I’m back with another one of Jamie’s 30-Minute Meals
This is not a low Fodmap recipe.
Jamie Oliver’s 30 Minute Cauliflower Macaroni Cheese
Author: Suzanne Perazzini
Ingredients
- 8 rashers of bacon
- 1 large head of cauliflower
- 500g dried macaroni
- Olive oil as required
- 250g mature Cheddar cheese
- 4 thick slices of bread
- large sprig of fresh rosemary
- 2 large clove of garlic
- 250g crème fraîche
- Salt & pepper
- Parmesan cheese, to serve
Method
- Fill the kettle with water and bring to the boil. Preheat the oven on to 220ºC/425ºF/Gas 7.
- Lay the bacon in the dish you will eventually be using for the pasta mixture and put on the top shelf of the oven to pre-cook.
- Trim off any very coarse or spoiled outer leaves from the cauliflower and remove the tough end of the stalk. Quarter the head or break it up into large pieces. Place in a large saucepan, stalks downwards and add the pasta.
- Pour over the boiling water to cover the ingredients, season, add a little olive oil and place on a high heat. Stir well until it reboils, and cook with the lid just askew.
- Grate the cheddar cheese in the food processor and tip into a bowl. Add the crème fraiche and crushed garlic.
- Remove the bacon from the oven. Using a food processer, process well with the bread and rosemary leaves. Add a good drizzle of olive oil to bind the ingredients into a coarse breadcrumb consistency.
- When the cauliflower and the pasta is just cooked (a knife inserted into the cauliflower stalk should slip in easily), reserving the cooking water, drain it all through a colander into a large bowl.
- Tip the pasta mixture into the dish the bacon was cooked in.
- Add about 400ml (just under a pint) of the reserved cooking water.
- Stir in the crème fraîche and cheese mixture, breaking the cauliflower up with a fork or potato masher until you have bite-sized pieces.
- Season. The sauce should be loose and if necessary, add another splash of the reserved cooking water.
- Spread the mixture out evenly in the dish and scatter over the breadcrumb topping.
- Cook on the top shelf of the oven for around 8-10 minutes, or until the topping is golden and the mixture bubbling.
- To serve grate over some Parmesan.
Kudos on a beautiful photo of an old classic on our menus since childhood . Love the rosemary bough so artistically falling over the dish 🙂 ! If you look at Jamie’s 30 minute meals – much of the prep has been done and dirty dishes disappear as if by magic! I have sort’of watched the guy grow up and love so much of what he does, use his recipes regularly [so sensible], but I certainly would not put the timer on when prepping 😀 !
Also, I have noticed in the film clips that one second he is perhaps peeling one carrot and then magically they are all peeled. I have seen that magic several times if you look closely so even he is not doing it all in the requisite time. And I can’t bear the dirty dishes stacking up. I like to keep a tidy kitchen while I work.
I grabbed all that rosemary when I was visiting my mother over the weekend so thought I should use it. I did think it would get burned as the dish was straight out of the oven but it’s made of sturdy stuff.
Suzanne
As I, Jamie does not peel his carrots. There is no need, just a good wash. And as far as dirty dishes, he uses four or five pans and usually serves in them. And what he does have as far as dirty dishes, he just throws in that giant sink 😂
I’m so happy to have found another kindred spirit – another member in the 30-minute fail club! Your cauliflower dish looks absolutely delicious and like you said on my blog, the recipes are so yummy. I’m sure we would all enjoy them a lot more if we didn’t sit there wondering where we failed. I think you’ve done incredibly well to bring this in in 45 minutes. Great achievement! xx
Fail club is right. There’s so little time in the evenings after work to exercise, cook, photograph and blog, so I really need quick dinners and mostly they don’t exist. Even a basic salad takes trime to clean and cut up all the vegetables.
I will be keeping an eye on your efforts to lift yourself out of the fail club via your blog.
Suzanne
What a brilliant variation on traditional Mac ‘n Cheese – The cauliflower sounds delicious and I’m loving the rosemary in this recipe and in your photo! So pretty with the brilliant green surrounding your dish.
Thanks, Kelly. It is a much healthier version of Mac ‘n Cheese and the subtle rosemary flavour lifts the dish.
Suzanne
I love cauliflower and it’s so nice to see it in macaroni cheese! I love JO too, and his recipes are wonderful. I love using (neighbor’s) fresh rosemary and this is definitely a keeper for our week night meal!
I made a great dish last week which used finely chopped cauliflower instead of couscous and no one could tell the difference. You should check it out. I’ll be doing another Jamie meal tomorrow night.
Suzanne
Really like the idea of adding cauliflower to mac ‘n cheese. People used to skip the pasta entirely and do a cauliflower gratin, but I haven’t seen those around lately. This is a good dish – thanks.
It was a big enough dish to do us for two nights and it was just as good the second night.
Suzanne
you said you are an amateur photographer??? your photo up there is so so professional , you are very good. iam also into food and photography – but iam not good at photography as you are. Do you have a website or facebook page where you showcase your photography/ i could learn from you
Thanks so much, Nessie, for the compliment. I only started photography less than a year ago so I do consider myself an amateur. My photos are only here on this blog for now. Good luck with your own photos.
so did you do any photography courses that you would recommend? really impressed with yo pics
No photography course but I did read a lot of online tutorials and my son is doing a design degree with a major in photography. He was able to help when I got stuck.
Fantastic recipe, unfortunately it took me an hour because I am such a disorganized person. Kids love it so was a winner!
I’m glad it worked well for you, Annya. Trying to get Jamie’s meals down to 30 minutes has made me a lot more efficient in the kitchen. I was used to cleaning up as I went, but you can’t do that with Jamie’s meals so I had to learn to put up with the mess while I cooked.
Hi don’t suppose you know what the green sauce/ dressing was I just caught the end of this episode, thanks Paul
It was the salad dressing: basil, garlic, salt, pepper, anchovies, mustard, yoghurt, red wine vinegar and olive oil.
Your website keeps asking to close the taB, WHICH MEANS i AM UNABLE TO [PRINT OFF THE CAULIFLOWER MACARONI CHEESE DUSH ETC. PLZ CAN U HELP. THANKYOU.
i ALREADY HAVE SEVERAL OF jAMIES BOOKS/RECIPE BOOKS BUT JUST LOVED THE REVIEWS ON THIS RECIPE AND WOULD LIKE TO TRY IT.
When you click on the print button and the recipe appears, then go to FILE in the top left corner of your computer screen, click it and then click on print.
This is fantastic! My children really love cauliflower, can’t wait to try these out with them. Thank you for sharing such great ideas, Suzanne.
I made this for company to day who had to cancel due to a snow storm. Will this cauliflower Mac and cheese freeze well?
I have never tried freezing it but I see no reason why it wouldn’t work.
Hey hey!
I made this recipe for my flat mate and myself and it was absolutely delicious. I was expecting to make enough for two nights but ended up with so much that I had to freeze half of it.
The recipe doesn’t say how many servings it will make or I would have halved the ingredients to make 4 servings.
We both loved it.😋😋😋
I am glad you enjoyed it.
I’m shocked, but this recipe was a real miss for me. Not the poster’s fault, this is all on Jamie. I like to play around with recipes and I have this nagging suspicion that I should be enhancing this one, but I carefully followed it right down to weighing out all of my ingredients. In the end, the results were very underwhelming. It definitely needed more sauce as it was sticky/dry. I did add some extra pasta water to make it “loose” as the recipe describes, but it clearly wasn’t enough and any more would have watered down the already bland flavor. I used a sharp cheddar, grated from a block to avoid the non-clumping chemicals, but it was not cheesy at all. I also could hardly taste the bacon. All in all it was kind of dry and very bland and very underseasoned. I ended up adding more cheese (both Parmesan and more sharp cheddar), salt, pepper and more salt and it was tolerable. Now I have a huge pan of this stuff to try to doctor up and use. I should have trusted my gut on this one.