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Stuffed Cauliflower
Pick over a fine cauliflower, and plunge it for a moment in boiling water. Look over it well again and remove any grit or insects. Put it head downwards in a pan when you have already placed a good slice of fat bacon at the bottom and sides. In the holes between the pan and the vegetable put a stuffing of minced meat, with breadcrumbs, yolks of eggs, mushrooms, seasoning of the usual kinds, in fact, a good forcemeat. Press this well in, and pour over it a thin gravy. Let it cook gently, and when the gravy on the top has disappeared put a dish on the top of the saucepan, turn it upside down and slip the cauliflower out. Serve very hot.
The original gives no quantities, no timings and no pan size, which is typical of the book. What follows is what a competent cook needs to fill in.
- The hinge: blanch properlyA cauliflower "plunged for a moment" in boiling water is barely blanched. Boil the trimmed whole head 6-8 minutes until a knife meets slight resistance at the core, then drain it head down so no water sits in the curd.
- Grit and insectsThe double inspection is not fussiness -- garden cauliflower harbours aphids and small caterpillars deep in the curd. A 15-minute soak in cold salted water before blanching draws them out and does the job the boiling-water dip was meant to do.
- The pan"Pan" here means a deep saucepan or small casserole on the stovetop, not a baking dish; the recipe's own "put a dish on the top of the saucepan" settles it. Choose one the head just fits into, so the forcemeat fills a narrow gap rather than swamping it.
- Fat baconRead this as a fat-heavy cut: fatback, salt pork or fat streaky bacon will all serve, sliced thin and used to line the pan so nothing sticks and the fat bastes the stuffing. Smoked bacon brings smoke and more salt -- season the forcemeat accordingly.
- Forcemeat, in numbersFor a medium head, about 1 lb minced pork or veal, 1 cup fresh breadcrumbs, 2 egg yolks, 4 oz mushrooms chopped fine, salt, pepper, nutmeg and chopped parsley. It should be stiff enough to press into the gaps and stay there.
- Thin gravyRead this as light stock, not a thickened sauce -- roughly a cup, enough to come partway up the stuffing. Thickened gravy scorches on the bottom of a covered pan over the long, slow cook.
- Cooking time and donenessCovered, over low heat, 45 minutes to an hour. "When the gravy on the top has disappeared" is the period signal that it is done; verify with a thermometer in the forcemeat, which should read 160F.
- Turning it outLet the pan stand off the heat 5 minutes before inverting, and use a rimmed platter -- residual fat and juices will run. Serves four as a main course, six alongside other dishes.
The Belgian Cook Book was compiled by Mrs. Brian Luck in 1915 from recipes gathered from Belgian refugees who had fled to England after the German invasion; the recipes carry almost no weights or times, a terseness typical of cookbooks of the period. Stuffed cauliflower belongs to a broad Northern European family of vegetables braised head-down in a lined pot with forcemeat packed around them -- a method that stretches a small quantity of meat across a bulky, cheap vegetable and produces something that looks like a moulded dish when turned out. The sandy market-garden soils around Mechelen had a genuine reputation for cauliflower, so a fine head was a vegetable a cook there had reason to take seriously.