"Eat More Veggies" recipe: roasted cauliflower

Roasted vegetables, when done right, may well be the salvation of reluctant vegetable eaters seeking to improve their nutrition. Just as with meats, the dry-heat method of roasting causes the target food item to give up some of its moisture content, resulting in a great concentration of flavors. It also browns the food, which not only ups the flavor content some more but also adds a nutty savory richness that is nigh irresistable. Naturally-sweet vegetables such as onions and red peppers become so sweet they're almost like veggie-candy. Sliced winter squashes roasted without any sugar whatsoever are so good, you'll never do that Thanksgiving candied sweet potato with marshmallow thing ever again. And when roasted, garlic becomes the vegetable equivalent of crack, it's so damn addictive.

Note, however, that qualifier I threw in at the very start: "when done right." Yes, it has been my sad fate to have experienced roasted vegetables done wrong, and let me tell you, it is not a pretty scene. The main offenders I have noticed here are 1) incorrect temperature and timing, producing wan, mushy veggies with no golden brown of caramelization; and 2) using way too much oil to lube up the veggies for their sojourn in the oven, resulting in food so slimy-greasy that even in my most fat-drenched eating days I found them irredeemably disgusting.

The first problem is easily solvable by correcting one's roasting technique. Despite those hopeful articles that surface every now and then about how to speed-roast at high temperatures (usually applied to poultry), roasting at its best is not a particularly speedy or high-heat process. Vegetables, thankfully, do roast up faster than meats, but you should still expect your panfuls of veg to spend a minimum of 30 minutes, and more like 45 or even longer, at no higher than 350 degrees F--and that's only after you've chopped them up into chunks to expose more surface area to the oven's heat.

The second problem is admittedly a little trickier. Even before I went on the health regimen, I found it was an extremely fine line between just enough oil and too much. It seemed to work best to toss the veggies in a big bowl with just a little oil plus whatever seasonings were desired, hopefully leaving any excess oil behind in the bowl when I transferred the veg to their roasting utensils. But even then, sometimes they'd still wind up a little oilier than I found palatable.

This is where those damnfool non-stick cooking sprays prove themselves to be more than just a dieter's convenience ingredient, and an actual boon to a cooking process. Because they are light sprays, with soy lecithin diluting the oil content, you can spray away as needed and not worry about overdosing on oil.

Admittedly, I haven't yet found an olive-oil-flavored spray that has good enough flavor to recommend itself, but if you want a good olive oil flavor on your roasted veggies, you can simply drizzle a little extra-virgin oil of one's choice on the veggies after they've finished roasting. You'd probably want to do it this way anyhow, as EVOO's lovely flavors would never survive the long heat of the roasting process.

While onions, bell peppers, garlic, and eggplant seem to be the veggies you most often find roasted on restaurant menus and such, there are many more that also make great roasting fodder. The main requirement seems to be that the vegetable be reasonably chunky, so that it can stand up to roasting without drying up to a cinder. Asparagus is mighty yummy roasted; so are beets. But one of my new faves in the roaster is cauliflower.

Now I adore cauliflower, but it never occurred to me to roast the stuff until I stumbled upon this monumentally long and enthusiastic topic on the subject over on eGullet. With that as inspiration, I began to experiment, and eventually came up with a method that pleased me and conformed to my food regimen. This method is so blissfully simple, I almost feel a bit of a fraud calling it a "recipe." Maybe I should just call it a technique. Whatever. It works, and it's pretty damn yummy. In fact, I've got a bowl of the stuff by my computer right now as I'm typing this, which I'm intermittently munching on as if they were potato chips--only much healthier.

So here's what I do:

1. Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Take one head of fresh, high-quality cauliflower and break it down into flowerettes, as uniform in size as you can manage. I find chunks somewhere around the size of an apricot, or maybe a hair larger, seem to work really well. Don't throw away the core or stem--trim them up a bit and cut them into chunks, a bit smaller than the flowerettes since the stem/core stuff is a little denser.
3. Take a couple of roasting pans or rimmed cookie sheets, and spray generously with cooking spray. Spread your cauliflower out evenly in the pans in a single layer. Give the vegetables a generous spray, sprinkle with salt and/or other spices as the spirit moves you, and then give the veggies in the pans a good stirring, to more evenly distribute the seasonings and to make sure they're well-coated with the cooking spray.
4. Slide the trays, uncovered, into the oven, and roast away. Once the cauliflower starts picking up a little browning, stir it around a couple of times more to expose unbrowned surfaces to the oven's heat.
5. When the veggies have gotten some nice browning all over, and are tender but still with a little "al dente" crunch to them, remove from the oven, and devour as desired. You'll notice the veggies will have lost a significant amount of volume due to moisture loss--but a whole head of cauliflower still makes a goodly pile of roasted product.

These are great to eat as is. They really are at their absolute best hot from the oven, but they're also quite nice at room temperature. And I haven't yet had opportunity to try this, but I bet roasted cauliflower would make an absolutely killer soup. Hmmmm ... I feel another cooking experiment coming on!

Comments

[foodmomiac]

Yum, one of my very favorite things in the whole world. I have a new variance for you to try next time you cook this up - try SLICING the cauliflower instead of breaking it up into little florets. I read about this on eGullet, I think. It creates more of the little crunchies.
Have you tried roasted artichokes yet? I just attempted them this past weekend - a revelation. I blogged about it just two nights ago.

[mizducky]

Howdy, foodmomiac! Nope, haven't tried roasting artichokes yet, but I just clicked through to your blog--lovely purple 'chokes, I had no idea they came in that color!--and I agree, that sounds really yummy, and less fuss than steaming the darn things. So I'll be sure to give it a go the next time I see some nice 'chokes on sale.

As to slicing the cauliflower--you know, I saw that same tip on eGullet, and I tried it sliced ... and for whatever reason, I kinda like roasting the little flowerettes better. Dunno why ... I think I just like the flowerette shape more. I can be funny that way. :-)

Thanks for stopping by!