Cauliflower - Bacon Gratin (French Fridays with Dorie)

I'm not hugely crazy about cooked cauliflower, although raw cauliflower is my first pick from a plate of crudités. It has a nasty smell while cooking, reminiscent of a bad boarding-house kitchen (if the cook at the bad boarding house was into cauliflower). So, while this cauliflower dish was a good one, I'll admit that my favorite parts were the bacon and cheese. But you really can't have a bacon gratin, can you? There has to be something in there besides bacon, cream, and cheese.

Jim liked watching the cauliflower boil because it turned somersaults.

I bought the makings for this dish without double-checking the recipe. I knew that it called for Gruyere cheese, but somehow, in my feeble brain, that translated to Fontina, and that's what I bought. Although Fontina is definitely not a classic French cheese, it worked quite well.

The sauce, which turned out to be lovely, not only had cream and full-fat milk, but it also had five eggs, which were beaten, one at a time, into the flour. Not surprisingly, the eggs made the sauce custardy, rather than white saucy.

The cauliflower was decent, the sauce was delicious, but it was the bacon that made this dish.

Into the oven it goes,

and out it comes, just 25 minutes later.

We had this as a main course at our house, with just a green salad, so it was an easy weekday dinner. I would probably add a little thyme if I made it again, but it doesn't really need it. I'd also cut the cauliflower pieces a little smaller. All in all, though, I was pretty satisfied with it just the way it was. Although Dorie says it doesn't keep very well, I had it for lunch today, and, although I had to apologize to the people at work for the odiferous cauliflower, it still tasted fine.