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Cauliflower in Ramekins
Separate the flowerets of any cold cauliflower, toss them carefully about in a little melted butter, and pour over them an equal quantity of cheese sauce (see page 69). Place the mixture in ramekins, sprinkle the top lightly with buttered crumbs, and heat in oven until sauce bubbles through.
Sautéd Cauliflower Cut cold cooked cauliflower into pieces of suitable size, dip lightly in flour seasoned with salt and pepper, and brown in hot bacon fat or dripping.
Two ways of finishing cooked cauliflower left from an earlier meal. Both depend on the cauliflower already being tender, so the work is browning and heating through, not cooking.
- The hinge: heat fast, don't cook againCauliflower that has been boiled once turns sulfurous and slack if it sits in a hot oven. The book gives no temperature; a hot oven suits the job, and the ramekins should come out as soon as the sauce bubbles at the edges and the crumbs colour.
- "Ramekins"Here the word means the individual straight-sided dishes, not the old sense of a baked cheese preparation. Four to six ounce dishes are right; a single shallow gratin dish works equally well and browns faster.
- The cheese sauceThe sauce referred to on page 69 is not reproduced here; a cheese sauce of this type is generally a white sauce with grated cheese stirred in. Roughly a cup of medium bechamel to three or four ounces of a sharp, dry cheese would give a sauce of the right consistency for "an equal quantity" by volume to the flowerets.
- Buttered crumbsFresh crumbs tossed with melted butter until each is coated, about two tablespoons butter to a cup of crumbs. Dry commercial crumbs absorb less and can scorch before the sauce is hot.
- Dripping and bacon fatBeef dripping was a standing kitchen fat in this period and is worth using if you have it. Otherwise bacon fat, clarified butter or a neutral oil will brown the floured pieces; the pan must be properly hot or the flour turns pasty.
- Seasoning the flourSeason the flour more assertively than seems necessary. Boiled cauliflower is bland to begin with and the coating is the only seasoning the sautéd version gets.
- YieldA medium cauliflower's worth of leftovers fills about four ramekins as a side dish, or two as a light supper with bread.
Cookbooks devoted entirely to left-overs were a familiar feature in Britain and America around the turn of the twentieth century, when domestic economy was taught as a discipline and throwing out cooked food was treated as a moral failing as much as a financial one. The two methods here are the standard pair applied to almost any cooked vegetable in such books: bind it in a sauce and gratinate it, or flour it and fry it. Cauliflower took to both because it holds its shape after boiling, and because it had long been served au gratin with cheese in French practice. The instruction to toss the flowerets in melted butter before saucing is the small refinement that separates this from mere reheating.