How To Make A Broccoli Cheese Casserole

Today, I'd like to show you how to make a simple vegetarian dish. I'd like to tell you how to make a delicious broccoli cheese casserole. Really easy to make, but you do have a few separate parts to it.

You've got the cheese sauce, you've got the broccoli and cauliflower, and you've also got a stew of chick peas, tomato, onions, garlic, and a little bit of mixed herbs. We're also going to top this off to give it a good crispy topping, some nice bread crumbs. First thing to do is to make the cheese sauce.

Really simple to make! Basic ingredients, you'll need some milk, good strong cheese grated, and a little bit of butter, and some flour, which will thicken it. Really straight forward, but you do need to follow a few tips. The first thing to do is to put in your butter into a pan and just allow that to melt for around about 30 seconds or so.

And to that, I'm going to add flour. This is just ordinary white flour; you could use whole meal flour, any flour at all, but not corn flour. You would use a different technique if you're using corn flour.

So, once the butter's melted, we'll add the flour and we'll cook that off for about 30 seconds to a minute. It will get quite sticky and that's what it's supposed to do. So, don't worry about that.

Now the butter's melted, we can add the flour. Just sprinkle it on and keep stirring. This is the basic brew, the thickening part of many, many sauces.

So, this needs to cook for approximately 2 minutes or so. That should be about right. I'm going to add the milk now, just gradually add it in and keep stirring.

And what will happen is it will start to thicken up, and that will be the basis for your sauce. You want to add some pepper in there to give it a bit of bite or paprika. As you can see, the sauce is starting to thicken nicely.

We're going to add a little bit more milk. Keep stirring all the time. The sauce is thickening nicely, there are no lumps in there at all.

Perfect sauce! Add the remainder of the milk. Keep on stirring, and if you do get lumps, you can throw it for a serve, so it's not the end of the world. So, that's the basic sauce and of course, we're going to add some nice cheese.

You can add any cheese you want. In it goes. I think that's probably enough.

So, as the cheese melts, the sauce will be ready. Now, we've made the cheese sauce, the next step is to make the casserole. So, we've got the chick peas, onion, garlic, tomatoes, and a few herbs.

Heat a little olive oil in your pan and to that, you can put in the onions. Let these cook for 2 minutes or so, just to soften them. They are going to go into the oven in a moment, so they will continue to cook, so you don't have to be overly fussy with these onions.

The next thing to do is to pop in garlic. Not too much, just the regular clove. If you want to pop more in, pop more in.

If you put smoked garlic in, that's nice. Or some smoked paprika. While the onions cook for 2 minutes till they're soft, we can add the other ingredients which are the mixed herbs, just the everyday mixed herbs you've got in your cabinet, and tinned chickpeas.

Just strain those under cold water and add those straight in. If you use dehydrated or dried chickpeas, you will need to cook them thoroughly first, which will take about an hour or so, or even longer, depending on if you use a pressure cooker or not. I would recommend that you use tinned ones, just strain them first.

Now, the onions are softened, we can add the remaining ingredients. The tinned chickpeas have been drained, in they go. We've got the tomatoes and we've also got ordinary mixed herbs.

In they go, round about a teaspoonful, and let that cook for about 10 minutes or so. It starts to get soft, starts to look nice. And that's the end of that stage.

Now that the chickpeas and the tomatoes are cooked, it's time to assemble the casserole which is the next step. In go the chickpeas and the tomatoes, and that will be