The art of cauliflower cheese

There are some dishes on which I am well aware I hold strong opinions: toast (well done but not burnt, real butter, generously spread; must be eaten hot), crumble (crunchy, not soggy, lots of it; simply must be served with custard, ideally cold), roast chicken (cooked hot and fast, with more butter than is sensible, until the skin crackles; the chicken oysters are always cook’s perks).

But some catch me unawares. I don’t realise that I feel strongly about a particular recipe of foodstuff until I’m staring down the barrel of a recipe, or contemplating something that doesn’t meet my surprisingly exacting standards. I’ll find myself holding forth on the correct way to make an egg mayonnaise sandwich, or the one true way of cooking porridge. Perhaps I’ll end up on a soapbox about the proper proportions of a pavlova, or the only acceptable type of chocolate bar, despite never previously having given the subject conscious thought. I’m a delight to live with, as you can imagine.

Cauliflower cheese belongs in the latter category. I truly didn’t think I was terribly fussy. Perhaps that’s because I am sufficiently greedy that if you serve me a cauliflower cheese, I will be genuinely happy, no matter how it’s made. But ask me how I believe a cauliflower cheese should be made, or what its platonic qualities are, and I will, I’m afraid to say, talk you ear off.

Like many, I expect, my first experience of cauliflower cheese was at school: huge vats of the stuff, boiled to within an inch of its life, before being drowned in an insipid white sauce, and then kept in hot-holding, under heat lamps, until however many hundreds of pupils had been served. This is, you will be shocked to hear, not the ideal set of conditions for a cauliflower cheese.