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Roast cauliflower
Your cut-out-and-keep guide to the fundamentals of cooking
Ithink part of the reason that cauliflower has become so popular is because people are getting more adventurous with vegetarian options. For years, they were so limited to just pasta and rice and stuff, but now they are actually getting adventurous with vegetables. We were all brought up on overcooked cauliflower, and we’re used to it boiled and that’s that, but it’s really a very versatile vegetable. You can roast it, or eat it raw, or saute or pickle it, and it’s a great vegetable for picking up flavours. I started experimenting with cauliflower a couple of years ago; microplaning it into risottos, and roasting it to make a caramelised cauliflower puree that worked with white fish, the same way a brown-butter sauce would. Cauliflower gets a wonderfully nutty flavour when you roast it. It can take on so much by way of flavour if you par-cook it in a heavily seasoned or spiced stock first, though. Par-cooking is key to making sure it’s not undercooked at the end of the roasting. This spicy stock is delicious, but you could vary your spices for different effects. Another option is to butter-poach the cauliflower. Add some spices, such as cinnamon or cloves, to a pot of melted butter and simmer the cauliflower in the butter before roasting it. Utterly unhealthy, but really delicious. In the restaurant, we serve the cauliflower in this recipe with couscous and various flavours of pickled raisins, barberries, cranberries and whole roasted almonds, garnished with pickled lemon and coriander. There’s a bit of butter, too, but essentially, it’s a very healthy dish. Serves 2 or 3, depending on the cauliflower.
You will need:
10 cardamom pods 1 teaspoon each of fenugreek seeds, cumin seeds, black peppercorns, coriander seeds, fennel seeds 2 cloves 20g( ¾oz) ground turmeric 3L (5¼pts) water 2 large sticks cinnamon 2 curry leaves 2 tablespoons salt 1 large cauliflower 50g (1¾oz) butter
Method:
Preheat the oven to 175°C, 350°F, Gas 5. Toast the cardamom pods, the fenugreek seeds, the cumin seeds, the black peppercorns, the coriander seeds, the fennel seeds, the cloves and the ground turmeric in a large dry saucepan until they are fragrant. Add the water, the cinnamon sticks, the curry leaves and the salt to the saucepan, bring it to the boil and allow it to simmer for 20 minutes to make a spiced stock. Trim off the outer leaves of the cauliflower, place it whole in the simmering spiced stock and bring the stock back to the boil. Then remove the saucepan from the heat and allow the stock to cool, with the cauliflower in it. Once the stock has cooled, remove the cauliflower, place it on absorbent kitchen paper and slice it in half. In an ovenproof frying pan, foam the butter over a medium heat. Place the cauliflower halves cut-side down into the pan, then place the pan into the preheated oven for 10 minutes.