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.
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| Cauliflower Soup with Croutons |
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