As more British cauliflower growers give up on the crop due to pricing pressures from abroad and lack of domestic demand, Love British Food takes a fresh look at the oft over-looked, yet wonderfully versatile vegetable.

You can imagine a cauliflower coming to sit next to you on a train.  Oh no, you think. Large, awkward and dull.  It is true, if you don't engage with it, it will do nothing. Just sit there. Blandly.  But if you give it some attention, then goodness, the possibilities are endless - cauliflower, chestnut and mushroom pie; cauliflower baked with aubergine; cauliflower, bacon and Stilton gratin; cauliflower, leek and blue cheese risotto; chickpea and cauliflower salad, cauliflower and broccoli soup or as a key component of piccalilli to be enjoyed with a slice of pork pie.

The cauliflower is the underdog of the vegetable world.  It doesn't have the superfood status of broccoli, the retro-cool of cabbage, the vibrant colour injection of a carrot or the blink-blink sweetness of garden peas. But in its roundness and simplicity it is a great big comforting bear hug of a vegetable.  Of course, I am not talking about those small imported cauliflowers where all the white is morphed together into a solid anaemic knuckle.  I am talking about the true British cauliflower that are being grown less and less in gardens and fields across the country. The springy, sometimes spindly custard-cream white flowers full of crunch and personality.  Those fine native specimens that almost crumble as they are torn from green leaf and put in boiling water. One of the many wonderful things about British cauliflowers is that they seem to never go out of season; just as they are currently in full bloom in the South of England, it will be summertime when they are fresh for picking north of the border. 

Lauded chef, Yotam Ottolenghi, is keenly aware of people's current indifference to cauliflower and has previously done a programme for BBC Radio 4 to show why this sentiment is unjustified.  As he writes in his book, Plenty - "Cauliflower is actually wonderfully versatile…it is one of those singular vegetables that can take on big flavour without losing its own character."   Even Chris Evans was recently giving his BBC Radio 2 listeners his wife's cauliflower soup recipe.

Despite these and other celebrity endorsements, such as the Hairy Bikers spending an entire episode of the BBC's Great British Food Revival highlighting the plight of our native cauliflower, growers in Kent, Cornwall, Lincolnshire and Scotland are still stopping planting them.  They largely blame foreign exporters for pricing them out of the market with smaller varieties that are more suited for chopping into packs and ready-made meals.   But what other one vegetable can, with the aid of some white sauce and cheese, feed a family of four.  Elizabeth David longed for the "day when it was going to be clever to serve some relaxed English dish like cauliflower cheese".  That day has arrived, except it looks like the great British dish won't be made with British cauliflowers.

Cauliflower cheese is such a simple, filling and comforting plate of food.  Cheap and easy, the vegetable equivalent of macaroni cheese and ten times more delicious.  A large cauliflower from a local producer should cost you no more than £1.00.  To make a white sauce you melt 1/2 oz butter then stir in 1/2 oz of flour with a pinch of mustard powder if you wish.  Keep stirring for a minute. Take the pan off the heat and slowly add milk, whilst still stirring. Return pan to the heat and keep stirring and the sauce will thicken.  This is wonderful to watch and really rewarding.  When it is thick enough, add some grated British cheese and cover the cauliflower. Bung it it in the oven and if you like a crispy top, cover it in breadcrumbs.  The irony is that to make a cauliflower cheese, using a British cauliflower, will cost approximately £2.00, if that. It will take 4 minutes to make and approx 10 minutes in the oven. To buy a potentially non-British, ready-made cauliflower cheese for two people will cost around £2.99. It will take approximately 6 minutes in the microwave.  There will be no satisfaction of making it yourself, there will be no fresh milk in the watery sauce, there will be no hope of leftovers and it will need a good dousing of pepper to give it any significant taste.  To buy a ready-made version you sacrifice supporting your national produce, not to mention the made-to-taste cheesiness of a homemade dish, all for a saving of 8 minutes.  Yet the demand seems to be for the ready-made meal option. 

So, as Jane Grigson advocated in 1971 we need to "fight, and demand, and complain, and reject, and generally make [ourselves] unpopular in order to preserve our native cooking skills."  We have to go and ask our shopkeepers, whether they own the shops or not, to stock British cauliflower so that we can cook with them ourselves. We need to pass the message on that we are not babies and do not need our vegetables flown in from abroad and  pre-chopped up into tiny tasteless pieces for us. So let's show some support to the British cauliflower farmers.  Buy a British cauliflower today and relish its home-grown flavour.

For 111 different cauliflower recipes including pan-fried scallops with cauliflower chips and cauliflower purée [click here].
More cauliflower recipes can be found at Love Your Greens - a website dedicated to the finest, tastiest, healthiest British vegetables money can buy - cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, swede and sprouts.
Special mention must go to the following outstanding cauliflower recipes - Ottolenghi's Saffron Cauliflower, from his book Plenty, Jane Grigson's Cauliflower with Prawn Sauce from her Vegetable Book and Diana Henry's Cauliflower, Bacon and Blue Cheese Gratin from Food from Plenty. Yum!

This month, The Sauce tests out Cauliflower and Cheese Soup…

The Sauce

Cauliflower and Cheese Soup

• What ingredients did you use and how readily available were they?
  
  • 1 small cauliflower from Farm Shop - 75 pence
  • 1 large potato - from store cupboard
  • 2 garlic cloves - from store cupboard
  • 850 ml milk
  • 25g butter
  • 175g mature British cheddar cheese from Lidl - £1.74


• What was the sum total cost of this recipe?
  £2.49


• How many people did it actually feed?
  4


• How long did it take and how easy was it?
  Really easy.  Chop the cauliflower and garlic.  Peel and chop the potato.  Put all these ingredients in a pan with the milk and put on low heat for around 12 minutes, when the potatoes are soft.  Then add the butter and cheese and whizz together with an electric hand blender.  Including cooking time it took about 25 minutes from start to finish.


• What did you and your guests think of the soup?
  I served it with homemade bread and oatcakes.  Everyone thought it was delicious.  It is quite rich and perfect for a cold day.


• Would you cook it again?
  Yes, cheap and quick and it's bright white colour makes it look light and appealing.

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