Fast, healthy, delicious: Puréed cauliflower

Puréed Cauliflower’s lively flavor makes for a great substitute for mashed potatoes. Marion’s recipe below.

Why isn’t cauliflower more popular? It is so wonderful—subtle, but not bland, so easy to prepare and so complementary to strong flavors. The part about it also being so healthy (a crucifer packed with vitamin C, Vitamin K, folate, and fiber, plus cancer fighting compounds) and even so low-carb is a great big bonus.

This cauliflower purée is so simple that it ranks among our not-exactly-a-recipe recipes. And it’s the perfect complement for Wine-braised Short Ribs.

Puréed Cauliflower
Serves two

1 small head cauliflower
water for steaming
2 teaspoons olive oil
1 teaspoon butter
salt

Discard any leaves that may cling to the stem, then break up the cauliflower head. You want to use everything except the cone-like core and the stem. Break the florets into pieces all about the same size, so that they will finish cooking simultaneously.

Put the cauliflower in a flat-bottomed skillet and pour about 3/4 cup of water around the florets. Bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to a simmer, cover tightly and steam until it is barely fork tender. Most recipes say this will take around 15 minutes, but I find that it actually tends more toward 10 or 11 minutes. Don’t let the cauliflower become too soft. A fork should go in easily, but it shouldn’t be mushy and collapsible. When in doubt, err on the side of less cooked rather than more.

Once the cauliflower is cooked, turn off the heat. Don’t discard the cooking water! Put about half the cauliflower in the bowl of a processor; add a bit of the cooking water—I recommend around 1/4 cup of cooking liquid for each cup of cauliflower, if you want to make a purée that still mounds nicely and doesn’t run all over the plate. Process quickly in short bursts of five or ten seconds. Scrape down the sides of the processor bowl in between so everything s uniformly pureed.

Once the cauliflower starts looking like mashed potatoes (just a few seconds) add the remaining cauliflower. Test it at this point—if it is very wet, don’t add any more cooking liquid yet. Add the butter and the rest of the oil. Process, keeping an eye on it. If the cauliflower looks too grainy and solid, add a judicious amount of cooking liquid. You want it to be smooth in texture, not grainy but not liquid either–visually like mashed potatoes. When the texture is to your liking, carefully add salt. Now it’s ready to serve.

Options:

Substitute milk or, if you are feeling lavish, cream for some or all of the cooking water.

You can also add a flock of different things to alter this basic recipe:

During the steaming process, add a clove of garlic [but discard it before puréeing]
Instead of a mix of olive oil and butter, use all butter
After it has been puréed, return it to a saucepan, heat slightly, and stir in cheese—Parmesan, or extra sharp cheddar; serve it with sautéed mushrooms and caramelized onions for a vegetarian-friendly entrée

I recently ran across a version of this using blue cheese to which I can only say OMDG we are so trying that soon. And we also want to try the Pan-Seared Salmon over Cauliflower Fennel over at Mike’s Table.

Dinner Double Feature, Part 2: Roasted beets create a truly golden salad

In which Marion capitalizes on Terry’s belated revelation that beets are delicious, especially in this Roasted Beet Salad with Oranges and Blue Cheese. Recipe below.

THE CAULIFLOWER SOUP TERRY POSTED LAST WEEK BEGAN AS A TUNA SANDWICH, and this roasted beet salad began as a trip to New York City. Our friend Laura and I were traipsing around town, a few years back, on a trip that included a lot of food and a lot of conversation about food. In the course of it all, we went into Zabar’s—me to look for various gifts, and Laura to look for pomegranate molasses for a stew she wanted to try. I had never heard of pomegranate molasses before, and I filed it in my head, alongside sumac and boldo, for future reference. That event—learning about something brand new and potentially marvelous in the company of a great friend—became an emblem of that wonderful trip. Continue reading “Dinner Double Feature, Part 2: Roasted beets create a truly golden salad” →

A big, warm bowl of comfort: Roasted cauliflower and dill soup

Roasting the cauliflower mellows its flavor in this hearty, creamy [but dairy-free] Roasted Cauliflower and Dill Soup. Substitute vegetable broth for the chicken stock and you’ve got a satisfying vegan meal. Recipe below.

A quick note: I’ve totally dropped the ball in terms of providing any ideas for Thanksgiving this year. But at the end of the post, I’ll provide a few links for some interesting sides.

As proof that you just never know where inspiration will strike, this soup started out as a tuna sandwich. On a recent Sunday, that’s what sounded good for lunch. But Marion and I wanted our sandwiches on better bread than we had at home, so we walked up to Kurowski Sausage Shop, a Polish deli/grocery/bakery in our neighborhood. By the time we had walked the five or so blocks in the brisk November air, though, some soup was sounding pretty good—and Kurowski serves up delicious homemade soups fresh and cheap in their refrigerator case.

After flirting with bigos and borscht and some other Eastern European delights, we settled on a hearty cauliflower soup flecked with fresh dill. Being no fools, we got two containers—a whopping $1.29 each. Back home, the tuna sandwiches became half-sandwiches, bit players to the soup’s star performance. And as I leaned over my steaming bowl with big chunks of cauliflower and carrots, I knew I would be attempting my own version soon. Continue reading “A big, warm bowl of comfort: Roasted cauliflower and dill soup” →

Homemade pizza, quick enough for a weeknight

Mushrooms, arugula, red onion and mozzarella come together with [gasp!] ready made dough for this Mostly Wild Mushroom Pizza, about as fast as delivery. Recipe below.

Let me start with a confession. This is the first pizza I’ve ever made. We love pizza, and Marion occasionally makes it, always a treat. But mostly when we want pizza, we order out. That’s because when we think of having it, it’s often either [a.] close enough to dinner that we don’t have the time or patience to make pizza dough or [b.] a weeknight and we’ve been at work all day, which means see [a.].

So when I was invited to test a ready-to-bake thin crust pizza dough, Pillsbury® Thin Crust Pizza Crust, I jumped at the chance. It’s not that I’m afraid of making pizza dough [okay, well maybe I am just a little]; it’s more that I hate to plan ahead. And even though pizza dough is decidedly unfinicky and nonfragile, unlike many bread doughs, there’s also a bit of the pain-in-the-ass factor at play here, at least for me.

But if someone else were to make the dough and I was free to concentrate on the toppings, I would be intrigued. And I was. I was even further intrigued by the fact that this was thin crust dough. Despite Chicago’s reputation as a deep dish town, there’s an ever-growing contingent that prefers thin crust. Count me in that group.

Okay, so I had some dough to play with, courtesy of Pillsbury. [Full disclosure time: They sent me the pizza crust dough for free, and that’s how I’m reviewing this product, for free.] Now I had to figure out what I wanted to do with it. First, I nosed around Deb’s excellent Smitten Kitchen archives. Deb loooves pizza and shares great ideas for making it on her blog from time to time. I’ll include links to some great tips she has in the Kitchen Notes below. You’ll find more about how the pizza dough performed there too.

Next I hit the library. I came away with a few books on pizza, including one by noted Italian chef Wolfgang Puck. But the one I gravitated to and learned the most from was a practical little volume, stuffed with recipes, helpful tips and gorgeous photographs, called Pizza! It’s by two London-based food writers, Pippa Cuthbert [by way of New Zealand] and Lindsay Cameron Wilson [by way of Canada]. They talk about equipment, give recipes for various doughs [and yes, I will make my own at some point] and devote an entire chapter to classic pizza recipes. And then they take off in many directions, just as pizza itself has done.

Reading through numerous recipes in Pizza!, I came up with lots of ideas to try. More important, I got a good sense of basic techniques for working with topping ingredients and the encouragement to experiment. Continue reading “Homemade pizza, quick enough for a weeknight” →

Pasta with pecan pesto, pronto

Fresh basil, garlic and Parmesan pack plenty of flavor in this quick dish, perfect for weeknight suppers. Besides boiling water for pasta, the only cooking involved is pan toasting the pecans.

FOR THE SECOND YEAR IN A ROW, WE DIDN’T HAVE A GARDEN. That meant no fresh tomatoes, still warm from the sun. No fragrant fresh rosemary. And perhaps worst of all, no armloads of fresh basil to turn into delicious batches of pesto—some to be consumed immediately, some to be frozen in small zippered bags for a taste of summer in midwinter. Continue reading “Pasta with pecan pesto, pronto” →

Moving day, chilled soup, cool borrowed memory

Creamy and unexpectedly chilled, watercress vichyssoise makes a cool first course for the last hot days of summer—or paired with a crusty bread, a satisfying light lunch. Recipe below.

It’s happened again! Summer is almost gone, and we’ve hardly gotten around to making any cold soups. Marion did make her refreshing gazpacho once—oh, and her sweet potato vichyssoise, always a hit, but usually reserved for Thanksgiving. But there were none of Marion’s delicious attempts at recreating the cold cucumber bisque we used to get at Café Balaban in St. Louis—she never matches our fading memories of it [it’s been years since we’ve had it or they’ve even served it—we recently learned, in fact, that Balaban’s has closed], but she always creates something summery and fresh. So when I saw a simple, authentic sounding recipe for vichyssoise over at Katie’s Thyme for Cooking, I had to give it a try.

One reason the idea of vichyssoise appealed to me, I have to admit, was the opening of Anthony Bourdain’s highly entertaining book Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly. He talks about his very first realization that food was more than mere fuel. Even though I read it back when it first came out in 2000, this passage stays with me:

My first indication that food was something other than a substance one stuffed in one’s face when hungry—like filling up at a gas station—came after fourth grade in elementary school. It was on a family vacation to Europe, on the Queen Mary, in the cabin-class dining room. There’s a picture somewhere: my mother in her Jackie O sunglasses, my younger brother and I in our painfully cute cruisewear, boarding the big Cunard ocean liner, all of us excited about our first transatlantic voyage, our first trip to my father’s ancestral homeland, France.

It was the soup.

It was cold.

As Bourdain explains, it was something of a discovery for someone whose entire experience with soup to this point had consisted of Campbell’s. Here’s how he describes that first taste of vichyssoise:

I remember everything about the experience: the way our waiter ladled it from a silver tureen into my bowl; the crunch of tiny chopped chives he spooned on as a garnish; the rich, creamy taste of leek and potato; the pleasurable shock, the surprise that it was cold.

Bourdain realizes that vichyssoise has become an old warhorse of a menu selection, but says the very name “still has a magical ring to it.” Good enough for me. I had to make some.

But first, I did a little reading. Turns out this most French-sounding soup was created in New York in 1917. By a Frenchman, though—Louis Diat, head chef at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. He based it on a warm potato and leek soup, a classic French soup that he made from a recipe his mother had given him. Julia Child’s version of this traditional Potage Parmentier in Mastering the Art of French Cooking is simplicity itself. Of course, much of French cooking is deceptively, elegantly simple.

One variation on this basic soup includes watercress. The slightly peppery crisp taste of this herb sounded like it would the perfect addition to this creamy, cold soup. Continue reading “Moving day, chilled soup, cool borrowed memory” →

Berry delicious: French toast with fruit and mint

Lightly sweetened seasonal fresh fruit with mint and a squeeze of lemon juice replaces sticky syrup and powdered sugar in this delicious take on a weekend breakfast favorite, French toast. Recipes below.

How has this happened? This is my 100th post at Blue Kitchen, closing in on two years of blogging about food, and I’m only now getting around to breakfast. This is just wrong; breakfast is very important at our house. Not so much as a big weekend ritual. [And we are so not brunch people—to us, brunch means too much food for too much money after waiting in line for too long.] For us, breakfast is a practical daily meal, breaking the fast [the period between bedtime and breakfast is the longest most of us go without eating], fueling up for a good start to the day.

Breakfast is usually foraged individually as we get going in the morning, especially during the work week, and often includes some combination of a fiberrific cereal, maybe an egg, maybe some toast [also fiberrific], a handful of nuts or a little peanut butter and maybe some fruit. Oh. And caffeine. Tea or coffee for Marion, iced tea or diet Pepsi for me.

But some weekends, we do opt for what we call a weekend style breakfast. Omelets or pancakes or, far too infrequently, French toast.

French toast’s origins are clouded in mystery. Hardly anyone thinks that it originated in France, although one source claimed authoritatively that it did, in the 16th century. Another popular story is that it was created in the 1700s by a tavern owner in Albany, New York—one Joseph French. And at least one source claims that the first recipe dates back to ancient Rome! No one really agrees on the name, either. We Americans call it French toast. In France, it’s pain perdu—lost bread. French bread dries out in just a day or two and this is a wonderful way to give it another life. In some quarters of the UK, it is apparently called “poor knights of Windsor!”

What all do agree upon is what French toast is: Bread dipped in a mixture of egg and milk, then fried until golden brown. Most also agree that it is delicious.

I’ll be honest with you, though. As much as I like French toast, what got me started on this post was the fruit. Berries and stone fruits only have a little more time left in the markets this season. Most of the time, they don’t make it past their original state in our house before being devoured. Last Sunday, Marion and I polished off a pint of blueberries driving home from the produce market [thank heaven for automatic transmissions]. But the berry mixture Susan over at Food Blogga created for her Skinny Berry Parfaits got me thinking. Then I saw a recipe for minted blackberries in the August issue of Gourmet. Never mind that that it was meant to top cheesecake. I was off to the races. Continue reading “Berry delicious: French toast with fruit and mint” →

Potato salad: A classically done American classic

Nothing says summer like a classic American potato salad with mayonnaise, yellow mustard and the crunchy bite of red bell peppers. Recipe below.

AT OUR HOUSE, A LOT OF THE FOOD WE LOVE is something we’ve come to in adulthood, and even recently. Part of this is because of the great revolution of American eating habits, which has so thoroughly swept up our household. Now so many foodstuffs and cuisines are so accessible to so many of us. We eat not just to live, but to keep ourselves healthy, to entertain our palates and to experience the infinite variations of this most evanescent of art forms. Continue reading “Potato salad: A classically done American classic” →

Pasta, vegetables and overcoming deal breakers

A mix of vegetables takes center stage in this Pasta with Chickpeas, Fava Beans, Pecans and Spring Peas, with bacon playing a supporting role. Recipe and variations—including vegetarian and vegan versions—below.

Sundays are often when I cook whatever I’m posting the following Wednesday. But this past Sunday found me spending more than an hour at the Crafty Beaver hardware store, puzzling out what I needed to solve a minor plumbing problem and build a small bookcase. [Don’t be overly impressed—the bookcase is going to be, shall we say, elegantly simple.] Then I spent a good chunk of the afternoon solving said plumbing problem and starting on said bookcase. When it became clear I wasn’t going to get around to cooking, Marion offered to make this wonderful dish, solving both dinner and what to post. All I had to do was not start devouring my meal before I photographed it. I’ll let Marion tell you how this excellent pasta came together.

The other day the New York Times ran an article by Kim Severson in which good cooks were asked about their recipe deal breakers, “those ingredients or instructions that make them throw down the whisk and walk away.”

Experienced, talented cooks cited abstruse ingredients [48 freshly picked grape leaves, vast quantities of fresh animal blood], fussy or intimidating instructions [the recipes of Thomas Keller were particularly noted], recipes with several recipes within them, recipes that demand dangerous conditions, extreme equipment [a couscousière, cornet molds—and I say that as, um, the owner of cornet molds, and of a heavy copper tin-lined tarte Tatin pan, hauled home from Paris, that has become a place to keep our bananas]. My favorite example was the author’s own: She will not make any dish that requires an assistant. That made me laugh out loud.

Like every person reading the article, I immediately started putting together a similar list in my head. What magic words stop me from trying a recipe? Here are a few:

3 sticks butter
1 cup lard
The phrase “on the third day”
Any amount of insects [I will cheerfully eat pretty nearly any organ meat, but cannot make myself even consider eating an ant, a grub or a cicada]
Dried bean curd sheets [I shy off thanks to a series of ridiculous kitchen disasters years back that pretty much became one of those little private running jokes, in this case between me and a never-conquered recipe called Tinkling Bells]
“Have your butcher bone the pig, leaving the head intact” [that recipe, by the way, also includes the phrase “re-form the pig in its original shape,” which sounds so wistful somehow]

I have been cooking certain cuisines for years, but a long time ago I recognized that no matter how far I reach, there is always going to be an unbridgeable gulf between me and the most genuine examples of these foods. I have already said I am not going to eat anything with insects in it. I am not going to eat anything that in the US is construed as a pet. I am not going to eat any endangered mammals, and certainly not their paws.

Also, I am not going to cook anything out of a book the size and weight of a table, no matter how elegant the illustrations.

Years ago, I was standing in our back yard and reading some Martha Stewart magazine and came across a recipe for a ham baked on new-mown grass. There was a great deal of information about the grass you should choose to mow, how to make sure it is pristine, how to cut it… All I remember is opening my fingers and letting the magazine fall out of my hands and walking away from the magazine, which I believe eventually blew out of our yard or perhaps even decayed there, I don’t care, whatever, and I never read any other Martha Stewart publication again until a couple of weeks ago, when my sister [who for a couple of years had been saying, “It’s not what you remember!”] snuck a copy of Martha Stewart Living into a pile she was passing on to me. Okay, so I read it, fine, and once I navigated past the annoying crafts and the too many pastels I came across a pasta dish that, of course, sounded good, so good we had to mess with. Meaning that, for today at least, one of my ancient deal breakers has been overcome.

This descendant of Martha’s recipe asks you to cook the pasta in a moderate amount of water until the water is all absorbed and concentrated and cooked away leaving just pasta. I am usually nervous about this approach, not least because it means standing over the stove for seven or eight minutes and stirring pretty often, rather than wandering off to pick up the newspaper or look out the window at a puzzling brown bird. But I really like the technique here. It endows the pasta with a depth that is needed in a dish this spare.

This recipe begins with a lot of pasta—one pound uncooked—so it will serve five to six people easily. The next day Terry was able to celebrate Take Your Wife’s Cooking to Work Day. Continue reading “Pasta, vegetables and overcoming deal breakers” →

Gazpacho: Cold, tangy, perfect for summer

Chilled, chunky and chock full of healthy vegetables, this lively gazpacho makes a refreshing, simple first course all summer long.

I REMEMBER THE FIRST TIME I HAD PIZZA. I remember the first time I used chopsticks and the first time I made a pot roast and the first time I saw Terry and my first actual cocktail in an actual bar (it was a brandy Alexander—hey, I was an entry-level drinker—and it was Chumley’s). I no longer remember the first time I had gazpacho,though. Continue reading “Gazpacho: Cold, tangy, perfect for summer” →