I haven't cooked with cauliflower more than two or three times in my life, but one of my favorite ways to eat it is an Indian dish with green peas and either potatoes or chickpeas, in a tomato-based curry sauce. Tonight I made it for the first time, synthesizing several versions in cookbooks here to come up with my own 'keeper' recipe.
That's a little project that EYB makes a whole lot easier. A couple of days ago I searched my 'kitchen shelf' books for cauliflower curry recipes, then bookmarked the promising ones with 'r.cauliflower curry'. ['r.' bookmarks are what I use to gather multiple versions of a specific dish from different sources.]
Yesterday I got out the five or six cookbooks and magazines involved and looked up the recipe in each. I made a chart in my cooking notebook, with ingredients down the left side and across the page a column for each version (along with the page number in the book or magazine, so that it's easy to go back to check something). Down the columns I fill in the quantity of the ingredient each version calls for.
Sometimes this process makes it clear that I should just use one of the existing versions, and change things if needed based on the result. Other times, and this was one of those, it makes sense to record my own 'consensus', blended version. So on the opposite page, across from the ingredient column, I wrote in the amount of each ingredient I planned to use. Then I wrote out the procedures (after reading over most of the versions' directions).
Tonight I followed my synthesized recipe, and it was *exactly* right, just the taste and texture I was hoping for.
Thanks a million, Eat Your Books!
The versions underlying tonight's big success came from Julie Sahni, Deborah Madison, Anna Thomas, and Marian Morash.
How it goes:
Prep all the ingredients and have them lined up near the stove. On a back burner, put on a small pot of water to boil.
In a deepish pot on a front burner, heat oil (or ghee) on medium high. Fry mustard seeds and cumin seeds in the hot oil until the cumin darkens and the mustard seeds begin to pop (about 30 seconds), then add slivered onion and cook for a couple of minutes, until the onions turn translucent. Add minced ginger and stir for a moment, then add ground spices (coriander, cumin, turmeric, cayenne, cardamom) all at once and stir briefly to combine and warm through. Immediately add a head's worth of bite-sized cauliflower florets and stir until the cauliflower is completely coated with spices. Stir and shake often for the next five minutes or so, as the coated cauliflower cooks; go until it begins to wilt and sear.
Add a cup of tomato sauce (or puree or finely crushed tomatoes), stir well, and cook for another three minutes. Then add cooked or canned chickpeas and stir to combine thoroughly. Stir in a cup or two of boiling water and some salt, turn down the heat, cover, and let simmer for 15 minutes or so, until cauliflower is tender. Add frozen green peas, let simmer a minute or two more, and serve.