"mishmash: a confused mixture"
So today I presented my cauliflower cheese soup to my book group colleagues and they pronounced it good. Here it is - not looking that wonderful - and here is a tale against myself.
I wanted to photograph it as it came hot and steaming from the pot, but as is too frequent for me to claim efficiency as one of my qualities, my phone had died. Well the battery was flat. An all too common occurrence for me. I could not find David's phone as a substitute and so this is a photograph of cold soup after everyone had gone home. It actually doesn't look that different from the 'real' thing. Just the steam is missing, and it's a tiny bit gloopier. And note - I did not jazz it up with crispy bits of bacon, slices of grilled cheese on toast, or decorative croutons and/or other chunky things - not even when it was hot. There is not even a swirl of crème fraïche or something green. A beige dish in a brown bowl on a beige background.
And yet. It did actually taste pretty good. Not wow good, but better than just eatable. But I am left wondering what it could have been if I had done things differently.
You see ego got the better of me and also that quote, that I mentioned in my post about Nigel Slater's A soup of cauliflower and cheese.
"It was bland and boring. Far too creamy. Neither of us liked it at all."
That quote, in fact was the main reason that I decided to look elsewhere. It sowed a seed of doubt, because Nigel has occasionally disappointed in spite of his lyrical prose. Maybe this, I thought would be a disappointment too. And even Ottolenghi had lashed out at cauliflower cheese itself saying it was "awful, sticky, creamy and rich."
If you read my post you will remember that I found lots of variations, which included things like roasting the cauliflower, combining it with broccoli and sometimes other things as well, like carrots and tinned beans. The liquid varied from water, through stock to milk and cream, although I don't think, perhaps surprisingly, that anyone went for wine, and the toppings were many and various.
At first I though I would find another, better recipe, but having perused a goodly number decided to do a sort of Felicity Cloake 'How to make the perfect ...", by picking out the best bits from all of them and combining them in what was going to be a perfect blend of flavours and textures. I thought would be able to come up with the truly perfect combination of everybody else's efforts. Including the revered Nigel Slater.
I liked the idea of combining cauliflower and broccoli. After the event I am not quite sure why. In fact combining the two has confirmed me in my opinion that I am not a fan of broccoli. And also, unlike cauliflower, it doesn't really go with cheese. I think it's the texture, and the lack of taste. The texture is somehow almost sandy or gritty, and it really doesn't have a lot of taste. Maybe if you just blitz it which I have done occasionally. Broccolini is OK, but no - I'm not a fan of broccoli. For me it added nothing to the soup - not even it's greenness came to the fore.
I also liked the idea of roasting the cauliflower - and by association - the broccoli beforehand. The flavour of cauliflower is indeed enhanced by roasting - it also colours it a bit, therefore leaning the whole thing towards beige rather than cream. A fine distinction I know, but somewhow cream sounds better than beige even if it doesn't necessarily look better. And the broccoli was actually burnt a bit. Or should I say charred?
I also roasted a whole head of garlic and later squeezed out the now squashy and mild garlic into the soup. But honestly I could not taste it, so maybe should have stuck to Nigel's two cloves of crushed garlic.
As to liquid I began with some home-made chicken stock which was also a dark beige colour - a bit like this - maybe I should have described it as golden. Mind you I had to water it down because I didn't have enough for the large amount of cauliflower and broccoli. Admittedly I was cooking for 7 people, which would theoretically have meant that for most of the recipes I should have used two whole cauliflowers. Which made me think that cauliflowers in England and America must be tiny, because I only used just over half of my head of cauliflower and one much smaller head of broccoli and that was a huge quantity. The proof is that I have leftovers.
But back to my soup, which was now looking rather darker than I thought it should, and so I therefore decided to lighten it by adding milk. Quite a lot. And yes it did make it a bit paler, but it also made it - well - milkier, in the sense of making it 'pale' in taste. I think milk sort of does that. It neutralises things.
I forgot to mention that I had added a carrot, as one recipe had, just for a bit of extra flavour - and this I would endorse. Maybe I should even have added more than one. I did not add a potato or two as somebody suggested, however, because, much as I love potatoes I thought that would deaden an already, dare I say, delicate, flavour even more.
When all was tender I removed a couple of ladlefuls of soup and then blended the rest to a purée, returned the chunkier bits to the mix and put it in the fridge overnight before the final addition of the cheese today.
Overnight I worried, because I had tasted it, and found it a bit wanting in overall flavour, with just the cauliflower flavour predominant. The broccoli - well you wouldn't have known it was there. So I decided to go back to Nigel for the final flourish - the cheese, crème fraïche and wholegrain mustard that he adds right at the end. A whole tub of crème fraïche people, a large spoonful of mustard, and rather a lot of cheese - around 200g.
And I have to say that these three ingredients saved the day. Not that the day was lost entirely anyway. What I had was a perfectly eatable soup, but not a special one. What I ended up with was tantalisingly close to really good soup. Maybe if I try this again I should just stick to Nigel. No carrot, no roasting, no milk - just water, and most importantly no broccoli.
And everybody ate it and pronounced it good so who cares? A mishmash though - because, yes I over complicated things I think and made it confusing.
THOSE YEARS GONE BY
October 14
2023 - Nothing
2022 - Still life
2021 - Spag bol and beyond
2020 - Bolognaise in a sandwich?
2018 - The Danish super chef
2016 - Gas versus wood
Just needs some dark brown croutons and some bacon pieces to lift it out of Nigel's "bland and boring and far too creamy". As there was some left over from the lunch - no doubt I will find out!