This next dish is a delicious way to keep costs down and family-favourite flavours up.
My creamy cauliflower cheese spaghetti uses my super simple white sauce to totally reinvent
the classic. Served with a gorgeous garlic crumb topping, this dish is a delicious 70 pence per portion.
This is coming in well under budget and I've literally taken my favourite veg dish and
turned it into the most gorgeous pasta sauce. And the heart of this sauce comes from here,
the freezer! A friend, a very good friend right now. So I'm using frozen cauliflower,
great price, it's already prepped for you. So get your cauliflower into a bowl and then I'm
going to grab a leek here which I've washed. I'm going to take the end off the green dark
part and then this lovely white part I'm just going to put in with the cauliflower.
That's going to go in the microwave for 10 minutes okay? So that is going to semi-cook.
While that's doing its thing I want to show you a really nice little cheat to creating possibly one
of the most delicious sprinkles ever, think garlic bread but in sprinkle form right? Interested? Yeah
I thought so! So this is fresh bread, it could be stale. To make breadcrumbs without turning on
a food processor just get your knife, slice it up like this one way and then turn it and then simply
do it the other way until you've got breadcrumbs the size and consistency that you want, okay? So
we're going to use that on top of our silky sauce with our pasta and that crunch and that garlic is
going to be so delicious. So look the first thing that we're going to do is add a little garlic.
So in we go, that'll start to fry in no time at all. I've got this little lonely piece of
leek here just open it out like this and that will fry really crispy and be the most amazing
little thing to have with our crispy garlic bread crumbs. Put in the green part of the leek
and then we're going to go in with the breadcrumbs. I've got some mixed nuts
here 20 grams, all of those flavours that will enhance our little sprinkle. The nuts go in,
and they'll go golden and delicious. We're going to season this with some salt and pepper.
Imagine that garlic, oil, crispy, leeks, there we go.
So, there is my partially cooked leeks and cauliflower. So this lovely sprinkle
is going to go on here. Next part of the story we're going to have just a
little olive oil in the pan again. One clove of garlic, slice it up.
Put that in the oil, pan's already hot. So as the garlic starts to take on a little bit of
colour I'm going to use just a nice pinch of dried thyme, dried herbs are a fantastic thing
to invest in. When they're dried they seem to be more robust more savoury more substantial in
flavour. Little touch of salt. With the leeks I'm just going to slice these up just a little
bit can you see how soft they are now? And in we go look at that. So I want to do a humble white
sauce and I've got 400 mils of semi-skimmed milk. So I'm going to put most of it in here
and then we'll start just poaching. And about 100 mils of this I'm just going to put in a
little bowl and we're going to go in with one tablespoon of plain flour. So just mix that
little bit of cold milk and the flour together, that'll dissolve nicely. Pour this in and that
will start to thicken straight away. So use a potato masher to make a rustic white sauce.
Time to get the pasta on, get yourself some spaghetti. So what I want is
300 grams of pasta this is a 500 gram pack. Salt the water. And then we're going to grab
the spaghetti with two hands, in it goes. I'll put the lid back on just to bring it back to the boil.
So pasta's in, crispy bits have cooled down. Go in to our starchy boiling water and just steal a bit
and this will just allow it to smooth out a little bit.
So the spaghetti is nearly there. And this I've let down to be a nice consistency. Let's have
a little taste. A little touch of salt, a little touch more pepper, and then of course I've got 100
grams of cheddar cheese in this recipe. Cheddar is oozy it's stringy, that's about 90 grams there.
I want to get a nice consistency now. You can go chunky, you can go rustic like this,
but one thing that I can't help myself is to just use a little hand blender to make it super smooth.
So in with the lovely cheese. And then I'm going to angle this pan and just blitz it up.
It just sticks to the pasta in the most beautiful way.
So blend that up until it gets nice and smooth.
And there you go. Okay, sauce done. Pasta should be good, let's have a little try. Yes!
So take that pasta over and then what we can do is just get in there with the pasta
and just move it around. So look at that! Elegant and gorgeous. Let's get this going
and just put a nice big pasta platter in the middle of the table. Go in with the crispy bits.
Your mates would be so chuffed with this. Come on get amongst it. A bit more sprinkly bits.
And don't forget we've also got enough cheese just kept to the side just for a little light
grating. Silky sauce around the spaghetti, when you get your fork in there it kind of
just puts wave after wave of those lovely crispy bits. Beautiful.
So good. Soft, silky, crunchy, garlicky.
Mm! Cooked with a bit of love and care and flair and you get something delicious like that. Joy.
Just... joy. My creamy cauliflower cheese spaghetti serves four. It's packed full
of veg and flavour and comes in at a very tasty 70 pence per portion.