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

Spicy Dahl with Vegetables

I had a need to cook something yesterday – I have been slacking off on cooking this week as I had some meals prepared for those who are eating while the rest of us are doing this cleanse.

When I am thinking something over, I always like to cook, bake or be in the kitchen in some way – just to create. In the end I decided to make a sort of dahl dish for my daughter…

Of course there is no real recipe that I follow for this meal – I just sort of add things together until I get the result I am looking for. And with any dahl, it is so easy to make – and tasty too!

I started with a few vegetables – onion, leek, garlic – and stir-fried these in olive oil until well done and fragrant in the sauce pan. Then I added about 1 cup of soaked red lentils and some water and let all of this come to a low boil.

In the meantime I chopped a few carrots, a large sweet potato and a little seaweed and placed them into the pot. Next it was time for some seasonings…so I just put in whatever I could find.

Turmeric, coriander, cumin, cinnamon, ginger, salt and pepper – all went into the stew as it bubbled away until there was a nice dahl like smell filling the kitchen. Of course this type of dish cooks fairly quickly – so nearing the end of cooking I added a dollop of butter and another large tablespoon of coconut butter.

After about ½ hour this was nicely thickened and ready to sit for awhile – which is when I added a little sprinkle of chopped parsley before I blended it a tiny bit just to make it a little more like a dahl.

Once it was cool some chopped garlic chives were tossed over the top – and it smelled lovely – great with some of that olive bread I had ready with very garlicky guacamole. 

April

Spicy Dahl with Vegetables