I had to get some veggies in.

Time: 1 hour 10 minutes

Difficulty: 1/5

Ingredient Availability: 4/5

I haven’t been eating many vegetables lately. Trying all these recipes that I end up eating for most of the week just makes it kinda hard to incorporate vegetables. Realizing this, I decided to try one of the vegetable recipes in the Italian American cook book. I like cauliflower, and the pictures looked good, so I decided to try the Sicilian roasted cauliflower.

Key Ingredients and Omissions:

While I wouldn’t really identify any of the ingredients in this recipe as key, I do need to point out that I couldn’t find Hungarian sweet paprika, so I used hot Hungarian paprika. I also, just used fennel seeds whole instead of grinding them.

Tools:

• Sharp Knife

Cooking Review:

Vinaigrette: 40 minutes

To make the sauce, the rice vinegar, honey salt, raisins, and water were mixed and brought to a boil and simmered until the raisins were soft. The mixture was then transferred to a blender along with some lemon juice and olive oil and blended it all together until smooth. The capers were stirred in at the end.

Cauliflower: 30 minutes

While the Vinaigrette was coming to a boil, I made the spice mix. I then cut up the head of cauliflower and mixed the olive oil with the spice mix. The cauliflower was then tossed with the oil and spice mixture before being spread out on a parchment lined baking sheet. I baked the cauliflower for 17 minutes before tossing half of them in the sauce.

Analysis:

I preferred this cauliflower without the sauce. Although the sauce was good, it really muted a lot of the flavors and took over. The sauce adds some tanginess and sweetness, but hides most of the flavors from the spice mixture. Without the sauce, the cauliflower has a little spiciness and an interesting combination of flavors from the spices. I also liked how the cauliflower retained form crunchiness and wasn’t mush or completely soft. Overall, I was impressed by this recipe. It was really easy to make and would be even faster without making the vinaigrette. With all things considered, I’d give this recipe a 9/10.