Cauliflower
Cauliflower is a most versatile and interesting veg
which lends itself to a world of possibilities beyond cheese sauce. The
key to delicious cauliflower is to use it very fresh so it is one of the
many vegetables that is really worth growing for yourself. A cauliflower
that was growing in your veg patch ten minutes before is juicy, nutty,
crisp, fresh and mellow all at the same time and is a revelation if you
have never grown one before.
If
you can’t grow your own, choose the freshest available: one grown as
close to where you live as possible and that feels firm and has a slight
dewiness to the inner leaves, gently peer inside to check. There should
be no stale cabbage smell: the slightly rank mustardy brassica odour
develops with age as the delicious nutty flavours decline, so smell your
potential purchase as well as prodding it – never mind if you get some
strange looks!
Having got your cauliflower to the kitchen use it as soon as possible,
this is not a vegetable to store till next week. If you cannot eat it
all in one sitting, I suggest you have it raw as salad the first time
and then, perhaps, cook it for a subsequent meal. Keep it in the fridge
in the meantime.
It is possible to have fresh cauliflower in the garden for at least half
the year if you choose different varieties that mature at different
times and sow them successionally. But, however careful your planning,
there are bound to be times when three caulis are demanding to be cut
simultaneously. I have never successfully frozen cauliflower: it has
always thawed to be rubbery and slightly unpleasant tasting and I think
it is a vegetable which you cannot expect to use from frozen in the same
way as you use it fresh.
The flavour of many vegetables preserves better as a cooked purée, or a
partially cooked dish, so think soup rather than florets when freezing
cauliflower and make a purée to use as a base for soups months later
when there are no more fresh caulis in the garden.
Prolonged boiling does terrible things to cauliflower, as it does to
most veg, so when cooking it do so for as short a time as possible and
preferably sautée it rather than boil; you want it to be firm not mushy
and to retain its mellow flavour.
To prepare cauliflower, break it up into small florets by cutting across
the stalks of the big sections so that the outer florets fall off and
then cut in half the middle section which does not readily subdivide.
Use the stalks, they are even more delicious than the curds, or flower
buds as they are, chunking them to the same size as the florets so that
they are all cooked at the same time. There used to be a bizarre fashion
for boiling a cauliflower whole and serving it complete in a dish. I
suppose it looked quite impressive but to soften the inner bits the
outer sections must have been drastically overcooked and quite
tasteless.
Experiment with cauliflowers, use them in
a range of ways, startS with salads, soups and stir fries.