Difficult Vegetables: Cauliflower

As we head into the cold weather, the "favorite" vegetables of the warm weather are gone. No more green beans, peas, tomatoes, summer squash, or all of the other goodies that people mention when they talk about their favorite vegetables. Now we're left with the "tough stuff," like beets, kale, chard, and the cruciferous ones: cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, brussel sprouts, and that whole category. (Know why they call them "cruciferous?" The flowers of these guys look like little tiny crosses. They DO. I've seen em on cabbage plants and broccoli plants. Really neat).

Winter vegetables have very strong flavors, and they aren't as easy to cook as the summer ones. And all of us have some kind of memory of one or more of them that isn't appealing. I know I have them.

I DO enjoy some of these vegetables, but no one is going to get me to eat brussel sprouts. At least not willingly. I have only liked them ONE way: I had a stir fry once, of shredded sprouts, pecans, apples and maple syrup. That is more like candy than a vegetable, so I can't say that "oh, I had some great brussel sprouts." Not that long ago, at one of our favorite restaurants, the kitchen sent out, on the house, their special brussel sprouts salad. Bravely, I dug in. These were shredded raw sprouts, mixed with enough "stuff" to make it barely palatable to me. I'm sure that it was delicious, like all the food at Barbuto, but it's just not my thing.

Indeed, for years, I had an adversion to cauliflower, and for a while, broccoli. Where the adversion to broccoli came from, I do not know. I had always liked the stuff, but then one day, I woke up and the thought of it, the sight of it, the smell of it, and of course, the taste of it would leave me running to the bathroom to , well.... Then one day, it just disappeared.

I THINK I know where the adversion to cauliflower came from , and I think many people share the same adversion: SMELL. When you cook any of these cruciferous vegetables, you can get a really, truly nasty smell in the kitchen and your home, that lingers. That's the sulfur in these vegetables. It's also what makes them somewhat indigestable to some people. Not being able to digest a veggie is reason enough not to eat it, but the odor problem CAN be solved. Trust me. I got over my cauliflower problems, and I believe that you can too, if you follow a few little guidelines.

First, when you buy cauliflower, or cabbage, or any of these vegetables, you have to divorce yourself from the American concept that "bigger is better." It's not. The larger varieites of these vegetables will have more "aroma" than the smaller ones, and it's not proportional. In other words, it's not the case that a two pound head of cauliflower is going to have twice the odor of a one pound head. Uh uh. It's more pronounced than that, because in addition to getting bigger, the vegetable is older. Older vegetables have more "aromatics." Why do you think French women, those masters of soups, use older carrots in their stock instead of young ones? So go for the smaller specimens.

Second, when you buy them, plan on using them sooner rather than later. These veggies all store well, but that doesn't mean you should push them to the back of the fridge, and use them when you "get to them." The longer they store, the more water they will lose, and the more concentrated the sulfurs. More concentrated sulfurs means a stronger aroma.

And finally, what to me is the KEY point. When you cook these vegetables, use PLENTY of water. WAY MORE than you think you'll need. What I believe happens is that as the veggies cook, the aromas vaporize. If they can dissolve into the water, they won't get into the air. And you won't smell them. And you'll be able to enjoy the veggies without having to deal with, what my grandmother used to call "underwear odor."

When I was a kid, cauliflower was white. In big heads. These days, you seem to be able to buy it in a new color every year. Now we have golden cauliflower, and purple cauliflower, and I think there's a green one, too. I remember when the golden ones came out for the first time. They hadn't "quite" gotten the genetics down yet, and when you cooked it, the color leached out and when you drained the water, it looked a lot like, well, urine. Now THERE's something that will turn a cook's stomach. Now, though, the color seems to fade a little, but to hold in the final product. That's a "good thing." I think that happens with the purple variety too, but honestly, here's one of my prejudices, I can't see myself eating a purple vegetable other than eggplant. I have a purple sweet potato in my fridge from Nevia, BEGGING to be cooked, and I just can't do it....

Anyway, cooks seem to have "gotten it" and cauliflower became "chic" last year, even to the point of one restaurant putting a side order of white/golden/purple cauliflower on the menu at 15.00 a plate. FIFTEEN BUCKS for cauliflower. Can you imagine? I think they either took it off the menu or reduced the price. There is no way I would pay that. Would you?

Cauliflower works beautifully as a soup. You saute the florettes in butter and oil with other aromatic vegetables until they just begin to soften, then add stock and cook it until it's soft enough to puree. When it's cool, either put it through the food mill, for a rustic feel, or blend it for a smooth one. Add milk if you like, but that will obscure the taste. It's also wonderful baked in a cheese sauce, or deep fried, but let's face it: you could cut the rubber fingers off of a glove and deep fry them, or bake them in cheese sauce and it would taste good. No, let's stick with getting the flavor of the vegetable.

This is my current favorite way of serving cauliflower. I almost always use the golden one for this, but you can use the white variety, and it will look like creamy mashed potatoes and you can fool people into trying it. I'm sure the purple variety will work, I'm just not there yet.

You break up the head of cauliflower into florettes, and then cook them in a BIG pot of boiling, salted water, until they just begin to feel tender. It shouldn't take more than ten minutes to do that. Then, fish them out and put them in a food processor or blender, with about half a cup of the cooking water, and puree this to a nice smooth puree. Add some salt, and either butter OR, my new favorite finishing ingredient "olio verde." Olio verde is "fresh" olive oil, which is to say olive oil that has not been allowed to settle down yet. It's got a bite of pepper that is a bit fierce, and it's GOOD. You don't cook with this oil. You finish vegetables with it.

If you want to trick people into tasting cauliflower, you can put a pat of butter into the puree instead of olive oil. The purees really DO look like very creamy mashed potatoes. It's a good way to get people to pay attention to what they're eating, something we ALL need to do.

My second favorite way of using this vegetable is in a pasta dish, that I'm told comes from Sicily, where cauliflower is a key vegetable in the winter. I'm told that you can do this several ways, here's how I do it. First, I boil the florettes of a head of cauliflower like above, but I stop the cooking after five minutes, because I'm going to cook them again. Then, in a pan with some olive oil, I add the cauliflower, some capers (preferably salted ones that I've soaked to get some of the salt out), and then some dry bread crumbs. Many folks add anchovies at this point, but it's another ingredient that is not in my list of favorites . So instead I add pine nuts at this point. And sometimes raisins. I just toss this together and add some olive oil to it at the end. NO CHEESE. Then, boil up a pound of pasta and toss this vegetable sauce through it (you need a pasta like ziti or rigatoni or something short and "muscular" like that. No linguine here, and use dried pasta). I made this pasta concoction one year for a party, thinking that no one would touch it and we'd eat the leftovers the next day. In fact, I had to run to the kitchen and make a second batch of it.

So, it's time to come out of the closet all you cauliflower lovers. Try these recipes. Let me know if you like them. I really hope you do.