Cauliflower, How I Love Thee!

Recently I noticed that there are a whole lotta cauliflower recipes on this blog. Why? Maybe because it's a versatile and delicious vegetable that can be used as a side dish or an entree, even as a substitute for rice or a pizza crust, but most likely because I am about 80% Eastern European and cabbage and cabbage-adjacent veggies are the food of my people. 

My childhood was fairly cruciferous. (Cruciferous refers to the cross-shaped flowers of many members of the cabbage family. Also, I was raised Roman Catholic, so....) Boil-in-bag broccoli in cheese sauce was always a big hit upstairs in our apartment. Downstairs, Grandma cooked cabbage in any number of ways, with and without pork products and other vegetables. But cauliflower she made one way: steamed. She'd put the whole head in one of her enamelware pots, add an inch or so of water, cover it, and turn on the heat. After the water had mostly boiled away, Grandma would stick a knife into the head to see if it was tender. If so, it was offloaded into a bowl, topped with a tremendous knob of butter, and sprinkled with copious salt and pepper. She and Mom and I would go at it with forks until it was gone while my younger brother ate a boiled hot dog or whatever other food he deigned to eat at the time. (Unlike me, he was a picky eater.)

Many years later I realized that cauliflower was plenty tasty on its own, but it is even better when roasted, spiced, or sauced. Its relative neutrality lends itself to a wide variety of flavor profiles, and it can be eaten raw, lightly cooked, and even cooked to death without stinking up the house (take that, broccoli!) Additionally, cauliflower is loaded with Vitamin C, antioxidants, and fiber, with only 145 calories for an entire 6" head. Cauliflower diet, anyone?

Links to a baker's dozen cauliflower recipes can be found below, though there are probably more than that around here. Besides cauliflower, what is the other theme running through them? Take a guess and leave a comment.

Blackened Cauliflower Steaks

Cauliflower can be cut through the stem into "steaks," which are lovely roasted until just tender with a drizzle of olive oil and sprinkle of salt. Top them with sauce, or a fried egg, or both, as in this recipe for Blackened Cauliflower Steaks.

Cauliflower Breadsticks

Cauliflower is low in calories, but not after it's used to create a pizza crust! (Cheese is the magic that glues it together.) Cauliflower crusts don't really cut it for me; I prefer to make Cauliflower "Breadsticks."

Cauliflower Caponata

Caponata is a sweet-and-sour Sicilian condiment usually made with eggplant and other veg. I don't see why cauliflower shouldn't get the same treatment. Cauliflower Caponata

My grandmother used to make vegetable fritters or pancakes all the time, mostly corn or potato, but occasionally with something really weird like canned asparagus. A shame she never worked cauliflower into her repertoire. Here are two totally different takes on the concept: 

Cauliflower Corn Fritters 

Cauliflower Fritters

Cauliflower Soup Reading this post I got the impression that I wasn't too pleased with this recipe, but dammit, I was going to make it anyway. It does seem a little weird, but it's a Rocco DiSpirito thing.

Cauliflower Tikka Masala

I believe pretty much anything would taste good smothered in a creamy spiced yogurt sauce. Skip the chicken and try Cauliflower Tikka Masala on your next Meatless Monday.

Kung Pao Cauliflower

Our favorite sweet and spicy Chinese chicken dish works well with cauliflower, too. Kung Pao Cauliflower

Mediterranean Cauliflower

Mediterranean food, with its various sauces and condiments and hummuses (hummi?), is fun to play with. Mediterranean Cauliflower gave me the chance to make some sauces, and also use a jarred product that I had just received for review. 

Moroccan-spiced Cauliflower Steaks

There are nearly infinite ways to season a cauliflower and make it delicious. I made these Moroccan-spiced Cauliflower Steaks with a jar of Moroccan grill seasoning I received as a Fancy Food Show sample. Of course I also made various sauces and salads to go with.

Purple Cauliflower Tacos

I probably could have just steamed and seasoned the cauli in these Purple Cauliflower Tacos, but I decided to make things a bit more interesting by turning it into fritters with feta cheese. Tortillas just happened to be a convenient way to get the various sloppy ingredients into my mouth easily.

Spicy Cauliflower Mac and Cheese

Spicy Cauliflower Mac and Cheese is a great way to sneak vegetables into a meal. Or to sneak cauliflower into a meal served to my pasta-loving husband who's not all that crazy about cauliflower.

Street Cauliflower

Street Cauliflower is my take on a dish eaten at La Food Marketa, which is their take on street corn.

What's your favorite way to cook cauliflower?

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Posted on Minxeats.com.

Golabki

From time to time we get a delivery of farm fresh produce from Washington's Green Grocer. A recent box included a fat savoy cabbage. I took one look at that thing and thought "golabki." (I suppose if I were more Ukrainian, I might have thought "halupki.") I had never made golabki (the word is pronounced "go-woomp-key" and means "pigeons") before, but that wasn't going to stop me. Once upon a time I had never made, well, anything that I make now. There's always a first time.

Genetically, I am very much Eastern European. Yet I seldom, if ever, cook food from that part of the world. I think if my grandmother had been younger when I was born, and up to cooking more labor-intensive dishes like pierogi and golabki and kruschiki (oh my!), I may have learned some recipes. Or would even have had the inclination to try making these things for myself. But she mostly made soups and stews, easy things that involved throwing a bunch of ingredients in a pot and adding a handful of peppercorns. (I'm not kidding. Every mouthful of Grandma's chicken/beet/beef/sorrel soup revealed hidden spicy pepper bombs that blew out the palate for a couple of minutes.) My mother was more of a convenience foods cook, and she never made anything more complicated than Shake 'N Bake when I was growing up.

But Golabki are cabbage rolls stuffed with a combination of ground beef and rice and sauced with Campbell's Tomato soup. How hard could they be?

I looked at a couple of source recipes, including ones my cousin Dianne had sent me last year. One was her grandmother's recipe. It looked good, but those old recipes are always a bit underseasoned--aka plain--for my palate. I decided to do a riff on the classic, but with additional onions, garlic, and fresh thyme from my garden, to perk it up a bit. And tomato soup was fine, but I thought it could be better with the addition of diced tomatoes and tomato paste.

I am too fancy for my own good sometimes.

I gotta say though, my changes worked out for the best. I hadn't had stuffed cabbage in ages, so didn't have a nostalgic taste in my mind's palate, waiting to taunt me if my version didn't taste as good as my memory. My cabbage rolls were pretty damn good, if I do say so. I served them with some green beans and the leftover rice. You can serve them with whatever you want.

Aren't these pretty? Raw golabki look like fancy green brains.

Golabki

1 large savoy cabbage
2 tablespoons butter
1 large onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves
Salt and pepper
1.5 lb fatty ground beef
1 cup cooked rice
1 egg
1 can condensed tomato soup
Chicken stock - 2 or more cups
1 can diced tomatoes
2 tablespoons tomato paste

Fill a large pot with water and bring to a boil. Cut out the core of the cabbage and gently lower the head into the boiling water. Blanch about 10 minutes. If you notice the outer leaves softening and starting to float away from the rest of the cabbage, remove them as it happens. You don't want to cook the leaves, per se, just soften them enough to fold around a filling.

Remove the cabbage from the pot and blot it dry. Remove as many whole leaves as possible. The center of the cabbage will still be crunchy, so stop when you get to that point. I got about 19 leaves out of my medium-large cabbage. Set the nicest and larges leaves aside; reserve the rest. Discard the uncooked cabbage center or use it for slaw.

While the cabbage is cooking, melt the butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat and add the onion and garlic. Cook, stirring regularly, until softened. Add the thyme and season with salt and pepper. Let the onions get slightly browned before turning off the heat and allowing them to cool completely.

In a large bowl, place the ground beef, rice, egg, cooled onion mixture, and additional salt and pepper to taste. Blend well to combine. Refrigerate for at least an hour to allow flavors to meld.

Time to fill the leaves. If any of them have a tough bit of vein at the end where they were attached to the head, cut it out. Add a few generous tablespoons of filling to the stem end of the leaf. Fold over the top, then the sides, and roll up. You will probably only get one or maybe 1 1/2 turns.

Use the torn and leftover leaves to line the bottom of a large pot. Arrange the filled cabbage parcels in concentric circles in as many layers as needed. Pour over the condensed soup. Fill the soup can with chicken stock to rinse it and add that to the pot. Dump on the can of tomatoes. Mix the tomato paste with a cup of stock and add that, too. If the liquid level doesn't reach to about halfway up the topmost layer of cabbage parcels, add enough stock to do that.

Bring pot to a boil over high heat. Once boiling, cover pot and turn heat down to simmer. Cook 1 hour. Remove the cover and continue cooking for another hour. If you want a thicker sauce, turn up the heat for the last 20 minutes or so. Taste for seasoning and add more salt and pepper, if needed.

Makes 12-15 rolls.

Posted on Minxeats.com.

Grandma's Spaghetti and Meat Balls

Occasionally I get a real pang of nostalgia for my grandmother's cooking.

Grandma lived with her son, Frankie, my uncle, in the downstairs apartment of our house in Fells Point. My immediate family - Mom, Dad, and my brother - and I lived upstairs. While Mom made dinner most nights, Grandma occasionally gave her the night off by cooking for the house. By the time I came along, Grandma had stopped making more complicated Polish specialties like gołąbki, pączki, krusciki, and pierogi, and pared her culinary repertoire down to a fairly limited number of things - smothered pork chops, kotlety, placki - most of which were cooked in a heavy cast-iron skillet. Some things she made in a big, white, enameled stock pot. Among these were her rosół, szczaw, and spaghetti and meatballs. The latter also required the skillet and was one of the few dishes she made that used more than one pot.

My Uncle had rather plebian taste in food. The only time we ever ate Kraft Macaroni and Cheese was when he requested it. He also liked to eat canned shrimp sautéed in butter with lots of chopped onions. It was incredibly salty and screamed out for an accompaniment of rice or other starch, which occasionally was mac & cheese, but was most often merely buttered rye bread from the giant loaf we always had on hand. My Aunt Stasia's spaghetti and home made meatsauce and meatballs was too fancy for Frankie, but he loved Grandma's plain Jane version. I did too. There was something very comforting in her seven-ingredient recipe, and on a recent evening, I recreated it.

Although she normally used ziti and occasionally rigatoni, we always called it "spaghetti."

Grandma's Spaghetti and Meatballs

1 lb ground round
vegetable oil
2 onions, chopped
4 tablespoons of butter
1 6-oz can tomato paste
1 lb box ziti
salt

Form ground round into balls the size of a quarter. Fry in vegetable oil until dark brown on all sides. Set aside.

Grandma used a well-seasoned cast iron skillet, so her
 meatballs were even darker than this.

In the same pan in which you cooked the meatballs, sauté onions in butter until translucent and very slightly browned.  It's very important that you use all 4 tablespoons of butter and lots of onions - these are the major flavor components for the sauce.

Stir in tomato paste and cook for a minute or two. The sauce will be very thick.

While onions are cooking, cook pasta in boiling salted water until al dente. Drain and place pasta back into its pot.

Pour sauce over pasta. Add meatballs. Mix well over low heat until everything has a thin veil of tomato paste. Salt generously.

Eat.
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Yeah - told you it was simple. Simply delicious. It's all about the onions.

Sure, you can get fancy and add cheese or basil or whatnot, but it won't be my Grandma's pasta.

Grandma and me, circa 1966.

I usually sauté things in olive oil, so when the onions hit the butter, it immediately took me back to my childhood, when most meals started out exactly that way - onions cooked in butter. And when I added the tomato paste, it just smelled so right. As I ate it, I was able to revel in a little bit of my childhood, something I'll never recapture time-wise, but can always remember with food.

Thank you, Grandma.