Uuuuuummmm, Cauliflower…..

Posted byNancy Taylor RobsonPosted inSunday Cooking
October at the Chestertown Farmers' Market

I always figure if you have cauliflower in the frig, you’ve got dinner.  I realize not everyone sees it that way. I ran into a friend at the Chestertown farmers’ market last week. I was carrying a cauliflower the size of a bowling ball that I’d bought from Lockbriar Farms — a great find from my point of view — but Anita wrinkled up her nose a bit when I showed it to her.

“I don’t like it that much,” she confessed – if confessed is the right word to use in our let’s-all-eat-healthy-and-love-local-veggies-mindset – yeah, confessed is the right word for it. “A little cauliflower goes a long way with me,” she said, still staring at the massive crucifer I was hugging.  “What do you do with it?”

“Stir-fry it with tomatoes and celery and curry, cauliflower soup with mushrooms and shallots and gorgonzola, roast it with parmesan and garlic, steam it for lunch  with hot pepper cheese, layer it with beans and sautéed peppers some white wine and gruyere and buttered crumbs  and run it under the broiler, eat it raw with something sinful like spinach veg dip…”

“Oh!”  she laughed. “You REALLY like cauliflower!”

Yeah.

I love its raw crispness, I love the shape and texture of the head itself – curds some people call them, but that grosses me out, like the curds of clabber (aka curds and whey) my father used to make on the windowsill. I love cauliflower’s vitamin and mineral boost – huge vitamin C, plenty of K, folate and fiber, and more. There are now purple and cheddar cheese colored cauliflower varieties that have only mildly discernable differences in flavor to my palate (though the purple ones come closer in flavor to their brassica cousin, broccoli), but each is superb and superbly versatile.

Cauli stew with tomatoes, garbanzos and mild habaeros

I don’t just like cauliflower; I LOVE cauliflower (as one young friend corrected me when I asked about his fondness for snakes).  Mostly because it’s the basis for one of the best and easiest-to-make comfort-food meals of all time. Cauliflower gratin.  Like mac and cheese but better for you and quicker – it takes about 12 minutes start to finish.

CAULIFLOWER GRATIN

 1 medium head of cauliflower

3 tblsp sweet butter

3 tblsp flour

1 ½ cups of milk, anything from whole to skim

1 ½ cups of fresh-grated parmesan (use the real stuff; it makes all the difference)

salt, pepper and nutmeg

Put the cauliflower whole into a pot with about an inch of water and steam-boil it until just tender but not falling apart, which will take about 8 minutes. Meanwhile, make a roux. Melt butter in a pot, stir in flour and cook for a few minutes. Whisk in a cup of milk until smooth. This will be thick. Add salt and pepper and a dash of nutmeg, about a ¼ tsp.  Add more milk if the béchamel is too thick – it should be about as thick as a smoothy right now. Add more milk if you need to thin it some. Whisk in a ½ cup grated parmesan.

As soon as the cauli is just-done, take it out of the pot, otherwise it will get too soft, and break it into pieces in a gratin dish or oven-proof dish of some kind. But be sure you save the boiling water. Add some of the water from the boiled cauli to thin the bechamel and add flavor. It should now be the consistency of good rich cheese sauce. Pour the cheese sauce over the cauliflower, covering everything. (Enrobed is the way some of the more hopefully pretentious restaurants used to describe this.) Then cover that with about a cup of grated Parmesan cheese and run it all until the broiler until it’s browning and bubbly. Serve with a bottle of rich red wine. Heaven.

http://www.bigoven.com/glossary/Cauliflower

http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/roasted_cauliflower/

http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/simple-cauliflower-recipe.html

http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2009/01/cauliflower-soup/

Published by Nancy Taylor Robson

I grew up sailing and building boats with my dad, married a tugboat captain, (who I'm still happily married to) and embarked on a life of adventure, challenge and fun. My first book, Woman in the Wheelhouse, told the sometimes harrowing story of working on an old coastal tugboat as cook/deckhand then worked in Mexico in the Campeche oil fields on a supply boat. I was one of the first women in the country to earn a tug operator's license. I'm the author of three other books, Course of the Waterman, which won the Fred Bonnie Prize for the novel, the historical novel, A Love Like No Other: Abigail and John Adams, A Modern Love Story, and OK Now What? A Caregiver's Guide to What Matters, which I wrote with longtime RN and hospice nurse, Sue Collins during the time my mother-in-law was moving to the end of her life. My second, Course of the Waterman, the coming of age novel of a young Eastern Shore waterman, won the Fred Bonnie award in 2004. My third book, second novel, A Love Like No Other: Abigail and John Adams, A Modern Love Story, takes readers into the lives of the new nation's strong-willed second First Lady and her stubborn, often-absent and adored husband, John, our second US President. I wrote the book because I'd spent big chunks of time raising children alone while my husband was at sea and felt an affinity for Abigail, but also looked to her life as a MUCH bigger challenge that informed and encouraged my own. My fourth book, OK Now What? A Caregiver's Guide to What Matters (Head to Wind Publishing, 2014) was written in collaboration with Sue Collins, RN and longtime hospice nurse and has received heartwarming feedback on how helpful it's been to many caregivers. A freelance writer for many years, I've published personal essays, features, maritime reporting and analysis, travel, garden and more for such places as The Washington Post, Yachting, House Beautiful, The Baltimore Sun, the Christian Science Monitor, Southern Living, Sailing, and more. I'm also a University of Maryland Master Gardener who grows and cans the family's fruits and vegetables, and a Bay-Wise program certifier. I write, sail, race sailboats (occasionally), walk the German Shepherd dogs, and cook for friends and family.

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