Monday, April 28, 2008

Recipe review - Roasted Cauliflower

One of my friends headed out on vacation, and before she left, she brought over all of her perishables that we would eat - basically all of her veg. Included was a small cauliflower and a lemon. As I said earlier, I'm going to try out a bunch of things that require little beyond what comes in my box of veg. This is somewhat outside those bounds, but did only require items that I already had in the house.

Here's the recipe I used:

Roasted Cauliflower
• 1 head of cauliflower
• 2-3 cloves of garlic, peeled and coarsely minced
• 1 lemon
• Olive oil
• Coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper
• Parmesan cheese

Preheat oven to 400°F. Cut cauliflower into florets and put in a single layer in an oven-proof baking dish. Add garlic. Squeeze a lemon over cauliflower and drizzle each piece with olive oil. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. If the oven hasn't reached 400°F yet, set aside until it has.
Place casserole in the hot oven, uncovered, for 15-25 minutes, until the top is lightly brown. Test with a fork for desired doneness. Remove from oven and sprinkle generously with Parmesan cheese.

My modifications:
  • I don't keep Parmesan cheese at home, so I didn't add that at the end, but I was guessing that it was mostly for a little salty flavor. When I tasted it, I realized it had enough salt already and didn't need the addition
  • The head of cauliflower I used was rather small, so I reduced the rest of the ingredients by about 1/2
  • The florets I cut were a bit on the big side - I recommend that you cut them quite small
Conclusions:
This was a nice recipe, and I would certainly make it again. I found that the baking time given didn't make it quite as tender as you might otherwise hope for, so in the future, I'd bake it a bit longer. The lemon gave it a nice zing, and was the primary flavor. It might also be interesting to try a few seasoned breadcrumbs on the top - it might give it an interesting crunch. Overall, I recommend this to others, and will certainly make it again.

2 comments:

Kimberly Gische said...

We really liked tandoori grilled cauliflower. We put on the tandoori/yogurt mixture that we normal put on fish and then grilled outside. It was quite yummy.

We also really like grilled jicama. Peel and slice jicama. Brush slices with a little olive oil and sprinkle with pepper. Then grill to desired state. (It never really gets tender as much as cooked through.) It is better if you make sure to slice the jicama thin or it takes forever to cook. But, don't slice too thin or you end up with chips.

sb8q said...

I will totally try the Jicama recipe. I've got one sitting on my counter that I haven't known what to do with