Cauliflower Cheese Pie...side or main??

Tonight's meal was a bit of an open the fridge and create something from nothing kind of meal...basically I had a gigantic cauliflower and that was about it!! My cauliflower repitoire is rather limited to cold cauliflower salad, soup, curry or cheese... I knew I didn't want a curry and David and I had soup for supper a few nights ago...after looking though some books and on the internet I decided to use some leftover cheese, cream and bacon to make a cauliflower cheese pie.  When I was out and about today I picked up a package of puff pastry and that's about all I needed!!! 

Before this morning I didn't even know there was such a thing as cauliflower cheese pie...I mean cauliflower cheese makes for an excellent side dish...but a pie?? Some of the recipes I saw on-line suggested putting the cauliflower in the pie mixture RAW and letting the heat from the oven/sauce cook it...I wasn't down with that...I love raw cauliflower (with dip) but not in a hot pie! So I par-boiled the cauliflower first...made the cheese sauce...and fried some bacon and shallots...mixed it all together, added some frozen peas...poured it all into a gorgeous enamel pie dish...topped with some puff pastry and baked!! 

Easy as....well...PIE! 

Originally, I was going to serve this just with a side of coleslaw...but then I remembered the two cooked chicken legs sitting in my fridge from last night....perfect! cold chicken, hot and cheesey cauliflower pie and crunchy coleslaw...CC and C!!

Taking this chance to show off the new oil cloth on our kitchen table...I love polkadots!