Cauliflower Soup with Garlic Croutons

I love this – cooking late a night when the children are asleep and the house is quiet. Using up some end of the week vegetables before they go off. But also getting a chance to create and really think about the food I am preparing.

Not that I don’t consider it now – but I don’t always take the time to break down each piece of the food equation as I go about putting the dish together. By this I mean that sometimes I just throw the vegetables in and hope for the best!

So, last night I had a cauliflower to use up….I don’t know about you but this is one vegetable that I have had a weird relationship with over the years. I like this vegetable and everything from it’s Brassica family but when it tastes a little sharp or sour I often have a hard time getting the children to enjoy it.

The dish I ended up making was a cauliflower stew - to start if off, I began with sautéing the cauliflower together with onion, leek, celery and garlic in some water to sweat it down and then a little butter.

I would not ordinarily use butter – but I wanted to bring out a particular sweet taste that I know cauliflower has when cooked in this way. It was sautéd until lightly browned and very fragrant. Then I added turmeric, thyme, cumin seeds, cinnamon, salt and pepper and a little allspice to gently spice this up.

In the meantime I washed and rinsed a few red lentils (yes I am on a lentil binge right now) and brought them to the boil in a sauce-pan. Then I added some sliced carrots and sweet potato.

Once the cauliflower mixture was ready I added it to the lentils in the pot and let it all gently boil for about 40 minutes or so – until I was happy with the consistency.

It had thickened nicely and had a lovely fragrance. This was let cool overnight – but before serving to my taste tester I blended half of it in the food processor until smooth and then added it back into the sauce pan to heat.

To make it extra special I made some croutons with a little left over nearly stale olive bread by lightly frying them in crushed garlic and butter for a few minutes. It was a hit and something I will make again.

April

Cauliflower Soup with Croutons