Interesting conundrum...
I, for reasons unknown, had a craving last night for one of my early '70s standby dishes: vegetables in cheese sauce. I know! But bear with me...
Of course, the idea of a gloppy mess of cheddar in a gluey béchamel did NOT appeal. So an experiment was in order...
First I set a pot of brown rice to cook... Change Number One.
Then, I decided to try making a sort of velouté (that's really just a béchamel using stock instead of milk or cream)... Change Number Two. To make this velouté, I melted a tablespoon of butter, whisked in a tablespoon of flour... cooked that for two minutes, whisking... and then started adding chicken stock until I got the consistency I wanted, well, actually a little thinner than I wanted because I knew there was cheese a-comin'!
Knowing the vegetable of the day would be cauliflower (huge sale!!) and the cheese would be cheddar, and knowing that caraway seeds were perfect with both, I added a teaspoon or so of caraway, pepper, and a bit of smoked salt (I know... it's an obsession at the moment) and let it all simmer on low, adding splashes of stock when it became too thick. Meanwhile, I steamed about a 3/4 of a head of cauliflower.
I plated some rice, topped it with the barely softened cauliflower and, at the last second, whisked about 1/3 cup of grated extra sharp cheddar into the sauce, and poured it on top.
Between the flavor of the velouté, and the sharpness of the cheddar (and I used about 1/4 as much cheese as in the old days), the flavor was much deeper... I dare say almost sophisticated for such a '70s hippie staple...
And the texture was completely without the glop factor!
I'm not saying re-invent everything, but if you want a dish, and something about the recipe makes you say "yeah, but" ...just consider a re-examination of the components... You may surprise yourself. (My way of saying this was really good AND satisfied a nostalgic craving!)