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Cauliflower, Polonaise
Trim off the outer leaves and stalk of a good sized white cauliflower. Place in a saucepan with two quarts boiling water and a gill hot milk. Season with a tablespoon salt. Cover the pan and boil for forty minutes. Remove, drain on a sieve and dress on a hot dish. Heat one and a half tablespoon smelted butter in a frying pan, add three tablespoons fresh bread crumbs, then gently toss until a good golden colour. Pour over the cauliflower and serve.
A straightforward buttered-crumb cauliflower whose only real problem is the boiling time, which belongs to an era when vegetables were cooked to collapse.
- The forty minutesA whole head in boiling water needs roughly 10-15 minutes to be tender at the stem; 40 minutes leaves it waterlogged and sulphurous. Test the thickest part of the core with a knife tip and pull it the moment it gives. Cutting the head into florets shortens this to about 5-7 minutes.
- A gillAbout half a cup. Milk in the water is traditionally said to help keep the curd white rather than letting it turn grey or yellow; a squeeze of lemon is used the same way.
- "Smelted butter"Almost certainly a misprint for melted butter. Use about 1 1/2 tablespoons, and clarified butter if you have it, since the milk solids in whole butter will brown and speck before the crumbs colour.
- Fresh bread crumbsCrumbs torn or grated from a day-old loaf, not the dry sandy kind sold in canisters. Fresh crumbs absorb the butter and crisp into irregular golden flakes; dried crumbs soak up butter and go greasy.
- SaltA tablespoon in two quarts is about right for seasoning vegetable cooking water and is not excessive once the water is drained away.
- DrainingSet the head stem-side up on the sieve for a minute or two. Water trapped between the florets will run out onto the serving dish and dilute the butter.
- What polonaise usually includesMost versions of the garnish add finely chopped hard-boiled egg and parsley scattered over the crumbs. This recipe omits both; adding them is faithful to the name.
- YieldOne good-sized head serves four as a side dish.
"A la polonaise" is French kitchen shorthand for a vegetable finished with butter-fried breadcrumbs, and typically chopped hard-boiled egg and parsley, the pale and golden scattering generally said to echo Polish cooking's fondness for buttered crumbs over boiled vegetables and dumplings. Cauliflower is the classic vehicle, though asparagus, broccoli and salsify take the same treatment.