Cauliflower

Similar to Tempura (recipe follows), these are usually made only with vegetables—but a very wide assortment—and the batter is best when prepared with chickpea flour (also called besan or gram flour and available at Indian and many Asian markets and most health food stores). Traditionally, the batter also often contains anardana, a powder made from ground pomegranate seeds—if you can find some (try the same stores that have besan), add a teaspoon to the batter, along with the garam masala. Pakora batter can also be fried on its own, as a fritter; mix a medium onion, chopped, into it, and drop it by the tablespoon into the hot oil.

Cauliflower braised in tomato sauce is not a new recipe, but I had this delicious rendition, which I share with you here, at Torrisi.

Cauliflower, a good vegetable especially in the winter, can be prepared in many ways. I sometimes like just to boil it and while the cauliflower is boiling, add an egg or two to boil as well. When the cauliflower and the eggs cool, I peel the eggs, then toss the cauliflower and eggs into a great salad, dressed just with olive oil and vinegar. But the following is a recipe I got from Torrisi in New York, a deli-looking place set up with sixteen seats for dining. The cauliflower I had was delicious, and the bread crumbs used were made by Progresso, which was started by Italian immigrants in New Orleans in 1905.

I love soups, and I love cauliflower, and who doesn’t like pancetta? This is a delicious soup, and, yes, you can serve it as is, or you can add some cooked white or brown rice. Get yourself some crusty bread, a glass of Chianti Classico or Morellino (the other Tuscan red), and enjoy.

I cook cauliflower many ways and my family loves them all (certainly I do). But if some in your family don’t like the distinctive, “sulfur” quality in cooked cauliflower, try this skillet method. It eliminates the sulfur taste and produces a cauliflower floret that’s entirely different from a boiled one—crispy on the edges, and almost coated with a sweet caramelization. It’s delicious by itself but even better with the lively contrast of Garden Tomato Elixir.

These crispy, cheesy, caramelized florets of broccoli and cauliflower are a wonderful mealtime vegetable. But they’re so tempting, easy to pick up and pop in your mouth, that they would make a hard-to-resist impromptu hors d’oeuvre before dinner begins. You can prepare either broccoli or cauliflower alone with this recipe, though a combination is especially colorful. The florets are partly cooked by my covered-skillet method, then tossed with grated cheese and bread crumbs and baked until golden. The cauliflower and broccoli cook at different rates in the skillet, as detailed in the recipe. If you’re preparing just one kind of florets, simply adjust your timing.

This soup is nice without the addition of garlic purée, marvelous with it. If you like, add short shreds of Savoy cabbage in place of some of the cauliflower, or make Savoy-cabbage soup with poached garlic purée instead.

At my grandma’s house, we used to have this kind of salad many a time, with a slice of homemade bread and some good cheese, for supper.

Cauliflower is delicious cooked with anchovy. At Trattoria Ferdinando III they add distinctively Sicilian touches like raisins, pine nuts, and saffron to make a marvelous cauliflower dressing for pasta.

Cauliflower is another one of those vegetables that gets a bad rap. Yes, it’s in the cabbage family, and when the cauliflower is raw, the connection is easy to identify. Take a page from the Italians, then, who aren’t afraid of oil and know that giving some vegetables a dip in the fryer brings out their best characteristics. In this case, the cauliflower turns sweet and silken; add in some smoky shreds of ham hock and, well, you’ll be begging to eat cauliflower more often. Ask your butcher to split the ham hock for you; they have big saws for that very purpose. And don’t you dare throw away the liquid left over from boiling the ham hock. One bonus of this recipe is a soup waiting to happen.

These quick pickles make nice nibbles with drinks, and are great served with charcuterie. You can vary the vegetables according to what looks best in the market—just make sure they are fresh and attractive and that you cut them into roughly the same size so they become tender at the same time.

Years ago I drove through France with English friends on our way down to Provence. We were trying to decide where to stop for the night and couldn’t agree, so we kept passing by pretty country inns until finally it was dark, options were limited, and we were all tired and cranky. We agreed to stay at the very next place we came to that offered rooms, which turned out to be a rather dismal box of a building with very little charm. Just our luck! We went in and asked the woman who greeted us if we could possibly have a meal as well as a room. She told us to take a fifteen-minute walk, and then she would be ready. We stumbled around in the dark, hungry, weary, and not expecting much. When we returned to the house, we were greeted by a lovely platter of crudités, a country terrine with mustard and cornichons, sautéed river trout with lemon, and cauliflower that had been browned in butter. Needless to say, we were lucky after all! I’m sure there was dessert too, but the thing I dreamed about long after was the cauliflower. This preparation is still one of my favorite things to eat.

I serve this unexpected puree (cauliflower as sauce, who knew?) with seared or grilled scallops, beef, or salmon. Simply place the warm fish or meat atop a pool of the cream.

Satay is an Indonesian dish where, typically, foods are skewered and then grilled or broiled. But to me satay is all about the peanut sauce that’s served alongside the skewers. I love peanut sauce! I made a stovetop version with just broccoli and cauliflower accompanied with that amazing peanut dipping sauce, so it would be a really easy meal for one. The sauce would also be great with some baked tofu.

In classic stir-fries such as this one, beef, a special-occasion meat in Vietnam, is paired with a vegetable that is equally prized and costly. Here, it is cauliflower, traditionally considered a luxury vegetable in Vietnam because it used to be grown only in the cool areas around Dalat. To allow these precious ingredients to shine, they are treated simply with little sauce and only a few other ingredients. Taking a cue from Chinese cooks, I use flank steak for stir-frying. Cut across the grain into small pieces, it cooks up to an inimitable tenderness. To complement the beef, I select cauliflower that tastes sweet, looks dense, and feels heavy for its size.