With colder weather moving in, and Thanksgiving approaching, it's turning into comfort food season. I love comfort food. Boy oh boy do I love comfort food. I also love my health. It can be quite the challenge to turn comfort foods into a healthy snack, but it's not impossible. When it comes to creamy cheesy concoctions though, lets be frank, "healthy" isn't really going to be accurate. What we can do, however, is increase the nutritional content of what we're eating. Substituting cauliflower for pasta surely bumps up the number of vitamins and nutrients being consumed, at least that's how I'm justifying it. If you don't need any justifications, good for you! Here's how you get started:
YOU'LL NEED:
1 cup milk
2 tablespoons flour
2.5 cups gruyere
large head of cauliflower
salt to taste
First, break the cauliflower into bite sized chunks, and boil for about 10 minutes; until tender. In a separate sauce pan, slowly heat the milk. Once it's warm, but before it begins to boil, whisk in the flour, and add 1.5 cups of cheese. Stir it all together until it's all one creamy mixture. Pre-heat the oven to 450. When the florets are sufficiently tender, spread them evenly around a glass baking dish. Make sure they're not piled too high, I needed to use two 9x9 pans. Pour the milk/cheese/flour mixture over the cauliflower, it should cover roughly the bottom 1/3rd of the florets. Sprinkle the remaining cup of cheese on the cauliflower, and bake for about 25 minutes, or until the top begins to brown ad bubble. Let cool, (though it is particularly good when it's hot and gooey) and ENJOY!
