Conquering the Cauliflower, Phase I: The Iron Skillet

It has long been my dream to conquer the cauliflower. Partly because of the alliteration, and partly because—let's face it—the cauliflower is unexciting. Bland. Boring. Unmemorable.

There's nothing wrong with it...it's just not the sort of vegetable one would rave about. No one has ever been moved to expound upon the cauliflower. No sonnets have been written. No Trojan ramekins delivered. No exclusive cookbooks devoted to the cause. (Okay, probably this last one's not true. But you get the idea.)

Except that then, one day, we ordered some cauliflower at Tuli Bistro, and I realized the error of my ways. Cauliflower, it turned out, was neither bland nor boring. Steamed cauliflower is bland and boring. Boiled cauliflower is bland and boring. Cauliflower done right is momentously, shockingly delicious.

Ingredients
1 head cauliflower (green* or white), divided into smallish florets
Olive oil
1 yellow onion, halved and sliced into thin half rings
2 tbsp golden raisins
1 tbsp pine nuts
1/4-1/3 cup veggie broth
Kosher salt
Freshly ground white pepper
Lemon wedges

Heat a large cast iron skillet over medium heat. When hot, add a generous glug or two of olive oil, and swirl to coat the pan. After a few seconds, add the onion. Saute, stirring occasionally, until the onion softens and begins to smell sweet.

Push the onion to the side of the pan, and add the pine nuts to the other side. Stir until lightly toasted on one side, then combine with the onion and continue cooking until the onion just starts to turn golden here and there. Add the sultanas, stir once, then add the cauliflower and stir to combine. (If you had a large head of cauliflower, you may run out of room...just stick the rest in the fridge for later rather than overflowing the pan.)

Drizzle liberally with more olive oil and pan-fry for 4-5 minutes, stirring from time to time. Add a pinch or two of salt and a slosh of broth (just enough to create some steam -- about 1/8 cup), cover, and turn the heat down to medium-low. Steam for 12-15 minutes, checking and stirring at 3 minute intervals (and adding a little more broth when it starts to dry out again). The goal is for the bottom to turn golden brown (without burning), while the cauliflower cooks through. So, if it starts to brown too much, turn the heat down a little and add a bit more broth. If it's not browning at all, turn the heat up a touch or wait longer before stirring, and don't add more broth yet.

When the cauliflower is nicely browned and tender (a fork should insert easily), turn off the heat. Sprinkle with a salt and white pepper to taste, drizzle very lightly with lemon juice, stir once, and serve. Garnish with lemon wedges on the side.

Serves 3-4.

*Green cauliflower, it turns out, is higher in protein than the white variety. Also it's green. Also cauliflower is a complete protein (who knew?). Also—did I mention?—it is shockingly delicious.

Roasted Pumpkin with Cilantro, Chickpeas, and Thyme

I should be posting something from this past week, which has been stuffed, one might say, like a turkey (or perhaps, like a homemade ravioli) with collective cooking and shared food...starting with a homemade pasta party on Sunday and continuing through yesterday with a vaguely Thanskgiving-themed gourmet feast.

But all this will have to wait, because, as everyone knows, the first question that pops into your head after you've cleared out your houseguests and leftovers and emerged from your post-Thanksgiving food coma several hours or days later is: Can I eat that? And if you're gazing at the pie pumpkin you bought up at Apple Hill several weeks ago because it looked like it would make a nice autumn-evoking centerpiece, the answer is a resounding and emphatic YES.



Ingredients
1 smallish pumpkin (ours was a pie pumpkin about 8-9 inches in diameter, or substitute an heirloom or butternut squash)
Olive oil
2 small yellow onions, chopped
4 cloves garlic, pressed
1 large jalapeno, minced
1/2 tsp dried thyme
Salt and pepper to taste
A big handful of cilantro, chopped
1/4-1/2 cup veggie broth
1 tbsp brown sugar (or less if using a sweeter squash)
2 cups well-cooked chickpeas

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Cut pumpkin in half, scoop out seeds, and rub cut sides with a little olive oil. Roast face-down for 25-40 minutes or until just tender, turning heat down to 375 if it starts to get too brown. Let cool until it's easy to handle, then cut into 1-inch slices, peel, and cube.

Meanwhile, heat olive oil in a large, wide pan with deep sides over medium-high heat. When hot, add the onion and saute until soft. Add the jalapeno, cook for another minute or two, then add the garlic. Saute for half a minute and then add the pumpkin, thyme, a pinch of salt, and a little more olive oil. Stir to coat.

After sauteing for another minute or two, add the cilantro and 1/4 cup of the broth, turn the heat down to medium-low, and cover the pan. Simmer for 5-10 minutes to let the flavors blend, and until the pumpkin is soft, adding more broth if it starts to dry out.

Next, add the brown sugar, another pinch of salt, and a dash of black pepper, and use a potato masher to gently mash the squash to form a coarse puree. Fold in the chickpeas and cook for another few minutes until heated through. Adjust salt and pepper to taste, and serve garnished with cilantro.

Goes well with brown basmati rice simmered with cumin and saffron.

Serves 4.

Green Beans with Caramelized Onion

We found a big bunch of purplish green beans in our produce box last week, and they turned out to be much heartier and less watery (and also slightly fuzzier) than the typical supermarket variety. I'm not particularly a fan of boiled or steamed green beans...they get all soft and bland and squeaky...but I love them sauteed or stir-fried so that they start to get a little sweet on the outside but still stay firm and beany. This version was easy and delicious.

Ingredients
Olive oil
A little chopped onion
Spoonful black mustard seeds
A bunch of green beans
A little chicken broth

Saute the onion in some olive oil over medium heat until soft and sweet. Add the mustard seeds and stir a few times, then add the green beans and a little more olive oil. Toss the beans with the onions, then cover and cook for a couple minutes. Uncover, toss again, add a bit of chicken broth (enough to create some steam). Cover, turn the heat down a little, and steam for a few minutes until they're just tender but not yet soft. If there's extra liquid in the pan, turn the heat back up and simmer uncovered for a few more moments. Serve hot.

The Pizza Chronicles, Continued: Potato Pizza and A Glimpse of Crust Perfection

Potato pizza has long been a (rare but beloved) favorite of mine, and we had a particularly delectable version at Pizzaiolo in Oakland recently enough that it's been on my mind. That one came with an egg on top, which is the most amazing thing ever and which I think is relatively common in Italy and Australia but tragically uncommon here. Clearly, our next pizza attempt had to involve an egg. And potatoes. And something to give the crust a bit of flair.


Ingredients
Crust (adapted from the NYTimes recipe):
1 tsp dry active yeast
1/2 cup warm water (about 110 degrees F)
1/4 tsp sugar
1 tbsp olive oil
5/8 cups stone-ground whole wheat bread flour
3/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp plus one pinch salt
3 pinches chopped fresh rosemary leaves (2-3 sprigs)
2 pinches lemon zest (grated on a microplane, else very finely minced)
Coarsely-ground cornmeal
Olive oil for brushing on the crust at the end

Top:
1 clove garlic, pressed or minced
Cheese, ideally from pastured cows (e.g., jack and parmesan, or goat gouda might work well here)
3 medium-sized red, white, purple, and/or yellow potatoes
1/2 red onion, sliced
Leaves from 1 sprig of rosemary (left whole)
1 egg, from a pastured chicken

Sprinkle the yeast over the warm water, add the sugar, and stir gently. Let sit 3-8 minutes until it looks a little foamy. Add the olive oil.

Combine the wheat flour, white flour, salt, minced rosemary, and lemon zest in a food processor fitted with a steel blade. Pulse a few times to mix. With the machine running, slowly add the yeast mixture in through the top, and let it keep mixing until the dough forms a ball.

Lightly sprinkle a wooden cutting board or other flat surface with flour. Dampen your hands with a little water, then remove the dough from the food processor. Knead on the cutting board for 3-4 minutes, sprinkling more flour if necessary (you want the dough to be smooth and not sticky -- a little tacky is fine, and you want it to stick to itself when you fold it over, but it shouldn't stick to your hands). Form the dough into a ball.

Lightly grease a bowl with olive oil. Place the ball of dough in the bowl so that a smooth, round side faces down, then turn over so that this side is up (you want the top to be smooth for the dough to rise properly). Cover tightly with plastic wrap and set in a warm place to rise for 80-90 minutes until doubled in size. (An ideal rising temperature is around 80 degrees. If your house is on the coolish side, turn the oven on for literally just 2-3 seconds after you hear the burner come on, then leave the bowl in the slightly warmed oven.)

Meanwhile, gently boil the potatoes in a small pot until just tender (about 10-20 minutes, depending on their size). Drain, run under cold water to cool slightly, and slice.

Saute onion over medium-low heat until soft. Set aside.

When the dough is ready, preheat oven to 450 degrees. Brush the flour off your cutting board and sprinkle it with cornmeal. Take the dough out of the bowl and gently form a ball, then place on the cutting board and begin gently pressing and stretching it outward to form a flat pancake. You want to end up with a flat disc that's about 12" in diameter (the outside crust should not be raised or pinched or anything -- the whole thing is flat).

Rub the dough with the minced garlic, then sprinkle with enough grated cheese to lightly cover everything but a ring around the outside. (If you're using parmesan, you might grate a little into the outside crust as well).

Lightly oil a pizza pan or baking pan and sprinkle with cornmeal. Gently transfer the pizza to the pan, using your hands or a spatula. Next, arrange the potato slices in concentric circles on top of the pizza, then sprinkle with the onion and top with the rosemary leaves. Make sure the center of the pizza has a flat spot (potato slices are fine, just be sure they're not overlapping here), and carefully crack the egg onto the middle of the pizza.

Bake in the oven on the middle rack for 10-15 minutes, until crust starts to turn golden and egg white is white. 

Sprinkle with salt and pepper, and brush the crust with a little olive oil (you can add a small pinch of lemon zest to the olive oil if you love lemon zest -- this will make the crust taste delectably close to a lemon bar -- or a little minced garlic). Slice creatively to avoid breaking the yolk (think parallelograms), and serve.

Serves 2 with something leafy and green on the side.

Good enough to dream about. Not that I necessarily did. But if one were prone to dreaming about food, one might select, as a centrally featured topic one night, this pizza.

Or, you know, just eat it.

Smoked Salmon Risotto with Kale

Ha! Take that, kale. I have cooked you, and you are delicious.

As risottos go, this one is fairly simple to prepare (as in, there aren't too many ingredients, and they don't need to be cooked separately or cut in intricate ways), but the resulting flavor is complex enough to keep things interesting. 

Ingredients
Olive oil
1 large yellow onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, pressed
1 rounded cup of Arborio rice
About 4 cups of broth*
Dry white cooking wine
1 bunch dino kale, sliced into ribbons, rinsed, and dried in a salad spinner
6 oz smoked wild salmon, sliced crosswise into strips (and separated into individual pieces if necessary, so they don't clump together when you add them to the risotto) 
1 Meyer lemon, zested and halved
1 tbsp chopped flat leaf parsley
Freshly ground black pepper
1/3 cup grated Parmigiano Reggiano

And any of the following that strike your fancy:
Some asparagus, thinly sliced at an angle (diagonally across the stem)
A scattering of frozen peas
A handful of baby arugula


Heat the broth in a small pot until it simmers, then turn off heat. Leave covered on the stove.

Heat a generous glug of olive oil in a big pot over medium-high heat. Add the onion and saute until translucent. Turn the heat down to medium, then add the garlic and cook for another minute or two. Next, add the rice, stirring to coat the grains. After a minute or so, add 1-2 ladles full of white wine and cook, stirring, until it evaporates. Add a ladle full of broth, and again simmer, stirring, until the excess liquid is gone. Continue adding broth and stirring until rice is just tender and most of the broth is used up.

Then, add the kale and any other vegetables you'd like along with another ladle full of broth. Cook for a few minutes until wilted or tender (asparagus will take the longest, so add it first if you're including it. Kale and peas seem to need about 2-3 minutes, and baby arugula barely needs any time at all). Next, add the smoked salmon, lemon zest, juice of half the lemon, and parsley, and turn off the heat right away. Stir everything together gently, adding a bit of the remaining broth if it seems at all dry. Pepper liberally, stir in the grated Parmesan, and serve. Garnish with a half-slice of Meyer lemon and a sprig of parsley, or sprinkle a little chopped parsley over the top.

Serves 4, or two for dinner and two for lunch the next day.


*Half chicken and half veggie works well.

Collard Greens with Applewood Smoked Bacon

This recipe can be made with or without bacon. But, once you have the version with bacon, you're probably not going back, so if you for some reason want to try it both ways, do the non-bacon version first. (However, having just had the with-bacon version, suggesting anything of the sort seems a bit sacrilegious. Make it with the bacon. With with with.)

Ingredients
1 onion, halved and sliced fairly thinly

2 strips Niman Ranch applewood smoked bacon (optional but highly recommended), sliced into strips
2 large cloves garlic, pressed

1 bunch collard greens, sliced into one-inch strips

Olive oil

Several shakes crushed ñora pepper (available at Spanish food stores, like The Spanish Table)

Salt & pepper, to taste

1 loose tbsp finely chopped oregano

1/3 cup chicken broth

Saute onions over medium-high heat in a big pan with a little olive oil for a minute or so, until they begin to cook down a little. Push to the side and add the bacon, centering it over the heat. Cook until it begins to brown a little, turning the onions over once or twice in the meantime. When you lose patience with this silly way of cooking both at once, just stir to combine, and continue cooking until until the onions are golden. Add the garlic, turn heat to medium, and saute for one minute more. Add the greens and salt and cook, stirring, for two more minutes, then add the rest of the ingredients and bring to a boil. Turn heat to medium-low, cover, and cook for 25-30 minutes, stirring occasionally and adding a little water if it starts to dry out.

Serves 2 greedy people but could stretch to 3, if you're less prone to using forks to defend your right to half the bacon than some people in our household. Goes well with quinoa with carrots and pepper (below) and grilled summer squash.

Purslane with Sweet Onions

One day last week, while perusing our Coop's vegetable aisle and pining after the now-absent baby rainbow chard, my eyes fell on a bunch of some weedy looking thing I'd never seen before. A little detective work with the signs above (not purple kale, because it's not purple...not carrots, because I definitely know what those look like) suggested the mystery vegetable was purslane. I had no idea what purslane was, although it sounded vaguely familiar. (Turns out this is because Michael Pollan mentions it in passing as an example of how wild foods are often very healthy, which, apparently, purslane is.) But something about the way the tips of the weedy little sprigs jutted forward looked like a challenge. I will buy you, I said to them, hopefully under my breath although in retrospect, one never can be sure. I will buy you, and I will cook you. I fixed the stems with a steely gaze.

The problem, it turned out, when Phase I of my two-part plan (the buying of the purslane) had been completed, was that nobody seemed to know how to cook purslane (which was, if you recall, the crucial Phase II). I could find recipes online for salads and some people suggested using it on sandwiches, but I had distinctly (and hopefully silently) sworn to cook it, and a salad seemed like wimping out. Also, it tasted citrusy, almost sour, and I thought it might need something sweet to balance the flavor. So:

Ingredients
Olive oil
1 large onion, halved and sliced into thin half-rings
1 bunch purslane, washed
Salt & pepper, to taste

Heat olive oil in a wide pan over medium-high heat. Add onion rings and saute until golden and sweet-smelling, turning down the heat a little if necessary to avoid too much browning (although a little bit browned is perfect).

Meanwhile, cut the bottom 1/2 inch or so off the purslane stems, and then chop coarsely (I left it as a bunch and just sliced in one-inch intervals).

When the onions are carmelized, turn the heat back to medium-high and add the purslane.

Stir-fry for a minute or two, until the leaves just begin to wilt, add salt and pepper, and serve.


The citrusy taste of the purslane goes particularly well with salmon -- for dinner that night, we covered a piece of wild salmon with black mustard seeds and a few curry leaves, pan-fried it, then served over a bed of wild rice cooked with some chopped shallot:

Lentils with Parsley and Thyme

Ingredients
2 1/4 cups yellow lentils (half chana dal and half toor dal works well, because the smaller toor dal cooks to mush and automatically thickens the lentils)
2 cups chicken and/or veggie broth
1/2 tsp ground turmeric
1 onion, chopped
Minced jalapeno pepper and/or Aleppo pepper, to taste (depending on how hot the pepper is and how hot you like your food)
1 1/2 tsp finely chopped fresh thyme leaves
1 1/2 tbsp finely chopped flat leaf parsley
Olive oil
3/4 tsp cumin seeds
2 garlic cloves, pressed


Rinse the lentils well, pick through them to check for rocks, and drain. Add them to a pot with 2 cups broth and 3 cups water and set over medium heat. Just as it comes to a simmer, add the turmeric and turn the heat down to low (make sure it doesn't boil over -- if it comes to a rapid boil, the lentils will get all frothy. If this happens, turn the heat down and skim the froth off the top). Cover and simmer for 30 minutes.

Stir in the onion, pepper, thyme, and parsley. Cover and continue to simmer for 10-20 more minutes, or until the lentils are tender. (If it's very liquidy, leave the lid ajar to let some of the water evaporate. If it's too dry, add a little more water. The lentils need to be in some liquid in order to cook, but I don't like my lentils very soupy, so if I'm not using toor dal, I puree 1-2 cups of this near the end to thicken it up a bit.)

Turn off heat. In a separate pan, heat 2-3 tbsp olive oil over medium-high heat. When hot, add the cumin seeds and toast in the oil for 10-20 seconds. Turn off the heat and immediately add the garlic, stir for a few seconds until it turns yellow or golden, then pour the mixture over the split peas and stir.

Serve with a scoop of basmati rice (underneath or on top) and vegetables on the side (carrots or greens stir-fried with mustard seed and ginger tend to go particularly well).

Serves 3-4