loaded baked potato soup (loaded with sshh! Cauliflower!)

Well, here in southern California we finally got winter. It happened last Sunday. After weeks months of sunshine and tank tops, Sunday was winter. It rained and poured for about half of the day. And now we're back to spring.

For that one day, though, it seemed like I ought take advantage of the cold and dreary skies outside and make the house seem warm and cozy by heating up the kitchen. I made two batches of strawberry jam (see what I mean about the warm winter lately? Strawberries already at the farm stands!!).  And then I made a big pot of hearty potato soup.

But, since around here the name of the game is to load everything I can with more vegetables (and to make things healthier while I'm at it), I found a recipe that replaces half of the potatoes with cauliflower.

It turns out nice and creamy and rich, and by the time you top it with bacon and cheese and chives, you are in heaven. Rainy days don't get much better than this!

Baked Potato Soup
(I got this recipe from Skinnytaste.com)

2 potatoes
1 medium head of cauliflower, cut into florets
1 1/2 cups chicken or vegetable stock
1 1/2 cups milk
salt and pepper
1/2 cup sour cream
shredded sharp cheddar cheese
bacon, cooked and crumbled
6 tablespoons chives, diced

First, scrub and dry, poke the potatoes all over with a fork, then bake them. You can do it in the microwave or the oven. In the microwave, put them on high for 5 minutes, flip them, and cook them another 5 minutes. In the oven, place them on a rack for about an hour at 400. When they are done, take them out and let them cool.

While the potatoes are baking, cook the bacon. Yum! Try hard not to eat it all before the soup is finished.

Cut up the cauliflower and steam it. Again, this can be done in the microwave (about 8 minutes on high), or you can do it on the stove.

When the cauliflower and the potatoes are done, its time to puree them! Peel the potatoes and put them in  a blender with about half of the milk. Puree until smooth and pour into a stockpot. Next, put the cauliflower and the remaining milk in tot he blender and puree until smooth again (you may need to do this in batches). Add the pureed cauliflower to the pureed potatoes in the stockpot. Stir in the chicken or vegetable stock and season it all with a little bit of salt and lots of freshly cracked black pepper. Bring it to a boil then reduce to a simmer.

Add the sour cream and about half of the chives. Let it all cook for another 20 minutes on low.

Ladle into bowls and top each with some more chives, some shredded cheese, and some bacon.

cauliflower pizza crust

Last week, I had a big, beautiful cauliflower sitting in my fridge, who just know she was destined for greatness. And as it turns out, she wasn't just an empty dreamer. Greatness, indeed.

The concept of the cauliflower pizza crust was spreading like wildfire throughout Pinterest a couple of weeks ago, which proved to be excellent timing for the beauty in the crisper drawer.

Pinterest is now home to several links to different versions of this veggie pizza crust, and with good reason. It happens to be an amazingly good-tasting, solid solution for people who are vegetarian, gluten-free, low-carb, or just trying to eat more veggies.

All of the reviews I read for all of the different versions of the recipe said more or less the same thing: It's delicious! It doesn't taste exactly like a pizza crust, but it doesn't taste like cauliflower, either. And it needs to be eaten with a fork.

Although I agree with all of these opinions, my kids took umbrage with the last one. It can't be pizza if you need a fork. And so, they went ahead and picked it up and ate from the tip to the crust. Then, they licked their fingers and asked for more. (I'm with my kids on this one... it isn't a dry crust, but it is perfectly lift-able, and I see no reason why those inclined to lift shouldn't).

success!

It's really quite easy to make. Some of the recipes I saw said to steam the cauliflower first, then rice it. I found it easier to run it through my food processor first, and then cook it. The cauliflower doesn't need any additional water to cook, so just put it all in a glass bowl and microwave it. After that, stir it with some "glue" ingredients, bake it, top it, and melt the cheese.  Then sit back and enjoy perfectly guilt-free pizza. (Well, guilt-free until you add pepperoni. I would have preferred some veggies, but I was determined to get the kids to eat it this first time. We can always go up from here).

Most recipes I saw, on various blogs, traced back to Your Lighter Side as the originator of the concept.

cauliflower pizza crust
(makes enough for two 14-inch pizzas)

one medium-large cauliflower
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
1 tablespoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

Preheat the oven to 450.

In a food processor, finely chop the cauliflower. (Use the shredding blade). You can also hand-shred this, if you want to be industrious and work out your forearms.

In a large bowl, cook in the microwave on high for 8-9 minutes. It should be soft, not mushy. Stir together the cooked cauliflower, cheese, egg, and seasonings. Shape it into a disk on an oiled (or non-stick) pizza pan.

Bake it for about 15 minutes, until golden brown.

After the crust is done, go ahead and top it any way you like. I did traditional sauce, mozzarella, and pepperoni.

Pop it back in the oven for another few minutes, to melt the cheese.

Enjoy!

Veggie Scraps Pasta Sauce

Basically Free Pasta Sauce

--or--

Making Something From Nothing

-or--

You can eat that?

I just couldn't decide what to call this post. 

The very last thing I did with my week of roasted vegetables was to make a sauce out of the scraps. In An Everlasting Meal, she calls it a pesto, but I didn't think it was quite tangy enough to fit the connotation of a pesto.

It is indeed a delicious sauce, and it is indeed made from scraps. The parts of the vegetable that I have always thrown away became the basis for this sauce, and therefore the inspiration for dinner. 

As I prepped my vegetables, I kept aside those things I ordinarily toss in the compost bin. The leaves from the broccoli and cauliflower, the cauliflower core, the tough ends of the broccoli stalks, the chard stems, and the tiny little cores from the brussels sprouts all went into my cooking pot.

I chopped everything into smallish cubes and put them in a pot, just barely covered with water. To that, I added a few whole garlic cloves and a tiny little bit of salt.

Bring it to just under a boil, and let it simmer a good long time, until everything is tender enough to easily smash with a fork. This takes a good half hour at least, so it is a good thing to do while you are cooking something else. I let this pot simmer the same evening I was making the risotto. The cooked veggies will then keep in the fridge another couple of days, so you can be making two dinners at once!

Once everything is cooked through, puree it all in a blender with a good dose of olive oil and a handful of parmesan cheese. If it needs more water, pour it in a quarter cup at a time, and keep it pureeing until it is a nice, thick, pale-green sauce. Season it with salt and pepper and whirl it one more time.

That's it!

Serve it over pasta, and wait for comments like I got:

"Mom, I usually don't like tortellini at all, but this is really good!"

--and--

"Yum! Can I have seconds?"

That, my friends, is turning trash into a treasure.

risotto and roast cauliflower

I used to be an English teacher. I taught high school, and within the high school I was happiest teaching seniors. Senior year of high school is a magical time. Suddenly, the kids are almost free. They can see the light at the end of the tunnel. They know that soon... soon... they will be done with assignments in classes they never wanted to take in the first place. Soon they will be done with curfews and dress codes and living by their parents' rules. They will be off to their "real lives," and moving out and trying on college or jobs or roommates or rental agreements. They are young enough to be completely idealistic, ready to end world hunger or animal abuse or the sex trade. They are young enough that they aren't quite adults, and they are young enough to still need adults to guide them, advise them, cheer for them, and console them. And yet, they are finally old enough to admit it. Most of the time, they know when and where to swallow their pride. They know when to stand up and fight, too. They are some of the most loyal people you might ever meet. They will do anything for a friend, but won't be walked on. They They are old enough to know better, to understand the rules, and how to play the game.

But still, they are kids. And like the seventeen previous years, they aren't always on their best behavior. They often make bad choices, give in to laziness, wallow in cattiness. They have a sense of being done with being controlled and ruled, and sometimes they become belligerent or defiant. They also have learned, quite well, that often times the consequence is well worth the fun of the transgression.

All of this is to say that by the time I had English students in their 12th year of taking English classes, I had kids who knew how to handle English class. They knew what grade they wanted (maybe just to pass and graduate, maybe to get into Harvard or MIT). They knew exactly how much work it would take to get where they wanted to be. Some felt fine skipping homework because they knew it would balance out come exam time, and the "C" would be secure. Some begged for extra credit... to raise their "A" to ... I don't know... a better "A"? A more secure "A"?

And no matter what, with plenty of regularity, there was an assignment and a kid who just didn't match up. Even the top achievers found an essay or book or poem they just couldn't care about. But that is where the comedy comes in for the teacher. Watch a gifted writer, a sponge of a reader, a deep-thinking, idealistic 18-year-old, produce 3 pages of writing about a book he would rather ignore (or perhaps, a book he did ignore). It makes for some highly amusing reading.

"The novel's imagery is developed through a series of descriptions."

"The juxtaposition of the light and dark in the first stanza is quite noteworthy."
(Oh, do the smart ones love the word juxtaposition.)

"The characterization of the antagonist shows him to be vile."

And one of my favorites:
"The main character was very very very very very very very heroic."

As you can see, those smarter-than-their teacher, brilliant high school almost-grads can find an amazing balance between very sophisticated vocabulary and lack of actual thought, and come up with three pages (or one, or seven), about anything. And equally importantly, about nothing.

But. But maybe I didn't always give them enough credit. Maybe they wanted to do better, but they had a biology test and a history report due the same day as my essay. Maybe they needed to work harder on their science grade or make up for lost time in Spanish class. And maybe the soccer coach called an extra practice the night before, or maybe they got off work late. Or maybe they were just plain tired.

Because here I sit, wanting to tell you about the risotto I made last night to go with yet more of the roast vegetables from earlier this week. It was fabulous. Such simple ingredients, such an amazing treatment. It was rich and creamy and flavorful, and all of the other adjectives I have used one.million.times. (In three days it will be a year since my first post, and I am running out of ways to describe food). I am not really sure how to explain that I found this risotto and cauliflower to be an all-around perfect meal, without saying...

It was very very very very very very very delicious.

It is a simple risotto, cooked the old-fashioned way of stirring and stirring and adding liquids slowly, and stirring, and then ending with the addition of a great handful of parmesan cheese. And then that was topped with the pre-roasted cauliflower that I had stored in the fridge.

Just for a minute, though, can I talk about the cauliflower? This was a Romansco cauliflower. Have you ever seen one? It is wild! It looks like the salt crystals that you can grow from a kit on a little piece of cardboard. It also looks like a neon-green forested mountainside. At the same time, it looks like a piece of tropical coral. It is simply awe-inspiring. I had to do a little photo shoot with my cauliflower before I could cut it into bits and turn this bright, hobby, reaching, leggy being into something so banal as ... dinner.

okay, back to our recipe. The risotto.

First, chop half an onion and cook it in some butter until it is soft. Add a half cup of dry white wine and let that cook down by half. Add a cup of rice, and a big pour of vegetable or chicken stock. Keep stirring the rice and liquids, for about 25 minutes. Any time you see that your spoon leaves a trail that isn't immediately filled with starchy, rice-y broth-y liquid, add more stock. You want it to keep wet. Keep adding stock and stirring until the rice is al dente. All in all, I used just about 3 cups of chicken stock. Just before it is done, add a big handful of grated parmesan and a half-handful of chopped fresh parsley.

Then, in individual servings, make a little volcano of risotto and top it with the pre-roasted, re-warmed vegetables. I used the cauliflower, but I think broccoli would do very well, as would the beets.

Roasted Vegetable Salad

So, now that you followed yesterday's instructions and roasted a huge pile of veggies, you may want some ideas of what to do to serve them. You did roast a huge pile of veggies already, no?

Plus, today being Ash Wednesday and all, this is an amazingly filling dinner salad that contains no meat. Win-win!

This was the first meal I made from the book An Everlasting Meal by Tamar Adler. I followed her instructions to roast my veggies and sauté my greens, and then I made this salad with those roast vegetables.

Oh my goodness was it amazing! I couldn't get over how much I was enjoying my dinner. The vegetables were absolutely amazing, they paired perfectly with the peppery greens, and the vinegar brought out the best of all of it.

And the best part of all of it was that it really was as easy as can be imagined to put it all together after I spend the morning prepping the vegetables. Dinners this week really should be a piece of cake to get on the table!

First, take the vegetables out of the fridge for at least a half hour before you plan to eat. This will allow them to come to room temperature (which makes the first sensation you experience to be flavor, rather than temperature).

Thinly slice a bit of red onion, or a shallot. Place it in the bottom of a medium-sized bowl, and sprinkle some red wine vinegar on it. Let that sit and soften the onion for about ten minutes. Add a teaspoon or so of mustard and let that sit another couple of minutes.

Add the vegetables you plan to eat with your salad to the vinegared onions. I used the broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, potatoes, and brussels sprouts that I roasted yesterday. Toss it all together, and let it sit another couple of minutes for the vinegar to penetrate the veggies. Drizzle it all with a good helping of olive oil.

Make a bed of bitter or peppery greens on each plate. I used the arugula that I got in my Abundant Harvest box this week. I piled the dressed vegetables on top of the greens, and sprinkled some of the roast nuts that I did in the oven yesterday on top of it all.

Again, I can't get over how delicious this salad was. Just trust me. And then find out for yourself!

Coming tomorrow... the best little sautéed greens sandwich this side of the Mississippi.

roasting and sautéing enough veggies for a week

Come along with me.

I am going on a little bit of an eating journey this week.

I have been reading The Everlasting Meal by Tamar Adler. It's an amazing book. As I read, and thought, and made my plans for my vegetables this week, my mouth was literally watering. Let's hope things turn out in reality the way they are in my mind. I am only part way through it, but I had to stop right there in the middle of chapter three and do what she told me to do.

If you love food, and cooking food, and eating food, this book is amazing. I am not going to say it is light reading or a page turner by any means. It is also not a cookbook that you can leaf through during spare minutes or while making your shopping list.

But, it you like to enjoy great writing and amazing descriptions of food and its preparation, this book is fabulous.

Her entire premise is that we ought to stop burying ourselves in recipes. We can stop having to go through a process of researching, reading, shopping, and prepping every time we want to put dinner on the table. Although the book is all about how to cook food and enjoy amazing meals, there are actually very few recipes, and very very few measurements. Rather, she describes what type of ingredients to use, and what ways they can be prepared. By letting each thing you cook build on the last thing you cooked, you don't ever have to find yourself standing in the kitchen at 5:00, wondering what the heck is for dinner. Tonight's dinner can most likely be built upon last night's dinner, and is therefore mostly decided upon and already partially done.

At any rate, in chapter three, she describes her process for shopping for a bunch of vegetables, roasting and sautéing them all on one day, and then having prepared ingredients for a week's worth of meals. According to Tamar Adler, they will be as easy and versatile to use as a can of beans, once the initial cooking is completed.

Most importantly, though, the ways she describes the meals she makes out of the vegetables... soups, salads, risotto, curries, pestos, and sandwiches, made me wish I were sitting at her kitchen table. Right. Now.

Well, since I have a beautiful box of vegetables sitting here that I picked up from Abundant Harvest Organics, I decided to give it a go.

I followed her instructions to roast the hefty veggies and sauté the greens on the first day.

Tamar Adler lists many many different veggies to roast, and I chose to use everything in my box that seemed like a "cookable" vegetable (All that was left, besides fruit, was cilantro, napa cabbage, a salad green called mache, and arugula).

I had broccoli, potatoes, cauliflower, beets, brussels sprouts, turnips, and carrots to roast. I also sautéed chard, green garlic, and the greens from the beets.

I thought I was doing well with making candy out of orange peels and stock out of onion skins, but according to Tamar I am not making the most of my vegetables! She suggests saving the core and leaves of the cauliflower, the tough stems of the broccoli, the core of a cabbage or the stems of chard. These can be made into a pesto, and I will give you that recipe when I try it later this week. For now, I have dutifully set them aside and I'm saving them for their ultimate fate.

I began with this amazing pile of gorgeous, fresh vegetables:

I chopped and roasted two pans that held broccoli, cauliflower, and brussels sprouts, with some whole cloves of garlic.

I also chopped and roasted two pans with the root vegetables: carrots, potatoes, and turnips.

Finally, I roasted a pan of beets. These need to be tented and cooked with a bit of water so they steam all the way through while they roast.

Preheat the oven to 450. Scrub, peel, and chop all the vegetables except the beets.

Spread each set of vegetables out on a baking sheet. The sheet can be pretty full, but they need to be in a single layer, with a bit of space between them. Toss them with some olive oil, until they are coated, and sprinkle with salt. Pop them in the oven, and after a half an hour, start checking them to see if they are done enough to make you want to keep eating. Be sure and tuck a few whole cloves (unpeeled) of garlic onto each baking sheet. Apparently we will use this later this week.

This is romanesco cauliflower. More on that to come! It's wild!

The beets are a bit different. Cut the greens and stems off and place them in a sink full of water, to use later with the other greens. Tuck the beets, tails intact, into a baking pan, and wash them with hard running water. Tip the pan while you wash them, and allow the water to run out. Once the waste water is clear, the beets are clean enough to cook. (Removing the skins after roasting them also removes any little bits of dirt that are left). Leave a little bit of the water in the pan, drizzle with olive oil, and and cover the pan tightly with foil. Place this in the oven.

Now that all of your veggies are cooking, you may want to check them once in a while. If they are getting too brown but not soft enough, scoot them all together to build up steam. If they are getting soft but not browned, spread them out.

The majority of the veggies should be done in half an hour to 45 minutes. She explains that they need to roast until they are "completely, completely tender." Rather than giving a specified time to let them cook, she says to check after a half an hour, "Test the doneness of...vegetables by tasting them. When you don't wonder, but reach to eat another, they're done."

And boy oh boy was she right about that. I couldn't stop myself from reaching again and again to munch on the first pan of veggies to come out of the oven while I continued prepping and cooking other things.

The beets, though, are going to need a bit longer, and won't necessarily all be done at the same time. Check the beets by lifting the foil, and trying to pierce each one with a knife. If it goes in easily, pull the beet out of the oven. If not, let it keep cooking. Tamar says "If you're not sure if they're done, they're not." Be sure to re-cover the pan tightly after checking and removing any beets, so they can continue to steam. After they are done and cooled, remove the skin by rubbing it off with your fingers. Cut them into slices or wedges and then sprinkle them with red wine vinegar and salt.

Once a pan of veggies finished and there is a little space in the oven, Tamar recommends placing a pan of nuts in. Let the walnuts or pecans cook for about 10 minutes, and they will come out toasted and perfect for topping a salad.

After all of the roasting vegetables are in the oven (and some may be back out again by this point!), it's time to take care of the greens. Add any greens you have to the beet greens that are soaking in the sink. In my case it was green garlic and chard leaves (I cut the chard stems off and added them to my collection of cauliflower leaves and core and broccoli stems that I am saving for later). Swish them all around in the sink to get them clean, and then pull them out, chop them roughly, and sauté them in a little olive oil and a tiny bit of salt. Keep most of the water that clings to them after washing... they are supposed to steam more than they sauté. If they dry out while they cook, add a tablespoon of water every once in a while. Cook them in as many batches as you need to. I did two frying pans full. Tamar recommends adding chopped garlic in with the greens, but since I had green garlic I didn't want to overdo it. These are done when they are completely wilted and can be easily cut with a knife.

After I spent a couple of hours in the kitchen, I had changed that beautiful pile of veggies into these containers of prepared ingredients:

Come back tomorrow and I'll share the first meal I made out of them! It couldn't have been simpler, and it was one of the most delicious meals I have eaten in a long long time.

broccoli and cauliflower salad

There are those out there who declare that raw is the only way to eat vegetables, and that cooking anything means breaking it down and losing some of its nutritious value. I can't say I know much about that. I imagine it has a decent dose of validity to it, but I also know that breaking vegetables down might not necessarily be the worst thing possible. I also know that there are degrees of truth, and that the method and length of cooking makes a big difference.

What is important is that you eat your veggies. If you cooking them is what will make them appeal to you, by all means cook 'em up and enjoy them. If eating them raw seems better, eat them raw. Just make sure you are getting a good variety and a great amount of fruits and vegetables in your diet.

For myself, I have a pretty good balance. Obviously things like potatoes need to be cooked, most fruits are eaten raw, and plenty of other things are good both ways. Like broccoli. A few weeks ago I did a series of ten recipes for cooking broccoli. Today, though, let's keep the stove turned off and the oven cool.

This salad has become an old standby at my house. It keeps well in the fridge for a couple of days, so I can make a big batch and enjoy it for dinner, as well as the next couple of lunches. It is very easy to throw together, and has a great sweet and tart flavor. As soon as I saw that there was both broccoli and cauliflower in my Abundant Harvest box this week, I knew that this was going to be on the menu.

I have had an abundance of rutabagas lately, and I have been throwing one into just about everything I cook, including this salad. If you have one, feel free to throw it in. If not, don't even bat an eye. It's not intended to be there, and it won't be missed.

Broccoli and cauliflower salad
This salad is best if it can be made ahead and allowed to chill for a few hours. Try to plan ahead! (This also makes it great for dinner on a busy weeknight).

1 head cauliflower, cut into florets
1 head broccoli, cut into florets
1 red onion, diced
1 small-medium rutabaga, diced (optional)
1/3 cup raisins
1/4 cup roasted salted sunflower seeds

Dressing:
1/3 cup mayonnaise
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1/4 cup sugar

Chop all the veggies and toss together in a large bowl. In a small bowl, whisk together the dressing ingredients. Toss the salad with the dressing until evenly coated.

Martha Stewart's creamy cauliflower soup with greens

My recipe yesterday was a little bit labor intensive, no? Let's switch things up today, and talk about a soup that is far more rich in the veggies, while taking a fraction of the amount of time.


But first, let's talk about the little miracle in my life.


I work at a preschool, where my duties include... well, everything. I never really know what I am going to be responsible for until I arrive in the morning. I often supervise the playground, shop for the groceries that become the kids'  afternoon snack, or keep the toy storage room clean and organized. I stuff envelopes, accompany kids to the bathroom, and file paperwork. 


And, as it turns out, I do laundry. Due to a series of events that won't interest you in the least, our regular system of getting the school laundry (mainly the cloth covers for the little mats where the kids take their naps) broke down last week. When I arrived in the morning, I was greeted by some teachers in a slight panic, because they were going to have nowhere for the cherubs to lay down at nap time. If you have ever faced 40 kids who need a nap at the same time, you would panic too.


And so I gathered up the dirty items, a stack of magazines from the staff room, and some detergent, and I headed out to the laundromat. There is probably a whole blog post about the people one encounters in a laundromat, but for today, let's talk about my miracle, okay?


After I got the laundry agitating, I sat down with the magazines. I mentally pleaded Come on, magazines. I know that one of you is going to have a recipe that calls for lots of the veggies I have right now... While we're at it, is there any chance it can please be the cauliflower and collard greens? Oh yeah, one more thing. Please don't require a stop at the supermarket, kay?


And guess what!? Martha Stewart Living had a recipe that onehundredpercent answered my little prayer to the magazine gods. 


I introduce you to Creamy Cauliflower Soup. It, of course, uses cauliflower and collard greens. It also uses onion, fresh dill, and copious amounts of garlic, all of which I have on hand, all out of the Abundant Harvest Organics box. Other than that, all it required was olive oil, salt, pepper, and water. Hooray!

As if that weren't enough excitement among the industrial washers, the soup is really quick to put together. Saute the onions and garlic, simmer the cauliflower and collard greens, and puree it all. 


It is creamy (thanks to the cauliflower) without using cream. It is bright and fresh and filling, and the drizzle of olive oil and fresh pepper on top give it just enough heartiness to let it stand as a main course.

1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for drizzling
1 medium onion, chopped (about 1 cup)
4 cloves garlic, chopped
Sea salt
1 medium head cauliflower (about 3 pounds), florets and stems cut into 1-inch pieces (8 to 9 cups)
4 1/2 cups filtered water
1/4 cup chopped fresh dill, plus more for garnish
5 large kale or collard leaves, or a combination, tough ends removed and leaves roughly chopped
Freshly ground black pepper

DIRECTIONS

Heat oil in a large pot over medium heat; cook onion, covered, until soft, 4 to 5 minutes. Add garlic and a pinch of salt, and cook for 3 minutes more. Add cauliflower and pour in filtered water until it reaches just below the top of the cauliflower.

Bring to a boil over high heat. Add 2 tablespoons dill. Reduce heat to low, and simmer until cauliflower is just tender, about 10 minutes. Stir in greens, and simmer for 3 minutes.

Let sit for 5 minutes to cool slightly. Stir in remaining 2 tablespoons dill. Puree soup in batches in a blender until very smooth, adding more water (about 1/2 cup) if it's too thick. Return to pot and reheat. Season with salt and pepper. Garnish with dill, black pepper, a drizzle of oil and a pinch of sea salt.

This post is brought to you by the letter C

When I picked up the veggie box this week, I wasn't exactly surprised to see a cauliflower. I think the good folks at AHO predicted that some of us might not have any ideas as what to do with a cauliflower this week. There have been quite a few of them lately after all.... the past four weeks have brought me a cauliflower. So, along with the cauliflower, they included a recipe for roast cauliflower in the weekly newsletter.

I think that the person who came up with this recipe had Sesame Street playing in the background. Or there was a sale on all items that start with C at the market that week. It includes no less than six "C" ingredients... cauliflower, cilantro, coriander, cumin, curry powder and cayenne pepper.

Although, since I keep my spices arrange alphabetically on the shelf, it sure made it easy to get everything ready. Hmm... maybe the creator of this recipe does the same thing? That could explain it too.

At any rate I went off to sail the six C's,  and the recipe turns out to be as delicious as it is alliterative. Here you go:

Roasted Cauliflower with Curry Viniagrette
(as provided by AHOorganics and [of course] mucked up and changed around by me)

1 head of cauliflower cut into florets
1 red onion, peeled and sliced 1/4" thick, and separated into rings
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
1 1/2 tsp. ground coriander
1 1/2 tsp. ground cumin
3 tsp. curry powder
1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper
1 1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 cup fresh cilantro, chopped.

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Wash cauliflower and cut into florets. Place in a  roasting pan and add onions. In a glass jar, measure out oil and vinegar.

Even though I couldn't figure out how to get a good shot of this, the layers of oil and vinegar are very very pretty. Take a moment to enjoy this, because it isn't going to look that great in a minute.

Add your C spices.

And shake it all up.

See? Enen though it is more photogenic, it's not nearly as pretty. It looks rather mucky, actually.

Drizzle this delicious-and-photogenic-though-not-beautiful-vinaigrette over the vegetables.

Roast in oven until tender buy not mushy, about 25 minutes. Sprinkle with fresh cilantro and serve.

It would be better if you could put a candle in it.

It is a friend's birthday today, and I wasn't sure what to give the girl who wants nothing. I settled on a jar of strawberry jam and a night off of cooking for her. In order to give her family a dinner that would travel well, I went with my old standard: pasta. In order to give her family a dinner that would be tasty and fresh, I incorporated some of this week's fabulous fresh organic produce.

Now I know that some of you are thinking that I was just trying to get rid of some of my veggies. A few weeks ago, you would have been so right. But I actually have gotten to the point where I use up almost all of it myself. This week, for example, all I have left is some lettuce, an onion, and a few potatoes. I can't say whether the kids have gotten better at eating their veggies, but I sure have. So when I made this dinner, it was out of thought for my friend. On her birthday.

But while we're on the topic, anyone want some slightly old potatoes?

This pasta dish is loosely based on a recipe from the New York Times a couple of years ago. I made a few distinct changes to it, though, so I'll give you my version. Just remember that I was making enough for two families (mine and hers) so you may want to cut everything in half.

Buttermilk Pasta with Cauliflower and Chard

1 head cauliflower
1 bunch chard, leaves and stems separated
2 pounds penne or other similar pasta
1/2 cup olive oil
2 Tablespoons minced garlic
1/2 cup plain bread crumbs
salt and pepper to taste
1 cup buttermilk

First, start a pot of salted water to boiling. Wash your chard and cauliflower. Cut the cauliflower into large florets, and cut the stems of the chard into 2 inch lengths.

Boil the vegetables until they are soft but not mushy.

Meanwhile, heat the oil over low to medium heat in a large skillet, and add the garlic. Cook until the garlic is golden. Add the chard leaves to the skillet, and sauté until the chard is wilty. 

When the cauliflower and stems are done, remove them from the boiling water with a handled sieve or a slotted spoon. Put the pasta into the boiling water and cook until it is about 2-3 minutes away from being completely done. Drain the pasta.

Set the vegetables aside until they are cool enough to handle, and then chop them up into smallish pieces.

Mix the cauliflower and stems into the skillet of leaves and garlic. Add the bread crumbs, and stir to mix thoroughly. 

When the pasta is done, combine the pasta and the veggie mixture. Add the buttermilk and salt and pepper to taste.

Top with parmesan cheese and serve with a simple salad.

cauliflower

Cauliflower, cauliflower. What can I say about it? It's just so ... plain. And big. Not big in a needing-to-shop-in-the-husky-department kind of big, but bountiful big.  A head of cauliflower quickly goes from being a side dish, into being a land-grubbing squatter on my dinner plate real estate. There is nothing wrong with it being there, but it isn't bringing much to the party, either.

Regardless of how it tastes and how much my kids will moan and groan about it, the reality is that this week, I got a big huge head of cauliflower in my CSA box. It's quite lovely, as cauliflowers go. Pristine and perfectly round, large and white.

So, cauliflower I will eat.  And then eat some more. And follow that with a cauliflower chaser.

I wanted to try something new... if only so I can tell the kids "You have never had this before. At least try it."

Here is how it went:

Cut the cauliflower into florets and spread out on a baking sheet.  Sprinkle on three cloves of chopped garlic, and about 1/4 cup of lemon juice. Drizzle olive oil over it all, making sure that each piece is oiled, but not drowning in oil. Sprinkle on salt and pepper to taste.

Roast in a 400 degree oven for about 20 minutes. When it is turning golden brown, remove it from the oven. While it is still hot, sprinkle about 1/2 cup of parmesan cheese over it all. Enjoy!

Be afraid. Be very, very afraid.

How did my grandmother ever cook without the internet? Pretty much the first thing I do, when I need a meal, is to see what google can do for me. (Anyone want some used cookbooks, by the way?)

So, today's challenge was sorrel. I searched for information about sorrel before I even looked for recipes. Just to see if I really wanted to bother with it.

And I found out that it is a horse!

Picture borrowed from Wikipedia.

Then I found some more useful information. About sorrel the herb. vegetable. herb. weed.  

Picture borrowed, again, from wikipedia. 

As a result of my detective work, I now know that sorrel is a perennial. I know it grows in Africa, England, Greece, and many other places around the world. I also learned that sorrel just may be the plant that St. Patrick was really looking at when he talked about the trinity.  But I can't wait for St. Patrick's day to eat it, because one other thing I learned is that it only lasts about 3 days in the refrigerator. We are on day 3, people. Time is of the essence.

But what do I do with this stuff? Other than move to Africa to start a farm? Other than religious education? I learned that it has a sharp flavor, from its oxalic acid (which just so happens to be a poison, and can be fatal in large doses). That's it! I guess I use it to carefully disguise my evil plans to start collecting life insurance. Who would ever guess death by sorrel?

For the record, I looked up the dangers of oxalic acid. Sorrel has far less of the stuff than spinach or chives have. And I have never heard of anyone dying from spinach. Not even Popeye.


So, now that I knew that the stuff is poisonous but not too much, may or may not represent God and Jesus and stuff, and may or may not refer to horse hair, I felt like I may or may not have been ready to think about cooking.

I looked for recipes next. The first place I went was the website for AHOrganics, the fine people who supply me with weeds  poison vegetables each week. They have hundreds of recipes on their website. Unfortunately, none of them contains sorrel.

So, I went back to google, and I found some recipes for pestos, some sauces for fish (I do NOT do fish), and the suggestion to use it in salads. I tried eating a piece, to see how I felt about putting it in a salad. When raw, it tastes like a cross between freshly mowed lawn and every other green leafy vegetable. So salad is out. I also found a way to cook eel with it. Umm, no.

That's when I realized how silly I have been. There is a gal who lives in my town, who has quite possibly the best cooking blog ever. Because she lives near me, she is often cooking the same fresh vegetables that I am, as they are harvested. However, she is infinitely more skilled, more knowledgable, more experienced, and more professional than I. As a matter of fact, I suggest you quit reading me, and read her instead. Here she is, folks. A girl, A market, A meal.

Of course, her blog came through for me. She just happens to have a recipe where sorrel is cooked into a cream sauce and served over pasta.  Never mind the fact that her recipe uses asparagus, and all of my asparagus was eaten up last night, wouldn't ya know.

I followed her recipe almost exactly, except I replaced the asparagus with cauliflower. 

Her instructions and photos are far better than anything I would come up with, so here you go! All I can say is... if you find yourself with some sorrel, or a chance to get some sorrel, click that link. And enjoy. I sure did.