Wednesday, April 4, 2007

Broccoli Gratin – Why am I staring at you in the check-out line?

Some things just go great together; chips and beer, warm bread and butter, Britney and K-Fed, and of course, Broccoli and Cheddar cheese sauce. As you’ll hear in the video this clip was inspired by watching people in grocery store lines buying tiny, expensive, and poor quality, frozen packages of broccoli and cheese sauce.

I had some left-over Béchamel sauce, so in this clip I’ll show how easy it is to take that humble base sauce and create a wonderful vegetable gratin. In case I wasn’t clear in the clip, turn the heat off the Béchamel as soon as you add the cheese. By the way, if I haven’t already, I’ll add a béchamel demo to the blog in case you’re not familiar with that “mother” sauce.

As far as recommendations go, I’m a HUGE cheese head, not the Green Bay Packer variety, but the delicious English Farmhouse Cheddar kind.

I hope you have a nice cheese shop near you, but if not you can get just about anything you want online these days. Check out cooking.com, they’re a great resource. I suggest any nice sharp cheddar for this dish, but so many other cheeses would be delicious. And for the top, Parmigiano-Reggiano is great, or even a nice Pecorino Romano.

2 cups Béchamel sauce
24 oz. Broccoli florettes (about 4 heads trimmed)
8 oz Cheddar Cheese
1/3 cup plain bread crumbs
1/2 cup grated Parmesan

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

haha... that's a good one "Britney and K-fed", but you can't forget the classic Mac and Cheese. My mouth waters just thinking about it. By the way do think you could make your version of mac and cheese? I'm also a cheese head, I even put it on my corn.(parmigiano reggiano works best).

Anonymous said...

Same viewer here, here's the recipe you'll need corn,mayonnaise, chili powder, and parmigiano reggiano(grated). Boil your, wait like 5 minutes.Now add your mayonnaise(how much you like), then sprinkle on your cheese, and if you like heat add as much chili powder as you like. again this recipe is all in variation according to your likings. Enjoy! (PS) Do Not... I repeat Do Not use Cheddar or any other melting cheese!it just screws up this dish!

Anonymous said...

When we add our Broccoli to that hot, boiling water how hot should that water be? My guess; boiling hot.

Chef John said...

yes, boiling!

ScienceSusan said...

To turn this into soup, would you add milk or stock, or is that right out?