A Piquant Parsley dressing for a Whole Roasted Cauliflower

Cauliflowers are a meaty sort of vegetable, aren’t they? Amenable to being treated as “steaks” and the like, as is the new trend. But not, I’ve often heard said, easy to like. They’re not an inherently tasty vegetable like the aubergine or the tomato–which apparently suits the caterpillars just fine, because our flower heads are often living biomes that have to be meticulously treated in salt water baths to extricate them critters. (That bothers me less than knowing the flowers have been so exposed to pesticides, the bugs wouldn’t come near them anyway).

But, gosh, they can be dramatic.

For us in Pondicherry, winters bring cauliflowers. Big-big, white-white. And in my kitchen garden, winters bring cool weather-loving herbs like dill and parsley. The first tomatoes are starting to ripen. I follow those leads, is all I ever do.

Indian cookery tends to approach the cauliflower as a salvage operation: overcook it and douse it in spices, because the thing is unpalatable otherwise. I hold out for a less cynical approach–which is also less labor-intensive.

Roasting the cauliflower keeps some of its original bite and flavor. And adds a welcome crunch.

A piquant dressing adds creaminess and depths and breadths of enlivening tastes.

The rest is up to you. This parsley dressing works on salads in general, so you could shredd cabbages or cut tomatoes and toss sprouts on there as you please, to create a context from which your grand dressed flower shall now rise.

Piquant Parsley Dressing for a Whole Roasted Cauliflower Salad

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Ingredients

  

• 1 whole cauliflower with leaves removed and stem trimmed
• A few teaspoons olive or other nutty oil for roasting
• Mixed salad ingredients such as tomatoes, shredded cabbage, sprouts, lettuces etc.

For the piquant parsley dressing:

• 10-15 Almonds or hazelnuts plus a few more to chop and garnish
• 2-3 cloves of garlic
• 1/4 cup Extra Virgin Olive oil or substitute with a nutty oil of your choosing
• 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
• 1 small bunch of flat-leaf Parsley, or a combination of parsley, basil, and coriander leaves
• A few splashes of White Wine Vinegar or the juice of a large lemon
• Red pepper flakes to taste
• Brown sugar or jaggery to taste
• salt to taste

Instructions

 

Roasting the cauliflower:

• Preheat oven to 180C/375C
• Place the whole cauliflower on a baking sheet and rub with the olive or other oil. Season with salt and stick in the oven for about 30 minutes, or until the florets are browning.

For the piquant parsley dressing:

• Toss all your ingredients into a blender and whizz away!

Assembly:

• Place the roasted cauliflower on a serving dish, and arrange the other salad ingredients all around.

Notes

Even a decent sized cauliflower head takes a fair bit of dressing, but if you have some left over–don’t fret. It serves really well with all manner of salads, so save it and use it within a few days to pep up your next one!

You can also vary the taste of this dressing by using lime juice in place of white wine vinegar, or a nice truffle or other nutty oil in place of extra virgin olive. Use cashews in place of almonds and hazelnuts. This is a wonderfully flexible recipe so, mix it up!