Cheesy Baked Cauliflower with Mushrooms
Western cooks usually take cauliflower one of two ways — boiled, or buried in béchamel; this Eastern European treatment reaches for breadcrumbs instead. The florets are blanched a bare 5 minutes, to just short of tender, then moved straight into foaming butter and showered with crumbs as they fry. The crumbs draw moisture off the surface and set into a thin crisp shell, which is why the cauliflower doesn’t slump in the finished bake.
The instruction to boil the mushrooms for 30 minutes belongs to a time when the basket held foraged wild mushrooms, which genuinely need it. Cremini or oyster mushrooms don’t: slice them and fry them with the onion until the pan hisses dry. That is where the dish is won or lost — underfried mushrooms weep into the dish and the cheese comes out soft instead of browned.
Don’t swap the butter for oil. The nutty note of browned butter is the link between bland cauliflower and earthy mushrooms, and 300 g of mushrooms — about 10 oz, a generous two cups sliced — needs it. Reach for an aged cheese, Gouda or cheddar or anything firm, since young cheese ropes and leaks fat while aged melts evenly.
Part of Ukrainian cuisine — 464 more recipes in the section.
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Ingredients
Instructions
Break the cauliflower into florets and boil them for 5 minutes.
Fry the cauliflower in butter, showering it with breadcrumbs as you go.
Boil the mushrooms for 30 minutes, then cut them into small pieces.
Fry the mushrooms with the finely chopped onion until all the moisture has evaporated.
Combine the cauliflower with the mushrooms in a deep skillet or ovenproof dish.
Sprinkle with grated cheese and bake until the crust is golden.
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