CAULIFLOWER PARTY

We picked up our first veggie box from Eastvale Farm last night and couldn't wait to get it home (in the dark as it turned out. Load Shedding). We've got lovely mielies/corn, free range eggs, spinach, courgettes, green beans and cauliflower. Problem is we've still not finished up our beaut of a cauliflower from Saturday's market which is the challenge with eating seasonally I suppose. So we're going to have to widen our repertoire a bit more than just cauliflower cheese if I'm not going to live on vegetable soup everyday for lunch.

I watched a programme on BBC Food a few years back which reported that cauliflower had lost out to broccoli in the popularity stakes and there was something of a cauliflower crisis in the UK.  I love cauliflower - I think it's such a wonderfully constructed vegetable with it's swishy skirt of green leaves and it's creamy white florets. It also has that nursery food appeal which I can never resist, but it has got quite grown-up in these past years and there are some interesting recipes around - some I've tried, some I havn't, some I'm about to and some which just look silly:

Angela Hartnett's Cauliflower & Chickpea Curry: I really enjoy Angela Hartnett with her sanguine treatment of men in the kitchen and the fact that she is Italian/Welsh. I've met some interesting national combinations in my life (Jamaican/Irish and Persian/Italian spring to mind) but her home must have been interesting to have grown up in. Angela's food is also no-nonsense and tasty and this recipe is excellent. Boys like it and it tastes even better the next day.

Simply Delicious's Roasted Cauliflower & Truffle Soup: If you havn't eaten roasted cauliflower before, you're in for a big treat. I really love this soup and it's dead simple to make too. From Alida Ryder's blog also come crumbed cauliflower and cauliflower mash, neither of which I've tried, but worth a look anyway. Think she must be getting a lot of cauliflower in her veggie box too.

Australian Gourmet Traveller is one of my favourite food blogs. This recipe for Dhal with Crisp Cauliflower is delicious but then I can never pass up any type of dhal on a good day, so this is food heaven for me. Jury out with the boys on this one. 

We make Piccalilli for the bakery and we use a variation of Jamie Oliver's recipe. It's worth the faff as it is so delicious with ham and cheese and lots of stuff. Boys love it too.

Making piccalilli on the island

I don't think I'll be making  cauliflower steak or a whole roasted cauliflower with whipped cream cheese. Boys would get very confused if I suddenly started calling a vegetable a steak ('what" "where" "huh?"). I also couldn't imagine serving up a whole cauliflower with a knife sticking out of it like a medieval hog.What were Bon Appetit thinking?

Next up beetroot. I have a secret penchant for trying to replicate the slightly sharp but sweet beetroot we used to get in jars with diced onions and which used to turn your braai and potato salad a swirly pink colour.

Who would have thought that one could get so much pleasure out of a box of vegetables?

Party at my house!