Ingredients

• Milk 500ml
• garlic clove 1
• nutmeg 1
• bay leaves 2
• butter 50g
• flour 50g (3tbsp)

Method

Put the milk nutmeg, garlic and bay leaves in a saucepan and bring to the boil, leave to infuse for a few minutes then strain.
Melt the butter in a saucepan and stir in the flour over a low heat to make a smooth paste or roux.

Add the milk a little at a time until you have a sauce without any lumps. When you make a sauce based on a roux you should add a hot liquid to a cold paste or a cold liquid to a hot paste, but it doesn’t really matter, here I put a hot liquid into a hot paste and it works perfectly well.

Simmer over a very low heat, stirring every now and then for 8-10 minutes to cook out the flavour of the flour.

Ben’s cauliflower cheese

Baby cauliflowers, 2

Extra strong cheddar cheese, xxg

To make my cauliflower cheese, cook the cauliflowers in the milk that you are going to use to make the béchamel to add extra flavour – just simmer it in the milk with all the flavourings until tender. Lift the cauliflower out and put them in an ovenproof dish. Strain the milk.

Make the béchamel as above then stir in a handful of grated strong cheddar cheese and pour the sauce over the cauliflower. Put more cheese on top if you want to and either grill for about xx minutes or bake in 180C oven for about xx minutes until the sauce starts to bubble.