Something For The Hunger Gap

p'tit gratin à la dijonnaise

I'm sorry to say that I must say something controversial and express that the best possible spring dinner is cauliflower cheese.

No, I know! I know! You hate that I have said this, and God knows so do I, but listen: I think it is true! I think it is time generally to rehabilitate cauliflower cheese into the realm of profound elegance; and also I think it's even more a spring dish than a winter dish! I think now is the perfect time to make cauliflower cheese, or, if you would prefer, un petit gratin.

Un petit gratin à la Dijonnaise! Which has the added bonus of sounding Frenchly chic, plus with a double dot which I have always loved. Djinn! Guajillo! Hijinks, of course, with a sensational triple. We can rename it for elegance but there is to me something very now, something pleasingly realistic and grounded about the phrase cauliflower cheese.

The problem with cauliflower cheese is that it has a schoolish connotation of both heaviness and stodge: disastrous, and the opposite of elegant. Fear not: I have a solution for that too. I can grant both lightness and depth. And I will! I did yesterday and may again tomorrow, such is my commitment to spring-as-the-season. A beautiful nutmeg-inflected Parmesan sauce! Spoonful after spoonful of Dijon! A thick brisk crisp layer of dark and toasty breadcrumbs! And more besides. I think that this is one of my best recipes and I think you will love it, honestly; it is cauliflower cheese for sophisticates. It is also immensely adaptable, in that I think you could make this gratin with whatever hardy vegetable you find in the fridge— Brussels sprouts, broccoli, fennel, celeriac, even regular celery, onions— and it would be good. Stale bread for the top! I love when a recipe is genuinely improved by a fridge forage. Maybe I should call this Fridge Forage Gratin. But, no. It already has two names. (The gratin who is loved has many names.)

The reason to embrace April as a season of cauliflower cheese (ptit gratin!) is because despite all sensorial evidence to the contrary, this is still winter as far as nature's bounty is concerned. The winter crops are exhausted, with the notable exception of cauliflower; the summer has not yet icumen in. Welcome to the Hunger Gap. Nothing is fresh. Nothing is green. Which is absurd! How should we have to wait for abundance in the very middle of all this sunshine! What is all this sunshine for if not to eat the crisp peas from the pod, the sun-warmed lettuce, the berries of the earth, etc. And yet to the growing things it is only the beginning.

The other reason that it is— in my opinion— which is correct— the season for cauliflower cheese is that it is not as warm when the sun goes down as you might think, and also if you are eating cauliflower cheese— votre gratin, bien sûr— you can for example eat it in the garden with, oh, impossibly chic: a little crisp salad, ideally very bitter, radicchio which is in season, per mirable; and, my God, a little glass of cold white wine and a blanket over your lap.