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Produce trio: cauliflower

I love cauliflower. Love love love LOVE cauliflower. I particularly love the purple kind. Also the orange, but deep, royal purple cauliflower from the farmer’s market is one of the best treats in the history of treats. For being one of my favorite veg, however, cauliflower has an ugly temper. The revenge it seeks when you ignore it for too long is epic. I have very vivid memories of one New Year’s Eve at my grandparents’…anyway. Ways to make cauliflower so that you eat it right up and avoid that fate.

1. Brassica (and stuff) salad. This is how I eat cauliflower the most. In fact, this is how I eat cauliflower at least three times a week and often more like six. This is a little thing I like to call “lunch.” I combine cauliflower florets, broccoli florets, and some other sturdy salad veg: rounds of real carrot if I’ve got some, cherry tomatoes, chunks of sweet bell pepper. I douse the whole thing in Ranch, Caesar, blue cheese, or some other creamy dressing, and top liberally with roasted non-salted pistachios. OM AND ALSO NOM.

2. Lebanese roasted cauliflower. This recipe, to be exact. We had it at the very restaurant the person mentions in Vancouver, and it was amazing, and I have successfully recreated the amazing back home. You don’t have to spice it exactly the same way each time, but the lemon-cumin-sumac combo is really nice.

3. Listen to Deb. I like cauliflower gratin and cauliflower soup from Smitten Kitchen, although I use less onion in the soup (“Use Less Onion” would be my kitchen’s motto were it not for Mark, but it is for Mark, and therefore we have to stick with “Basil Is A Vegetable”). Also I use a lot more paprika. A lot. Actually the soup is also good if you throw in mushrooms with the paprika and make it the love child of SK Cauliflower Soup and Random Hungarian Mushroom Soup. That is a great goodness. If I wasn’t going to Montreal, I’d make some for myself this week. Mmmm, paprika. (Note: whenever I say paprika, I mean real Hungarian paprika, not the food coloring they sell as American paprika. Szeged is the brand I use. Szeged is the brand most paprika lovers I know use. Mmmm, Szeged. They did not pay me to do a commercial for them, but I totally would. “When I want to get away from my Scandinavian Blonde-And-Bland Roots, I use Szeged spices….”)

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