Cauliflower - the brains of the vegetable world

Growing up, one of our dorky family traditions was to boil up a cauliflower on Saturday afternoon and eat it.  Yes, you read correctly, boil the hell out of a head of cauliflower and eat it with some salt, pepper and
lemon juice. If we were daring, we might venture to the sublimeness of boiled turnips. We lived
large back then - cauliflower, the Rockford Files and a nap. Saturdays were great nap days.

The smell of boiled cauliflower leads most to wrinkle their noses up and stare at the dog. It is not
a pleasant smell and it is a smell that lingers. Cauliflower is much maligned - its the last
vegetable left on the veggie tray, the vegetable that looks much like your brain on cauliflower,  the vegetable that turns grey with over cooking, over smothered with orange cheese sauce and the vegetable most likely to be fed to the aforementioned dog.

It is a vegetable that shines with tossed with olive oil and roasted. It becomes a whole other
creature -- sweetened, caramelized and savory at the same time. Tonight I was honored to be invited
to a small gathering to honor Amanda Hesser. The guests were asked to cook things out of her various
cookbooks and other New York Times cookbooks. I couldn't locate our NYT International Cookbook, so I
borrowed the The New York Times Country Weekend Cookbook from the library to see what I could find.

Hesser's take on Mario Batali's Roasted Cauliflower had me hooked. It hit the key points necessary
for potluck friendly food - easy to prepare, easy to double, best served at room temperature and
keeps for a day in the fridge and in fact tastes better with a little sitting around.  The recipe is really entitled - Roasted Cauliflower with lemon, olives and capers is a amazing mix of flavors. The sweetness and caramel flavors of the cauliflower, mixed in the tart lemon juice and lemon rind, a touch of garlic (just a touch, not overwrought) and the saltiness of
the capers and meatiness of the olives.

Its a keeper. 

The original recipe calls for a lot of olive oil. I was aghast at the amount. You need to use the oil
in three steps, cauliflower roasting, marinating and olive and caper desalting. You can limit the
amount of oil for the marinating, and discard the oil from the desalting. It all works out in the
end.

The recipe also calls for salted cured capers, these are an extravagance, but well worth it. They are
typically larger than the average brined caper and work beautifully paired with the olives.

Mario Batali's Roasted Cauliflower with lemon, capers and olives - From the New York Times Country Weekend Cookbook (2007).

Makes six generous side servings or 12 as nosheri
Time to make recipe ca. 1 hour, not all active time

Ingredients:

2 medium head of cauliflower cut into florets
salt and pepper
Approximately 2 cups good extra virgin olive oil to be divided and used for three different stages of the recipe
3 cloves garlic, peeled with green germ removed (halve the garlic)
2 T fresh thyme leaves, I used 1 T dried
Grated zest of 2 lemons, reserve lemon juice for end of recipe
3 T salt cured capers, rinsed and dried
1/3 cup kalamata olives, chopped

Heat oven to 375. Measure and cut a piece of parchment paper to fit in a jelly roll pan or large baking sheet.  Place washed cauliflower florets in bowl, add salt and pepper and toss to distribute evenly.  Pour 1/3 cup olive oil in bowl and and gently toss to coat the florets. Spread cauliflower on jelly roll pan. 

Roast in oven until cauliflower starts to brown and gets soft. You will want to check every 10
minutes and rotate the tray every ten minutes. The roasting should take approximately 30 minutes.
When completed, remove tray from oven and let cauliflower cool.

While the cauliflower is roasting, combine 1 cup of olive oil, garlic,  the lemon zest and thyme in a heavy,
but small pan. Place pan on burner to heat, but not boil You should have the oil bubbling gently. I
used a small copper sauce pan and had to keep my burner on a low heat. Check after about 20 minutes
to see if garlic is softened. When softened, remove from heat and let cool. When the oil has cooled
to room temperature, either use a blender or immersion blender to puree garlic into the oil.

In a separate pan, add the remaining oil, capers and olives together and warm for five minutes. Note:
My second making of this recipe - I rinsed the capers, but then just added them to a little oil to
help plump them up. I didn't heat them and they tasted just fine. I skipped adding the olives to the
oil as well. Once capers have plumped, drain oil.

Place cauliflower in a big bowl (you need to toss the mixture), add 1/3 cup of lemon/garlic oil and
toss to coat. You can add a little more of the oil mixtureif you want, but you don't want it dripping
with oil. Reserve the rest of the oil for another use. Add capers and chopped olives, season with
lemon juice and add salt and pepper if you think it might need a little more. The olives and capers
add a lot of salt, but not necessarily onto the cauliflower.

The dish is great at room temperature, but refrigerate if not using soon. Bring up to room temp before serving.




Chickpea, cilantro and feta salad

My mom called me on Sunday to tell me she had made a tabouli salad and kindly saved some for me.  If I hadn't been completely stuffed to the gills from Cookbook Club and the recipes from Falling Cloudberries, I would have picked up the keys and driven over because I love my mom's tabouli.  However, this post is not about tabouli, it is about the fact that soon it will be outdoor potluck weather and soon we'll be wishing we had opted to make a salad instead of a casserole.

Let me tell you something else about tabouli - everyone loves tabouli, and thinks that they will be exotic and daring and make it for a potluck.  Last year, I attended a summer solstice event at my parent's community garden where four tabouli salads turned up to feed  twenty people.  The same could be said for insalata caprese, its innocuous and frankly, not that exciting.

This week I made three different cold salads, ones that require minimal stovetop use and like most marinated things - tastes better the following day. While the weather has been unseasonably cool, you might as well plan ahead and try and tweak these recipes to your liking.   Here is the first. I love this salad and have made it three times for different events. It is hearty and packed with protein. The parsely and cilantro give it a nice springy taste and the jalepeno, a bit of a kick. I have varied the types of feta cheese in this recipe. If you have picky eaters on your guest list, go for the milder varieties of feta.

Chickepea, Cilantro and Feta salad - adapted from Falling Cloudberries by Tessa Kiros

1 14 oz can of chickpeas, drained

1 small red onion, chopped finely

1/2 jalepeno pepper, cut in a fine mince, remove seeds if you want

2 cloves of garlic (the original recipe calls for five, this was plenty)

1/2 cup olive oil (yes, I said 1/2 cup, and that is an adjustment down from the 1 cup specified)

1 1/4 cup chopped parsely

1/2 cup chopped cilantro

1/2 to 1 cup feta cheese, crumbled (I used both light and the real stuff - both worked fine)

2 green onions chopped (white and light green parts)

1 lemon, juiced (I will admit to adding more than that, I like things tangy)

Directions:

Saute onion in 2 T olive oil until soft (7 minutes for me), add garlic and chopped jalepeno and cook until you can just start smelling the garlic (ca. 2 minutes), remove from heat and let mixture come to room temperature (Note: you could do this ahead of time if you were more prepared than me).

Assemble the rest of the salad while the onion mixture is cooling.

Place chickpeas, parsely, cilantro, green onions in a bowl. Add cooled onion mixture and mix to combine.  Next add crumbled feta cheese to mixture and again, mix to combine.  Lastly add remaining olive oil and lemon juice mixture until it is well distributed.

Season to taste - add more lemon if you want, add salt and pepper, but the feta is a salty cheese and you many not need to add any.  Garnish with remaining parsely.

Refrigerate until served. This salad is delicious right out of the bowl or a few hours or days later. 

Props to Maggim for allowing me to use her lovely picture. I could not do this salad justice.