Cauliflower soup with a touch of curry

Today I am showing you a little soup I made – a lightly curried cauliflower soup.  It was light and delicate and made for a good lunch.

I was inspired to make it by having about ¼ of a lightly cooked cauliflower left over.  I had used the rest in a salad.

I sautéed a few slices of onion (finely sliced) in a mix of oil and butter and seasoned with ½ a teaspoon of crushed garlic, ½ teaspoon of curry powder, a tiny bit of ground ginger, salt and white pepper.  I didn't use very much salt at all because I was going to add some parmesan cheese at the end and that is quite salty.

I added the cooked cauliflower and when it was boiling pureed it with a stick blender and added a small amount of water to get a nice consistency for the soup.

I served it with a dollop of sour cream, some shaved parmesan on top as well as some chopped parsley.  Easy but sophisticated enough that you could serve it as a first course for a dinner party.

Need Some Inspiration? Try Cauliflower!

Cheesy Cauliflower Tots w Balsamic Ketchup

Food on Friday: November  had some great ways with cauliflower.  Here are some which I'd like to share with you today. 

The pic at the top was brought over by Vegetarian & Cooking – Cheesy Cauliflower Tots w Balsamic Ketchup  - yum!

Cauliflower Fritters, Maltese Style by I'm Turning 60 – look delicious, Margaret!

Gluten Free Breadsticks by Gluten Free A-Z Blog – who would have guessed they were cauliflower!

And for some unusual flavours, here is Za'atar Roasted Cauliflower w Pine Nuts, Dates & Thyme – thanks to Finding Time for Cooking!

For other cauliflower dishes head over to this Pinboard

Food on Friday: November 2019

It's the second Friday of the month so here is Food on Friday. 

As you can see, there are 3 new themes – Cakes, Potato/Sweet Potato and Cauliflower.  I hope you'll find some great stuff in your archives to share.

Feel free to add a number of things under each category and come back later in the month to add more if you would like to.   

To add your dishes, just put the name of the dish together with your blog name/name into the first Mr Linky box you will find below.  Then paste the url for your post about it into the second box. Mr Linky now makes you tick a compliance box which I always forget first time!

I'll be pinning your creations to the relevant Pinboards – Cakes, Potato/Sweet Potato and Cauliflower.  

Have fun!

PS If you check my top tabs you will see a draft schedule of themes for 2020.  All comments most welcome!

Cauliflower Steak

This dish was a first for me.  I have roasted a cauliflower before but have never cooked it like a steak.

Ingredients:

Cauliflower – sliced into steaks

Olive oil/butter

Alfredo pasta sauce

Salt & Pepper

Turmeric

Parsley and crispy shallots (for garnish)

Method:

Put your slices of cauliflower into a hot pan with olive oil and butter and let it sizzle away until it is nice and brown.  Through a combination of impatience and nervousness I never leave mine to fry quite long enough.

If you wanted you could then transfer the cauliflower to the oven to cook through but I decided not to.  I don't mind it al dente.

While your cauliflower steaks are frying heat your Alfredo sauce.  I added turmeric for colour (and it's supposed to be good for you) and seasoned the sauce with salt and pepper.

Serve your steak with the sauce and a garnish of parsley and crispy shallots.  You can get these at the Asian section of the supermarket.

Curried Cauliflower in a Salad Reprised

I like to change up salads by using vegetables that are normally served hot.  This time I added curried cauliflower florets.

You need to boil the cauliflower for 5 minutes in salted water.  Then drain them and refresh them in cold water to stop further cooking at that point.  Drain again and pat dry with paper towel.

Heat some olive oil and 1/4tsp of curry powder in a pan and fry up your cauliflower until it has golden edges.  Take it out and rest it on kitchen paper.

Don't throw the curried oil out.  Keep it to use in the dressing.  Deglaze the pan with white balsamic vinegar (or whatever is your favourite vinegar) and pour that into the oil.  Add 1 clove of garlic finely chopped or crushed into the oil/vinegar mix while it is warm.  It will take the raw edge off the garlic.  Add ½ tsp of hot chilli jam (or other chilli sauce).

Prepare your other salad ingredients but don't assemble your salad until right before you need it and the dressing mustn't go on until you are serving up.  The reason for this is the inclusion of shredded lettuce which just goes all yucky if it is mixed with other salad vegetables too early and starts deteriorating the moment the dressing hits it.  In fact because of this I quite often don't put lettuce into salads.

So apart from the curried cauliflower I had:

¼ red onion

Apple cucumber (which was fiddly to peel and I felt a little bit bitter – I'll use the standard ones next time)

Tomato

Shredded lettuce (just a few leaves sliced thinly)

Capsicum (bell pepper)

A little bit of raw zucchini

A hint of chopped fresh basil and mint

This was not the prettiest salad but the flavour of the curry and the cauliflower was very nice.