Whole Roasted Cauliflower Cheese Bake

Disclosure: This post is sponsored by Aunt Bessie's in conjunction with the Mumsnet Bloggers Panel. All views are my own.

I thought my fiance was joking last week when he got in from work and said he thinks we should go vegan.

This was coming from a man who always insists on meat on his plate and all the cheese!

His reasoning? Because we love animals so much. That's true, but I'm still waiting for the punch line, coming from a man who insisted on meat at every meal time.

Back in my uni days, I became vegetarian (then vegan for a while) and although I'm neither now, it has really helped me appreciate vegetables and flavours even more.

I've always thought meat tasted funny and growing up, it would be the last thing I ate on a roast dinner or sometimes not at all.

I remember Dad asking one Sunday while he served up dinner, "Are you going to eat your chicken? Otherwise I'll give it to your brother now". I didn't put up much of a fight as I was always content with my veg, yorkshire pudding, mash and gravy. But it wasn't until my mid twenties when I started eating meat again for protein.

So being a huge vegetable lover, I took advantage of my fiance's request and cooked a huge vegetarian feast of Linda McCartney country veg pies, a whole roasted cauliflower, plenty of Aunt Bessie's roast potatoes and veggie gravy.

And to my surprise, the response I got was that it was "quite nice", which is a huge revelation for someone I consider a very fussy eater.

It's definitely worth considering if you want to introduce more vegetables in to your family's diet.

But since my vegetarian days, it now amazes me about how many more thoughtful options are available in the shops than there used to be.

And this time last year when I had an early Christmas dinner with some old Uni friends, I discovered Bisto gravy granules was also now on the cards.

And another new find for our vegetarian roast dinner, were Aunt Bessie's homemade style roast potatoes. We found them an all round pleaser (and they're gluten free), yet still gives the perfect crunch. In fact, out of 250 Mumsnet bloggers, 75% said they'd use them again and would recommend them to others.

*Aunt Bessie's Homestyle Roast Potatoes are estimated to be 2.5 syns per 100g at raw weight).

So to compliment our roast, I also made this oh so yummy cheesy mustard cauliflower.

It was very difficult not to snack on it while I plated it up!

It's got tang from the mustard and an al dente crunch that I love. But if you prefer mushier vegetables, then you might want to roast for longer or steam for 5 minutes beforehand, but it's so tasty!

What's your favourite vegetarian option on your roast dinner?

📖 Recipe

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