!  Really, it couldn’t have been simpler.

The guidelines for this recipe are not written in stone.  I’ve listed the ingredients in the measurements that I used.  Feel free to change them to suit your own tastes.  I love fish sauce, so I was a little heavy handed with it.  If you like a more subtle kick, use less.  The same goes for the rest of the ingredients.  The important thing is that you like it.

Now, if I ever do come across a true green papaya, I’ll be more than happy to whip up the real deal.  But for now, I’m thrilled with my faux version.   It’s a vibrant, refreshing and very flavorful dish that would be a welcome addition to any Asian-inspired meal – at least at my table.

ขอให้เจริญอาหาร!

Enjoy!

There’s one thing about Mr. SGCC that drives me absolutely nuts.  (Well, there’s actually more than one thing, but that’s a story for another day.) He suffers in silence.  That is to say that, when he doesn’t like something, he usually just sucks it up and doesn’t say anything.  This especially applies to food.  I know this because over the past twenty something years, I have made and remade several dishes that he didn’t really like, yet he never said so – until maybe the tenth time I served it.  Case in point:  When we were first married, I used to cook a lot of spaghetti squash.  I served it like pasta with tomato sauce, sautéed in butter, swimming in broth… You get the picture.  I loved it.  He didn’t.  But, he never actually told me that he didn’t like spaghetti squash until years later, when it just kind of came up in conversation.

Imagine how awful I felt learning this little nugget of information after years of shoving pounds of spaghetti squash in his face!   I had no idea!

“Why didn’t you ever say anything?” I asked incredulously.

“I don’t know. I guess I didn’t want to hurt your feelings.” was his response.

Admirable intentions.  Poor execution.

HMMPH!

So, when I found one of these big boys in my veggie basket from Suncoast Organics this week, I found myself in a quandary.  Don’t you just love saying the word “quandary”?  I do.  Quandary. Quandary. Quandary.  There, I think I’ve gotten it out of my system now.

Anyway, I didn’t want to serve it to “you-know-who” when I knew that he didn’t like it. Especially when he knew that I knew he didn’t like it.   But, I certainly didn’t want to waste it either.  After some deliberation, I decided to do the only thing I could do given the circumstances.  I would try to disguise the squash by baking it in a casserole under tons of creamy Mornay sauce made with lots of butter and cheese.   I mean, everybody loves rich, cheesy, buttery sauces, right?  He’d probably never even know. Right?

And that, dear readers, is how this Spaghetti Squash Gratin came to be.

To make this gratin, you first have to cook the spaghetti squash.  There are a couple of ways you can do it.  You can steam or boil it, microwave it, although I’ve never tried that, or bake it in the oven.  My method of choice is baking.   While your squash is cooking, you’ll need to prepare the sauce. A Mornay sauce is simply a béchamel sauce amped up with shredded cheese, and is very easy to make.

Don’t forget the cheese!

Once your squash is cooked and your sauce is made, it’s time to put them all together.

Et voila!

One thing I should mention here, is that I also mixed some sautéed onions in with the squash before baking it.  You don’t have to do this.  But I love onions and thought that they would add a nice flavor to the dish – which they did.

The gratin was (Kat Flinn, please forgive me) absolutely delicious!  The squash was soft, delicate and just the tiniest bit sweet.  The sauce was voluptuous and velvety.  And the crunchy topping added just the right amount of texture.  It was a very successful dish that I plan to make again.

Oh, and Mr. SGCC did recognize the spaghetti squash, but he ate it anyway and said that he liked it.  I guess I’ll just have to trust him on that one.

Enjoy!

I was blessed with another batch of beautiful rainbow carrots in my basket from Suncoast Organics this week.  You may recall that the last time I had some, I pickled them with some daikon radish and made a lovely Do Chua.  This time, I wanted to show the carrots off in a more “Autumn-like” way.  Few things say Fall more than a big platter of lovely, caramelized, roasted root vegetables.  And, that happens to be my favorite way to enjoy them.  I saw a recipe using rainbow carrots on Jaden’s TLC blog and it inspired me.  Jaden also happens to be a member of Suncoast Organics.

In her recipe, Jaden roasts her carrots and then covers them with a glaze made with honey and mustard.  I decided to swap out the honey for some wonderful Vermont maple syrup that my nephew recently sent me. (He just started medical school at the University of Vermont and we are soooo proud of him!)  I also added a splash of sherry vinegar to the glaze for a little extra oomph.  Instead of pouring the glaze on the carrots after they came out of the oven, I added it during the last few minutes of cooking to give them a little more of that “sticky gooey” factor that I love so much.

Look at how beautiful those carrots are!  I couldn’t stop taking pictures of them!

Rainbow carrots don’t really taste much different than regular carrots.  But, they look so darn lush and pretty that eating them just feels more special!  You can certainly make this recipe with any kind of carrots you have, or even with other Fall vegetables like rutabaga, sweet potatoes or butternut squash.  It’s all good!

Enjoy!

I was recently the recipient of two gorgeous bunches of organic Lacinato kale from SunCoast Organics.  You might know it as dinosaur kale, Tuscan kale or cavolo nero.  It’s the kind that has long, dark, embossed, plume-like leaves as opposed to its curly-leafed cousins.  Lacinato kale has a slightly sweeter and more delicate taste than curly kale, and is lovely in soups, stews or even salads.

One of my favorite ways to enjoy kale is in Caldo Verde, a Portuguese soup made with greens, potatoes and smoky chouriço sausage.  It’s a hearty, rustic dish that I make often.  But for this kale, I wanted to try something new.  I found the perfect recipe on Molly’s site, and I ran with it.

Boiled Kale with a Fried Egg and Toast is the simplest of simple dishes, yet it is so incredibly delicious.  It’s just kale, simmered in chicken stock with onions, and served on toast with a luscious, gooey, runny fried egg on top. If you’re feeling really daring like I was, you can also fry up some bacon to toss in the mix.  No fancy bells and whistles here.  Yet, once I began thinking about this guileless little dish, I couldn’t stop!

The first thing you have to do is prepare the kale, by trimming off the tough stems, rinsing it like crazy and cutting it into ribbons.

Next, you sauté some onions and wilt the kale.   Then, add chicken or vegetable stock and simmer it all, slowly, until the kale is soft and tender.  I forgot to take a picture of this part.  I guess I was too excited about the impending bacon fry.

Everything’s better with bacon – especially fried eggs.  They’ve been going steady for years.

Where there’s bacon, there’s bacon fat.  Slide a few farm fresh eggs right down into some.  If you don’t use bacon, just fry the eggs in good old olive oil.

Plop a nice, thick slice of toasted bread in a bowl, ladle on some kale, toss on a little bacon and top with one of those pretty fried eggs – or two.  I sprinkled some shredded Parmesan on top of mine too.

Oh, baby! It just doesn’t get much better than this, people!  Come on – be honest. Could you resist this?

Enjoy!

Are you getting sick of me talking about Suncoast Organics yet?  I hope not, because I’m going to talk about them again.  This week I got the prettiest rainbow-colored carrots in my goodie box.  Another “first” for me. I’d seen pictures of them in cookbooks and magazines, but never, ever found them in any market around here.  I wanted to use them in a way that would really show off their pretty colors.  That meant cooking them was out.  Since my Wickled Okra was such a success, I decided to pickle the carrots as well.

One of my favorite restaurants here in town is a casual, little Vietnamese place called Pho Cali.  As you can probably guess from the name, they have awesome pho.  But, they also have awesome everything else too.  Alongside every delectable dish they serve is a sweetly zesty pickled carrot and daikon radish medley called do chua.  It’s the first thing I go for on the plate.  I sometimes have to fight Mr. SGCC for it.  But, I’m the fastest fork in the East, so I usually win.  I love me some do chua! 

Instead of making a traditional pickle with my rainbow carrots,  I channeled my inner Asian and made some do chua.  Luckily, I still had some daikons left over from last week’s veggie box from you know who.

Do chua is so incredibly easy to make. Since it is a “fresh” pickle, there is no boiling or cooking involved. All you do is julienne the carrots and daikon, and soak them in a brine made with white vinegar, rice wine vinegar, a little water, sugar and a pinch of salt. That’s it!  Plus, the pickles only need to marinate in their brine for about an hour before they’re ready to devour.

The recipe I used is from a cookbook called Into the Vietnamese Kitchen: Treasured Foodways, Modern Flavors, by Andrea Nguyen.  If you like Vietnamese food, you should definitely check it out.  Even if you only like to eat Vietnamese food in restaurants, you should still check it out because it’s a beautiful book. Andrea also writes the excellent blogs, Viet World Kitchen and Asian Dumpling Tips.  I’ve tried several of her recipes and they always turn out great, especially her dumplings.  She is a dumplings rock star!

Do chua will keep for weeks in the fridge, so you might as well make a lot.  These little guys tend to disappear pretty quickly!

Enjoy!

I’ve been having lots of fun thinking of different ways to use up the fruits and veggies in my weekly produce basket from Suncoast Organics.  Each week they offer several interesting and unusual items that I rarely, if ever, see at the supermarket -  like the yardlong beans I made last week.

This week, I ordered some organic red okra.  I didn’t even know that okra came in red.  Since red is one of my signature colors, I ordered some.  Then I remembered that no one around here particularly likes okra.  Except in gumbo. Or jambalaya.  But I wasn’t about to start a Cajun cooking marathon in this 95 degree heat. Nosirree!  Until it cools off a little, nobody’s getting much more than salad or a quick stir fry out of me!  Okay, I might be persuaded to throw some steaks or chicken on the grill, but that’s it – unless there’s jewelry involved.

But, these lovely little, rosy, red okra deserved more than just being chopped up in a salad.  Look how cute they are!  They needed to be front and center in whatever I used them in.  So, I decided to make pickles out of them.  And, not just any old pickles, mind you, but wicked sweet and spicy pickles.  I wanted to make okra Wickles!

I’m not a huge pickle fan, but I do love Wickles Pickles.  Now, I had absolutely no idea how to make these incredibly good, sweet and spicy pickles.  And, for obvious reasons, their seventy year-old secret family recipe was nowhere to be found on the Internet.  So I read the ingredient list on the back of a Wickles jar and decided to wing it.  Either I’m incredibly talented or incredibly lucky, because my pickled okra turned out fantastic!

The first thing I did was dig out a few pretty mason jars.  Then, I sterilized them in a big pot of boiling water.  After that, I made the brine for my pickles by simmering a mixture of apple cider vinegar, white vinegar, sugar, garlic and a variety of different spices and seasonings.  Then, I stuffed the okra in the jars with garlic cloves and chili peppers and topped each jar off with brine.  The hardest part about making this recipe was waiting a few days before I could eat the okra!

If you have never made your own pickles before, you MUST try this. It’s so easy!  Another plus is that you can adjust the amounts of each ingredient to suit your taste.  The measurements I used were basically the result of trial and error.  In other words, I just kept adding stuff until it tasted right to me.  If you don’t have one of the ingredients that i used, leave it out – or add some others in. There really is no right or wrong in this.  The only ingredients that I think are essential are the vinegars, sugar, garlic and chili peppers.

So, go crazy!  Make some pickles!  You know you want to.

Enjoy!

Happy day! After resisting for years, I finally broke down and joined a CSA.  Well, not a true CSA exactly, but close.  To be honest, I was never really sold on the idea of getting a big mystery box of produce each week and then having to figure out what to do with it.  I kind of like to choose what ingredients I cook with, and plan my meals based on what inspires me.  Plus, I wasn’t crazy about the fact that I had to prepay for the season and was locked in every week, whether I was able to use the stuff or not.  Still, I loved the idea of having access to all of those lovely fresh fruits and veggies, because lord knows, I can rarely  find them at my local market! Enter Suncoast Organics and the perfect solution to my produce dilemma.

Suncoast Organics is a new business in my area that delivers – yes, DELIVERS – just picked, farm fresh, organic produce each week directly to my doorstep.  It’s similar to a CSA in that there is a membership fee, but it’s a small one and you don’t have to pay it all up front.  Also, I get to choose exactly what products I want and how much of each I want.  So, each week, I just click on Suncoast Organics’ web site, check out what’s available for that week, order what I want and pay as I go.  Brilliant, right?  If I’m going out of town or I just don’t feel like ordering one week, I don’t have to.  No wasteful spending and no wasted produce!  I still have to pay the $10.00 membership fee, but I can live with that. If I decide to discontinue the service, all I have to do is email Julie and Jim and let them know.  It’s a great compromise between a traditional CSA and buying my produce somewhere like Whole Foods.  Plus, it’s cheaper than you know where.

Last week I got some interesting things in my veggie basket, including yardlong beans, or Chinese long beans.  I have never, ever seen them before at the market, and I’m pretty sure I’d never eaten them before either.  I was psyched! 

Look how pretty they are!

I also got a bag of these gorgeous shiitake mushrooms.  Need I say more?

I put my Asian food thinking cap on and decided to combine them in a stir fry with ground pork, garlic, ginger and black bean sauce. I hunted around the web for some inspiration and found lots of great ideas.  In fact, I found too many great ideas!  So, I took a pinch of this and a smidge of that, and came up with my own version of Chinese Long Beans with Shiitake Mushrooms and Pork in Black Bean Sauce.

I heated up some grapeseed oil in my cast iron wok that I got last year at The Wok Shop. I love that wok!  I love The Wok Shop too!

Then, I cooked my garlic, ginger and ground pork. Next, I added the long beans that weren’t so long anymore after I cut them up, and stir fried them until they started to get tender.  Once the beans were on their way to delicious tenderness, I added in the shiitake mushrooms and cooked it all a little bit more.  Finally, I poured in the black bean sauce and simmered it for another several minutes and I was done.

There are lots of good recipes for homemade black bean sauce, but I decided to save some time by using a pre-made sauce from the Asian market.   There are a few good ones around, but the best one I’ve tried is from Lee Kum Kee.  I use it to make a similar dish with chicken and eggplant, as well as those tasty little steamed spareribs you see a lot on dim sum menus.

My verdict on the long beans?  I really liked them.  They were a lot like regular green beans, but chewier and a little saltier.  They played very nicely with the shiitake mushrooms, as those also tend to be a little chewy.  In fact, I would definitely consider the whole dish to be a success.

I’m looking forward to getting my hands on more long beans as soon as I can.  Next time, I’d love to try them stewed, Italian-style, with fresh tomatoes and potatoes.  Until then, I’m looking forward to my next bag of goodies from Suncoast Organics.

Chinese Long Beans with Shiitake Mushrooms and Pork in Black Bean Sauce

Ingredients:

1 pound long beans
1 pound ground pork
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon fish sauce
2 teaspoons sesame oil, divided
Pinch of salt and pepper
2 teaspoons cornstarch
1-2 tablespoons unflavored oil, such as vegetable, canola or grapeseed
3 cloves garlic, finely minced
1 teaspoon finely minced ginger
1/2 pound shiitake mushrooms, cleaned and sliced
3 tablespoons prepared black bean sauce
1 tablespoon Chinese rice wine
1 teaspoon brown sugar
1/2 -1 cup water

Preparation:

Rinse and cut the long beans into 3-inch lengths. Set aside.

Combine the pork, soy sauce, fish sauce, 1 teaspoon sesame oil, salt, pepper and cornstarch together in a medium bowl.   Mix well with a fork or your fingers until thoroughly combined.  Let it sit for about 5-10 minutes.

In a wok or large skillet, heat the unflavored oil on high heat until smoking, then add the garlic and ginger. Stirring constantly, fry for about 10-20 seconds until fragrant. Be careful not to burn it.  Add the pork and cook until it almost no pink remains, breaking up the chunks as you go. This should take about 2-3 minutes if your wok is really hot.

Add the long beans to the wok and continue to cook for about 4-5 minutes, or until no pink remains in the pork and the beans begin to get tender.   Add the mushrooms and cook about 2 minutes.  Remember to keep all of the ingredients moving so that nothing burns.

Whisk the black bean sauce, rice wine, brown sugar and 1/2 cup water together in a small bowl.

Reduce the heat to medium, and stir in the black bean mixture.  Taste it and if the sauce is too strong for you, add the rest of the water.  Continue to simmer and stir for another 5-8 minutes, or until the beans are cooked through and tender.

Remove the wok from the heat and mix in the remaining teaspoon of sesame oil.  Adjust the seasonings if necessary.

Serve as is, or with some steamed rice or noodles.

Serves 4.

Enjoy!

Have you ever been sorting through your food pics and found a bunch that you forgot about and never posted on?  Well, that never happens to me.  Usually, I cook food and it is either gobbled up before I ever have a chance to photograph it, it’s late and I’m too tired to photograph it, or I get so busy that it sits in the fridge until it starts to decay and then I can’t photograph it.  So, imagine what a nice surprise it was for me to find these photos of a delicious cauliflower gratin that I made a few months ago.  I really meant to share it with you then, but I totally forgot!  Better late than never, I guess. 

In French, “le gratin” means crust and the verb “gratiner” means to brown.  Thus, a gratin is a sort of a French casserole in which ingredients are topped with a mixture of breadcrumbs, grated cheese and butter that are baked or broiled to form a golden crust on top.  It is traditionally served right from the oven in its baking dish.  Gotta love that!

For my cauliflower gratin, I used a recipe from Ina Garten’s Barefoot in Paris.  It’s a pretty easy one that doesn’t take a whole lot of time to execute.  That’s what I love about Ina’s recipes.  They’re written so that real people can actually make them at home without having to hire a kitchen staff!  Plus, they always work AND they taste great.  What could be better than that?

The foundation of this gratin is, of course, the cauliflower.  However, you can make a gratin – especially this gratin – with any vegetables you choose.   Frankly, since whatever you use is going to be bathed in an incredibly creamy, rich, cheesy béchamel sauce, who really cares!   Actually, I’m just kidding about that part, (um…not really).   My point is that no matter what ingredients you decide to “gratin” using this recipe, the result will be fabulous!

So, let’s get started!

First, you need to cook your cauliflower until it’s “al dente”.  This takes about 5-6 minutes.

Then, make the cheesy béchamel sauce.  Don’t let the fancy French name throw you.  It’s really easy!

Don’t forget the cheese!

Put it all together…

And bake!

Voila!

Mmmm!!!

Doesn’t that look just marvelous?  Trust me, it is!  This cauliflower gratin is simple and rustic enough to whip up for a casual, weeknight meal, yet it’s classy enough to serve to company.  An added perk is that it can be served hot or at room temperature, so it makes a perfect “make ahead” dish.    And, look how nicely this dish goes with the color red.  This means that it will look beautiful on your Holiday buffet!  There you go.  Now, you have no excuse not to make this one!

Cauliflower Gratin
adapted from Barefoot in Paris

Ingredients:

1 (3-pound) head cauliflower, cut into large florets
Kosher salt
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, divided
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 cups hot milk
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg
3/4 cup freshly grated Gruyere, divided
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan
1/4 cup fresh bread crumbs (I used leftover herb stuffing mix.)

Directions:

1.  Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

2.  Cook the cauliflower florets in a large pot of boiling salted water for 5 to 6 minutes, until tender but still firm. Drain.

3.  Meanwhile, melt 2 tablespoons of the butter in a medium saucepan over low heat. Add the flour, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon for 2 minutes. Pour the hot milk into the butter-flour mixture and stir until it comes to a boil. Boil, whisking constantly, for 1 minute, or until thickened. Off the heat, add 1 teaspoon of salt, the pepper, nutmeg, 1/2 cup of the Gruyere, and the Parmesan.

4.  Pour 1/3 of the sauce on the bottom of an 8 by 11 by 2-inch baking dish. Place the drained cauliflower on top and then spread the rest of the sauce evenly on top. Combine the bread crumbs with the remaining 1/4 cup of Gruyere and sprinkle on top. Melt the remaining 2 tablespoons of butter and drizzle over the gratin. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, until the top is browned. Serve hot or at room temperature.

Enjoy!