Yummy
Crunchy Top Vegetable Bake
With Magic Cheese Sauce
And Weird Topping
When we ran the vegetarian restaurant one of the most popular dishes was our Crunchy Top Vegetable Bake – made with a quick cheat’s cheese sauce and a very unusual topping!
Fry a couple of sliced onions, 2 battoned carrots and chunks of a large courgette until soft but not brown.
Meanwhile in a pan of boiling water barely cook a head of broccoli and head of small cauliflower cut into florets and add a tin of sweetcorn. Drain well (no soggy soft veggies if you don’t mind) and combine all the veggies into an ovenproof dish.
Now these veggies need a tasty sauce. One of Merrow Savouries’ most popular ‘feed a hungry crowd’ dish is Lasagne (as was our roasted vegetable lasagne in the restaurant). It may be a tad 1970s but it is still always delicious, hugely successful and devoured. But it does need a really good homemade cheese sauce. Never ever a bought jar of slimy, greasy E-filled slop. Homemade is fathoms above bought stuff - hence possibly why we are asked to make our Lasagnes all the time, be it beef, lamb, salmon, seafood, ratatouille, or griddled vegetable – you name it…
Anyway, when it comes to making our sauce we use the all-in-one method – much quicker when you have to make copious pints of the thick creamy cheesy stuff and frankly practically fool proof, always works, and lumpy sauce is banished forever.
So, instead of making the traditional ‘roux’ – simply put all your sauce ingredients into a saucepan at the same time, all cold. Proportions are roughly 1pt milk, 40g sifted flour/ and 40g cubed butter (not marg – you will tell the difference!). It also works well with much larger quantities. Now turn on the heat and bring the ingredients to a slow simmer – whisking as you go. It will quite quickly all come together into a thick glossy creamy sauce with no lumps. Magic! Then turn off the heat and leave it for 5 minutes to rest and thicken a little more; then season with salt and pepper and perhaps a pinch of cayenne or nutmeg or mustard. Stir in about 40g of grated strong cheddar cheese, which will melt in the residue heat of the sauce. Don’t add the cheese into the pan whilst it is cooking– it may become stringy. And you don’t want that.
With the magic all-in-one cheese sauce made – simply pour it over the prepared veggies.
Now for something weird…. Using a rolling pin crush some cornflakes (yes, cornflakes!) and combine with a good couple of handfuls of grated cheese.
Or you could actually be even weirder and use crushed crisps.
Bake in the oven for about 35 minutes and serve with a salad.
Enjoy!
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