Cauliflower Is Always There for You

I had a glorious weekend cooking project planned – a special lamb stew recipe. This recipe, it was slowest of slow food. You bathe the lamb in milk and herbs, massage it, read it Petrarchan love poems, pluck out a tune on the mandolin. And you cook it sooo slooooowly, so that the whole time it’s just thinking, “I’m just hanging out in the sauna with my friends, Potato and Fennel. And it feels GOOD.”

Garlic Roasted Cauliflower with Pasta

And the whole afternoon, while it’s cooking, you feel greedy and excited about the amazing meal coming your way. But you might also be worrying, “Am I worthy of such deliciousness?”

You are! We are! We all are. But, worthy though I may be, it wasn’t in the cards for me this weekend, alas. Suddenly it was Sunday afternoon, and there was no lamb, and no poetry, either.

So I made one of our classic Sunday night dinners – Garlic Roasted Cauliflower & Pasta, a comforting, luxurious meal that’s easy to make.

You can almost think of cauliflower, and other brassicas, like kale, cabbage, and brussel sprouts, like pantry items. They keep for a week to ten days in your vegetable drawer. When I pick them up at the store, I usually don’t have specific plans for them – they might be a side dish, or I might sautee the greens and wrap them in a tortilla with beans and guacamole, or I might cook them in oil and garlic and toss them with pasta, like tonight. I just know that sometime in the next ten days, I will not have a plan for dinner. And then, almost magically, I will find a head of cauliflower in my vegetable drawer. And it’s still good! It came through for me. Good old cauliflower.

I let the garlic steep in the oil while I prepare the cauliflower.

For this recipe, you roast the cauliflower with oil and garlic until it’s soft, almost a little melty, browned and sweetly carmelized. While it’s roasting, cook up about half a pound of a chunky sort of pasta, like rigatoni. Once the cauliflower and pasta are done, toss them together, making sure to get plenty of the roasting oil to coat the pasta – you can drizzle a little olive oil on your pasta if you feel you haven’t gotten enough. Finally, sprinkle generously with parmesan cheese.

Is it poetry? Maybe not, but it’s comfort food. Worthy of us, and we of it, and a perfect match for what we had in mind for the evening, anyway – getting cozy on the couch after a week and a weekend full of work.

Garlic Roasted Cauliflower & Pasta
Serves 2

Ingredients:

1 large clove garlic
1/4 cup olive oil
1 head of cauliflower
1/2 pound of chunky pasta, like rigatoni or ziti
Grated parmesan cheese

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Finely chop the garlic and combine with the olive oil. Set aside.

Cut the cauliflower into bite-sized pieces, and place the pieces in a 9X11 pan. Pour the garlic & oil over the cauliflower and toss to coat. Sprinkle liberally with salt and place the pan in the oven. Set the timer for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes has passed, stir the cauliflower to re-coat with oil and re-distribute. Stir again after another 10 minutes.

Start a large pot of water on, and when it’s boiling, add the pasta, and cook until done.

Check the cauliflower – it’s ready when the cauliflower is evenly browned and cooked through.

Toss with the pasta – be sure to get some of the oil from the pan to coat your pasta (or drizzle some oil right out of the bottle), and sprinkle with Parmesan, according to your taste (I like a lot, my husband doesn’t use any).