cauliflower and potato, indian style

using up: cauliflower.

This didn’t go quite to plan, but turned out utterly delicious.  I don’t suppose we’ll ever be able to recreate it, though.

I set a pan of potatoes to parboil, intending to deep fry them later, and put a cut up cauli in the steamer on top.  Pete did Indian spices - coriander, cumin, tumeric, fenugreek, cardamon seeds and allspice - and whizzed up ginger and garlic and a green chilli.  The timer went, and I put the steamer on the draining board while I finished emptying the dishwasher.  And forgot all about it!

When I remembered, the potatoes were pretty mushy.  I turfed them into a wok with some groundnut oil, but they were very soft, and wouldn’t take a crispy edge.  Nothing ventured, nothing gained.  Pete fried off the ginger and garlic, while I added the spices to the potato mush, and then the cauliflower.

We then put a small tin of tomato purée in with the ginger garlic, cooked it down a little, then tipped that into the vegetable mess.  Served it with rice, and it really was lovely - just the sort of texture I like from comfort food!

It made a second tub for the freezer too!

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cauliflower cheese

Last night’s supper was cauliflower cheese, accompanied by potatoes roasted in duck fat.

Not especially “reactive”, but a lovely meal concocted out of things we had.  I’m not going to tell you how to make a cheese sauce, because I don’t weigh or measure anything - I’ve been making it too long for that.

But add some grain mustard to the sauce mix for a bit of bite, and sprinkle some breadcrumbs on the dish before it goes into the oven (this is why I don’t like bread thrown away!). The potatoes were parboiled, then roasted in duck fat (which keeps forever, as far as I can see, in a bowl in the fridge).

So you can make a really lovely meal out of a few bobs’ worth of veg and a bit of cheese and stuff.  And no meat, so cheaper, and kinder to the environment according to the UN.

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