I think I’ve mentioned in the past that I’m not really a fan of cauliflower, unless it is deep fried into a pakora. I had bought some with this intent a couple of weeks ago, and didn’t get around to using the cauliflower. In an attempt to use up the cauliflower, I decided to simmer it on the stove and puree it into a pasta sauce – and it was delicious!
Cheddar cauliflower was one of the items in my CSA delivery this week, so I decided to use it to recreate my recipe from last week, with some minor tweaks in technique. I recently watched an America’s Test Kitchen episode where they made a broccoli cheddar soup (as a side note, did you know you can watch these episodes on Amazon Prime streaming for free?). I wanted to follow their technique on cooking the vegetables to see if I could get the same nutty flavour they mentioned during the episode.
Ingredients
- 1 tbsp butter (or olive oil if you’re opting for a vegan recipe)
- 1 head of cauliflower, trimmed and chopped
- 1 small onion, roughly chopped
- 2 cloves garlic
- salt to taste
- 1/2 tsp dry mustard
- 1/4 tsp white pepper
- 20 leaves of fresh basil
- milk to thin out the mixture after it has cooked – almond milk would work great here to keep the recipe vegan
- Melt the butter in a pan, and toss in the onions and cauliflower until it begins to soften.
- Add the garlic, pepper and mustard and salt to taste and stir to coat.
- Add enough water to barely cover the cauliflower, set the temperature to low heat, cover and simmer for 30 minutes.
- Add the fresh basil and puree the mixture – add enough milk to thin out the sauce a bit.
- Toss the sauce with your favourite pasta.
I added sun dried tomatoes and a handful of fresh spinach in this week’s batch, which also gave the sauce a great flavour. The recipe can easily be made into a vegan option and would taste really great with some nutritional yeast mixed into the sauce. This was a great substitute for a traditional alfredo sauce for a weeknight dinner and a perfect way to pretend like you’re not really eating cauliflower.
My Vegetarian Kitchen 
I’ll give that one a try for sure. How can you not like cauliflower? My absolutely favourite food is cauliflower with cheese sauce. Could eat it everyday but then i would end up looking like a cauliflower!
That looks delish! What a new and creative way to use cauliflower 🙂
Come and link up this great recipe at this week’s CSA link party…http://inherchucks.com/2012/05/31/whats-in-the-box-28/. Hope to see you there!
You are a genius! Can’t wait to get a cauliflower to do this.
You also try making mashed cauliflower! You basically steam it, and season it like you would mashed potatoes. People really can’t tell the difference when I feed it to them without mentioning what the mash is made of.