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Process cooked cauliflower, which is high in vitamin C and potassium, to a smooth purée and then add it to picky eaters' cheese sauce.
Tammy Ljungblad / Kansas City Star
Pump It Up Mac and Cheese
Makes 8 servings
* 1 1/2 cups cauliflower florets
* 3 tablespoons butter
* 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
* 2 1/2 cups 1 percent milk
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 1/4 teaspoon coarsely ground pepper
* 2 cups 2 percent shredded cheddar cheese, divided
* 7 cups firmly cooked elbow macaroni
Place cauliflower in microwave-safe bowl. Add 1/4 cup water and cover. Microwave on high power 5 to 7 minutes or until cauliflower is very tender. Carefully drain any liquid from cauliflower and place cauliflower in food processor. Add water a tablespoon at a time and pulse until mixture is smooth; set aside. (Cauliflower purée should be completely smooth.)
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Melt butter in large saucepan. Stir in flour. Gradually stir in milk. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until mixture bubbles and thickens. Stir in salt and pepper. Remove from heat. Add 1 1/2 cups cheese and stir until melted. Blend in cauliflower mixture. Add cooked pasta and spoon into a 2-quart casserole that has been sprayed with nonstick spray coating. Sprinkle with remaining cheese. Cover and bake 30 minutes.
Per serving: 307 calories (24 percent from fat), 8 g total fat (5 g saturated), 21 mg cholesterol, 42 g carbohydrates, 16 g protein, 395 mg sodium, 2 grams dietary fiber.
Recipe developed by professional home economists Kathryn Moore and Roxanne Wyss.

Food

Sneak cauliflower in kids' mac and cheese

By Jill Wendholt Silva
McClatchy Newspapers
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 11.07.2007
How do you get kids to eat zucchini?
Try baking it into bread.
Nearly every mother has tried sneaking chopped spinach into the spaghetti sauce or finely shredded carrots into the meat loaf. In "Deceptively Delicious" (HarperCollins, $24.95), a best-selling cookbook by the wife of comedian Jerry Seinfeld, Jessica Seinfeld uses an assortment of purées to coax children into eating foods they might not otherwise try.
But the first-time celebrity cookbook author has run smack-dab into charges of plagiarism: Missy Chase Lapine, former Eating Well magazine editor and author of "The Sneaky Chef" (Running Press, $17.95), which was released six months earlier, points to 15 nearly identical recipes and exact food pairings that appear in their cookbooks, like adding avocado to chocolate pudding or sweet potato to grilled cheese sandwiches.
Bestsyndication.com reports that Lapine pitched her cookbook to HarperCollins and the "Oprah" TV show but was turned down by both. Soon after Seinfeld made an appearance on Winfrey's show, her cookbook sold 1.2 million vs. Lupine's 150,000 copies.
Sneaky? Hiding fruit and vegetable purées in food is an old trick. As luck would have it, our testers came up with Pump It Up Macaroni and Cheese before hearing about the current cookbook controversy. In our version, we process cooked cauliflower to a smooth purée, then add it to the white sauce.
Voilà! My picky 13-year-old son wasn't the wiser. So, fooling a toddler, the target audience for this recipe, should be easy.
Cauliflower is very low in calories and sodium but high in vitamin C and potassium. A cruciferous vegetable, cauliflower is thought to contain powerful cancer-fighting properties.
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