CAULIFLOWER POWER
Trusty veggie plays a starring role in warm salad
It’s time to give this trusty vegetable a chance and a new Middle Eastern cookbook is doing just that, offering recipes for cauliflower pickled with carrots, or in a lamb stew, or roasted in this sustaining warm salad.
Nazareth-born Rawia Bishara remembers enjoying cauliflower fried and tucked into Arabic bread.
She puts this salad on the menu at her Brooklyn, N.Y., restaurant, Tanoreen, as an appetizer or to accompany meat or chicken.
The photograph by Peter Cassidy shows it lightly browned and topped with a tahini sauce and finely chopped parsley.
It’s one of many comforting vegetable dishes in the beautiful book Olives, Lemons & Za’atar: The Best Middle Eastern Home Cooking (Kyle Books/canadian Mana Group, $32.99).
Pomegranate molasses, a Middle Eastern staple, trims the vegetable. She uses the same ingredients to trim brussels sprouts, a vegetable she discovered in the U.S. and enlivened with her own treatment. Her tahini sauce may be stored, covered, in the refrigerator for up to two weeks.
CAULIFLOWER SALAD (SALATET ZAHRA)
Serves: 8
For the tahini sauce:
■ 1 1/2 cups (375 ml) tahini (sesame paste)
■ 3 to 4 cloves garlic, crushed
■ 1 cup (250 ml) fresh lemon juice (about 5 lemons), or to taste
■ 1 tsp (5 ml) sea salt Chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
For the salad:
■ 2 heads cauliflower, cut in 2-inch (5-cm) florets
■ Corn oil for frying
■ 1 cup (250 ml) Thick Tahini Sauce (see recipe)
■ 1/4 cup (60 ml) pomegranate molasses
■ 2 tbsp (30 ml) chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
1. For the sauce: Use a food processor on low speed to combine the tahini, garlic, lemon juice and salt for two minutes or until well mixed.
2. Raise processor speed to high and blend the mixture until it begins to turn white.
3. Gradually add 1/2 cup (125 ml) water until mixture is desired texture.
4. Transfer to a bowl and trim with parsley.
5. For the salad: Place cauliflower in a large pot and add cold water to cover. Bring water to a boil and boil two minutes, then drain in a colander.
6. In a large, heavy frying pan over high heat, heat 1/2 to
3/4 inches (1 cm to 7 mm) of oil until hot. Working in batches, fry cauliflower until golden brown, about two minutes a side. Use a slotted spoon to transfer browned cauliflower to paper towels to drain.
7. Or, preheat oven to 500 F
(260 C). Spread cauliflower on a sheet pan, brush all over with oil and roast until golden and tender to the fork, about 15 minutes.
8. Arrange cauliflower on serving platter, drizzle with the tahini sauce, followed by the pomegranate molasses. Trim with parsley and serve.