Cauliflower Steaks: Who Knew?

Just out of the oven

Friend was talking but all I remember him saying was "cauliflower steaks," two words I never before heard put together, and, curious, I bought a cauliflower, cheap and nutritious but I had no recipe for it that everyone loved besides breaking it into florets and roasting. Looked up and made a recipe derived from the magazine Bon Appetit. The link will take you the cauliflower steaks recipe, complete with sauce and relish--essential, I think, to the dish. You can roast the tomatoes and garlic cloves with the cauliflower.

Low fat, low-carb cauliflower steaks--when they're browned in a pan, roasted until tender, and then served with a black-olive relish and roasted tomato sauce--they don't look bad at all, do they? Dare to try them. The black-olive relish makes a great pasta sauce. The leftover florets I cooked, mashed and served as low-carb "mashed potatoes." Truly a versatile vegetable I'll use more often now.

Loving a Recipe: Carrot Soup with Cilantro

About 18 years ago when I became a cook with cookbooks I started noting the date and any variations on the recipes I tried. If I made it again I noted it. There are notes saying "Bob says this is the king of breads" (that's a bread recipe), or "Tasty but not pretty enough for company -- grayish" (that's cream of cauliflower soup) or "This tastes great!! Why did I doubt?" (fusilli with caper sauce), or "9/14/07 I never poached an egg in soup before, but it's GOOD!" (herb bouillon) or "blender makes gummy potatoes." The notes have made my cookbook library (about 30 books) a priceless record of my daily life and love of cooking. Here's a favorite recipe for that healthy pound of carrots I always buy only to realize that nobody is going to eat 'em raw. The secrets to the soup include the apple, the sweet potato, the rice that makes the soup creamy without cream, and the "Fresh lemon juice to taste" (about 1 Tablespoon). I whip the chopped cilantro into drained yogurt to make cilantro cream to float on top of the finished carrot soup. Recipe comes from The Vegetarian Times Complete Cookbook (the 1995 edition). I never have fennel seeds on hand so it's not in my recipe.


Carrot Soup with Cilantro (about 5 servings)


1 Tablespoon unsalted butter or corn oil
1 apple, peeled, cored and cubed
1 to 1-1/2 pounds of carrots, chopped
1/2 pound sweet potatoes, peeled and cubed
2 tablespoons uncooked white rice
1/4 teaspoon turmeric or curry powder
5-1/2 cups vegetable stock or water
1 bay leaf (don't omit!)
salt and freshly ground black or white pepper to taste
fresh lemon juice to taste (about 1 Tablespoon)
2 Tablespoons minced fresh cilantro
1/2 cup plain yogurt, drained
Heat the butter or corn oil and saute the carrots and sweet potatoes for about 5 minutes over medium heat, and add the apple and saute for another 5 minutes. Add the white rice, turmeric or curry powder, stock or water, and bay leaf. Cook for 20 minutes until vegetables and rice are soft. Remove bay leaf and puree the soup until smooth. Season with salt, pepper and lemon juice to taste. Pour into serving bowls. Mix the minced fresh cilantro with the yogurt and top each serving with a spoonful.

Welcome to Piehole Midwest

"Piehole" in Midwestern means "mouth," as in "Shut your piehole." Preferably we shut it on some tasty home cooking. Sometimes we eat healthy, sometimes not, but we love to grow, market, buy, cook, bake, grill and serve stuff to fill our pieholes, feed our faces, chow down, pig out, scarf & whatnot. I'm a hard-core born Midwestern home cook in Missouri, and I'll be posting foods and meals that show up in front of me, because like all Midwesterners I eat what's put in front of me. Like this bowl o' blueberries here. They got piled on French toast with maple syrup for breakfast. Coffee was our drink.