Читать книгу Rose Elliot’s New Complete Vegetarian - Rose Elliot - Страница 184

Cheese sauce is useful both for incorporating into other dishes before baking or grilling, and for serving with vegetables to make them into more of a meal. It’s worth using a strongly flavoured cheese, and you can boost the flavour with a good seasoning of mustard, cayenne and freshly ground black pepper. Unsweetened soya milk makes a particularly good, creamy sauce and Double Gloucester gives it a pretty colour.

MAKES 275ML (10FL OZ)

25g (1oz) butter

25g (1oz) plain flour

1 bay leaf

275–425ml (10–15fl oz) milk or unsweetened soya milk

50g (2oz) grated cheese – Cheddar or Double Gloucester

1 tsp mustard powder

cayenne pepper

salt and freshly ground black pepper

Melt the butter in a medium-sized saucepan and stir in the flour. Cook for a few seconds or until the flour bubbles round the edges, then add the bay leaf, turn up the heat and pour in about one-third of the milk or soya milk.

Stir hard until the sauce is very thick and smooth, then repeat the process twice with the remaining milk so that you finish with a thick pouring consistency.

Take the pan off the heat and beat in the grated cheese, mustard, a tiny pinch of cayenne pepper, and salt and pepper to taste. Don’t let the sauce get too hot once the cheese has been added or it may go stringy and spoil.