Cauliflower

Treat your taste buds to meals that incorporate all six flavors, like this one from Teresa Long, in-house nutritionist at the Chopra Center for Wellbeing.

Serve as a side dish for roast chicken.

Great with orange or Romanesco cauliflower. Serve with a green salad.

Skate is a firm, white, sweet fish. Quite common on the East Coast, it's now more readily available in the West.

The garlic-nut sauce known as tarator, which sometimes also includes tahini, is a classic Turkish accompaniment to mussels and fried fish as well as vegetables. Here, it's used with cauliflower that is sliced — rather than separated into florets — so that it can be more easily browned, which gives it a nutty flavor that complements the tarator perfectly.

Cauliflower, enhanced with toasty almonds and a briny parsley-olive mixture, holds its own as the star in this simple and slightly spicy vegetarian supper.

The colors are pale, but the flavors in this winter mix are vivid and fresh.

Bacon gives this soup added oomph and truffle oil makes it special.

This original take on cauliflower (the florets are thinly sliced) is equally good at room temperature.

Visually arresting and ready in a snap, these steamed cauliflower wedges are the side dish of your dreams.

Roasting a whole head of cauliflower at high heat creates beautifully caramelized florets. It's perfectly offset by fresh parsley and a drizzle of a quick lemon dressing.

Editor's note: The recipe and introductory text below are from Ted Allen's The Food You Want to Eat. For Allen's tips on throwing a Thanksgiving party, click here. Mashed potatoes really serve primarily as a silky, textural vehicle for butter, cream, and salt, in my view. Cauliflower does an excellent job as well — and considering all the other carb sources on your table today, there's no harm in a whipped white dish that contains few of them. Steaming works better than boiling for this purée because boiling leaches flavor out of the cauliflower. You can get a big pot with a steamer insert anywhere for about $20.00. But go ahead and boil if you need to; just use less liquid to thin the purée. (The cauliflower will have absorbed a lot of water in boiling.) There's no law that says you can't purée other quick-cooking vegetables as well; imagine whirled peas, as the Phish fans used to exhort on their Volvo bumpers. The bright green color looks fantastic on a plate.

Now that imported caviar is no longer available, the domestic stuff is all the rage. Paired with lemon oil (sold at many markets), it's the ultimate garnish.

These vegetables pick up a little spice and sourness from the pickling, but they stay crisp and retain their individual flavors.

Food editor Paul Grimes found this elegant mousse, adapted from a recipe in Gourmet's own Bouquet de France written by Samuel Chamberlain, a delicious classic. And the simple procedure means you can enjoy it—preferably with roast beef or a hearty stew—without putting in endless work.

Hors d'oeuvres like this one are great for entertaining — the vegetables benefit from being prepared in advance, becoming more flavorful as they absorb the pickling liquid. The recipe also yields a large batch, so you'll have plenty on hand.

If you like cauliflower, you'll love this pasta, with its slightly spicy mix of crisp, savory toppings.