Purple cauliflower cheese and pork knuckle

During the week, I started thinking about what I might cook myself for Christmas day lunch.

A conversation with some workmates prompted me to think about what movies to watch on Christmas day too. I’ll probably write about that on the Christmas day blog post.

When I was growing up in Brisbane, I remember my maternal grandmother roasting more than a dozen chickens because she would cook for a large group of people. My grandmother used to spoil me rotten. She knew that I loved eating the cloaca of roast chickens. I remember one Christmas; I had fifteen roast chicken cloacæ. It was epic.

After my grandmother’s death, we’d often have Christmas lunch with my uncle and his family. We’d have ham, turkey, chicken, and pork. The meals were huge.

In recent years, if I’ve eaten Christmas lunch with friends, there may be duck or chicken for the lunchtime meal.

This year, I’m cooking for myself. I’m not going to cook a whole chicken or a large joint of meat. I want something relatively simple and comforting, especially if I’m going to sit down in front of the TV watching a Christmas movie.

Pork knuckle

As I was browsing the aisles in the meat section of Coles today, I spied the pre-cooked pork knuckle and noted the extended expiration dates on the packaging. These pork knuckles have been pre-cooked, and vacuum-sealed which should aid safe preservation.

I’ve eaten one of these pork knuckles before and enjoyed it. I knew then; I’d do it again.

Cauliflower cheese

During the week I was watching Jamie Oliver on TV, and he made a cauliflower cheese. I haven’t made cauliflower cheese for ages and thought it might go well with the pork knuckle.

White sauce

I’ve become a fan of the French Cooking Academy on YouTube. While I’ve been competent at making white sauce for many years, I wasn’t necessarily aware of the two approaches to creating a white sauce.

Saucier pan

You might be wondering, what is a saucier pan? Is it just a fancy way of saying saucepan? I’m guessing that the derivation of the words is similar.
A saucier pan differs from a standard saucepan by having a more rounded bottom. A nicely curved bottom is an excellent thing in a pan because it means bits of your roux won’t get stuck in the angle between the hard bottom and sides of a saucepan.

A rounded bottom means easier whisking and less residue.

I recently bought a saucier pan on-line. I’m embarrassed to write that it was an expensive purchase and I had to wait months for it to ship from the United States. I guess that achieving the lovely curve of a rounded bottom takes more effort to make.

So apparently, if you’re serious about making special sauces, a rounded bottom is an excellent thing.

Purple cauliflower

I think most people would assume my favourite colour is maroon (pronounced ma-RONE) because of the association with the Queensland rugby league team (the mighty Queensland XXXX Maroons). However, maroon isn’t my favourite colour, purple is. I won’t go into the reason why here, but people who know me well, understand why this is.

While in the fresh produce section of Coles I spotted a beautifully formed purple cauliflower and thought it would be great for cauliflower cheese.

Ingredients

Pork knuckle

• Coles pre-cooked pork knuckle
• Iodised salt
• Queensland nut oil

Cauliflower cheese

• Purple cauliflower
• Iodised salt
• White pepper
• Lurpak butter
• Plain flour
• Milk
• White onion
• Cloves
• Nutmeg
• Bay leaf
• Porcini mushrooms
• Porcini mushroom distillate
• Cheddar cheese (Coon™)

Instructions

Pork knuckle

1. Follow the instructions on the box.
2. Dry off the rind and rub on some Queensland nut oil and iodised salt. I think the best thing to dry your meat off is a tea towel because you can wash it and reuse it. If you don’t want to do that, then absorbent kitchen paper is okay to use. Massage the oil and salt into all the nooks and crannies with your fingers.
3. Cook in a hot (220 °C, fan-forced) oven for 50 minutes.
4. Allow the pork knuckle to rest and peel off the crackling before pulling the meat from the bone.
5. Keep aside some of the pork muscle meat for another meal.
6. Eat all the crackling in one hit because it’s better hot than cold. I also defy anyone to not eat all the delicious crackling.

Cauliflower cheese

1. Dissect the florets off the cauliflower head using a sharp paring knife.
2. Cook the florets in boiling salted water until you can penetrate and withdraw from the stems with a sharp paring knife cleanly.
3. Drain the florets in a colander.
4. Melt the butter in a saucier pan (see my description in the earlier paragraphs on what a saucier pan is) over low heat.
5. Add in the plain flour and whisk to form a roux.
6. Cook for three minutes to remove the taste of the flour because it’s a disgusting taste and you want to taste the buttery goodness of the Lurpak butter.
7. Set aside the saucier pan with the roux and allow it to cool to room temperature. Make sure you place the saucier pan on a heat resistant surface. It will destroy the joy of the whole meal if you melt something and damage your saucier pan.
8. In a saucepan add some milk, half a white onion which has cloves inserted, a bay leaf, the juice from rehydrated dried porcini mushrooms, white pepper, salt, and nutmeg.
9. Bring the milk to a simmer and simmer for 10 minutes.
10. Replace the saucepan on the hob with the saucier pan with the cooled roux.
11. Pour the hot flavoured milk through a sieve directly into the saucier pan and begin to whisk to develop the white sauce. If it starts to get a little too thick and gooey, add some cold milk to bring the sauce to a more runny consistency if that is your heart’s desire. Me, I like my white sauce thick and gooey for the mouthfeel.
12. Add some raw diced white onion to the white sauce to add some crunch and texture for even better mouthfeel.
13. With a bit of kitchen-paper wipe the bottom of a baking tray with some Queensland nut oil in what is probably a vain attempt to stop the white sauce and cauliflower from forming adhesions to the bottom of the baking tray. While I don’t believe for a second that these adhesions are as painful and troublesome as intraperitoneal adhesions, it’s pretty frustrating to spend an excessive amount of time scrubbing the bottom of the baking tray. I’ve got a friend at work who has had problems with adhesions and she’s been through a terrible time.
14. With a ladle, spoon some of the white sauce into the baking tray. The aim is to coat the bottom of the oily base.
15. With your fingers, because fingers are delicate organs — fearfully and wonderfully created — to know just how much pressure to apply to objects to pick them up and transfer them. In this case, the cooked florets may be friable (sort of like caseation), so the aim is the transfer them into the baking dish without causing the florets to fall apart. I hope you can appreciate why I think fingers are best for this task.
16. If you burn the tips of your fingers, that’s the price you pay for trying to pick them up without allowing the florets to cool to a sufficiently low temperature.
17. Ladle the remaining white sauce over the cauliflower florets, making sure to fill in the holes and fissures with your thick gooey special sauce.
18. Grate some cheddar cheese, I used Coon™ and please understand this is the name of the cheese, and the name is going to change soon because the company which manufacturers the cheese has listened to its customers and will make a change. I don’t know what the new name will be. I hope it’s Eddie after Edward Coon who was the original maker of this delicious cheese.
19. Add the cheese on top of the white sauce covered cauliflower. Use as much cheese as you like. I like cheese, a lot of cheese, so I used a couple of cups of grated cheese.
20. I also grated some nutmeg over the cheese and sprinkled some cayenne pepper and smoked paprika on the cheese. Yes, I did the wanky thing and used a whole nutmeg with a microplane to grate it rather than shaking a bottle of ground nutmeg. If that’s all you have, then that is fine. Don’t let anyone ever look down on you for using nutmeg out of a bottle.
21. The baking tray should go into an oven heated to 180 °C for about 20 minutes. This should result in lovely golden and dark caramel tones to the white sauce with a little blue of the purple cauliflower peeking through. I say blue because the purple colouration changes when the cauliflower is cooking in boiling water.
22. Remove the baking tray and allow the cauliflower cheese to set. Setting the cauliflower cheese may take about 10 minutes. You want the cheese to stiffen a little, so the cheese and white sauce adhere to the cauliflower florets.

Plating up

1. Put the pork knuckle meat and the pork crackling on the dinner plate.
2. With a large serving spoon, ‘cut’ through the set cauliflower cheese and aim to take a floret with each spoonful. Place the cauliflower cheese next to the meat and crackling.

How did it taste?

The pork knuckle meat was tender, not too salty and delicious. The crackling was crisp and had a clean flavour.

The cauliflower cheese was fantastic. The white sauce and cheese were the right consistency, and the cauliflower was soft and not too firm.

I think I’ll be doing this for Christmas lunch.