Grain-free Mac 'n' Cheese

This is a sort of complicated one-skillet leftover-utilizing meal, in that you need to make the cauliflower and/or cabbage before. If you plan ahead and have cauliflower and cabbage for dinner the night before, and you just don't eat all of it in one sitting, then it's a brilliant use of leftovers. Sometimes you remember and sometimes you don't. Don't beat yourself up. 

It starts with an onion. 

Okay no it starts with cooking a head of cauliflower in a pot with some water until it's cooked, and roasting some cabbage in the oven at 400 degrees F with some olive oil and paprika and ground caraway and salt and pepper. Roast the cauliflower until it's browned. And eat some of both with a steak or something. But don't eat all of it, Miss Piggy! Then put the leftovers in the fridge and go to sleep and have sweet dreams about being Hillary Clinton's wingman. 

Sleep well? Great! You're still going to have to wait because this would be a strange breakfast, but what do I know? When I lived in Japan my home stay mother made me hot-dog pizzas for breakfast while the rest of the family had miso soup and leftovers. 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Remove four hippy local pastured eggs and some hippy local heavy whipping cream from your fridge, about a cup of cream, maybe more. Crack eggs and pour cream in the same bowl. Add paprika and caraway and salt and pepper. Whisk it. Into shape. Then add a cup of grated parmesan cheese and a smidge of other cheeses you might have around the house because your Mother-in-Law was visiting and cheese is delicious. I used a bit of Swiss Emmentaler. I didn't grate it, I cut it up kind of small though. Waste not want not.  

Now, the onion. Cut up one large onion and cook it with some fat (I used olive oil) in your big cast iron skillet until it's translucent-plus. Then add two cups of sliced brown mushrooms, paprika, caraway, salt and pepper to taste. I don't know how much. A sprinkling. Use your common sense. Cook this until the mushrooms are nice and soft and cooked. Remove to a plate.

Vegetarian? Skip this part. Cut up some Canadian bacon (do I need to tell you to get the best kind of pig-life bacon you can buy? I don't, you know better), and sautee it in the skillet until browned a bit. You could also use regular bacon but I didn't and I think it would be a different kind of thing but that's cool. Dude, you could use tofu, just keep it away from my face okay? (Said the former vegan.)

Add the mushroom-onion mix back.

Chop up the cold cauliflower and cabbage. Make it small. Add to skillet. Stir.

Turn off the heat. Pour the egg cream cheese mix on top of the other stuff and smoosh it all down. Put in the oven until it puffs up and is not jiggly. Eat all of it. It's really good cold too if you can control yourself. This amount served the three of us pretty well with a big green salad on the side. 

Listen, you could definitely add more cheese to this. I'm not going to stop you.