groove food

roasted cauliflower salad with pomegranate & hazelnuts

turn your oven up. we are about to make a salad.

prepare your palate, also. this is a salad chockablock with textures and flavors. here is a bowl of crisp, leafy, juicy, tender, crunchy things to entertain your mouth and subtly sweet, tart, peppery, toasty, herbal, warmly spiced things to make you linger. if you know the work of yotam ottolenghi and sami tamimi it will come as no surprise they are the masterminds behind such an unexpected dish. the roasted cauliflower salad we've set out to prepare is but a thimbleful from the irresistble lineup in their historically important cookbook jerusalem. 

like others in the book, this recipe merges the flavors of palestinian and israeli dishes into a unified, beautiful whole. while a cauliflower salad loaded with pomegranate, parsley and toasted hazelnuts is by no stretch a traditional dish, it is an expression of the authors' culinary imaginations where anything is possible.

what they present to us is a salad that may top the list of ultimate chilly weather salads, just the thing to make when the abundance of produce disappears but we still long to fill a big wooden bowl with stuff of the earth. like so many vegetables, cauliflower endures the heat of the oven with poise. once burnt in spots and starting to slump, it is joined with the other ingredients and a dressing quietly seductive with warm spices. is your oven on yet?

roasted cauliflower salad with pomegranate & hazelnuts

(serves 4 - 6)

2 heads cauliflower (about 3 pounds total), cored and cut or broken into small florets

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil, divided

2 tablespoons sherry vinegar

1 tablespoon maple syrup

1/2 teaspoon ground allspice

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

salt & freshly ground black pepper

1/2 cup hazelnuts, roasted and skins rubbed off as best as possible, then coarsely chopped

3/4 cup flat-leaf parsley leaves, very coarsely chopped

2 large stalks celery, cut on a diagonal into very thin slivers

2/3 cup pomegranate arils (from one medium pomegranate)

preheat the oven to 425. gently toss the cauliflower with 5 tablespoons of the olive oil and season with salt and pepper. spread the cauliflower out on two roasting pans. roast for 25 - 40 minutes, until parts of the cauliflower have turned golden brown. transfer the cauliflower to a large salad bowl to cool.

whisk the remaining olive oil, sherry vinegar, maple syrup, cinnamon, and allspice together. season with salt and pepper.

once the cauliflower is cool, add the hazelnuts, celery, pomegranate and parsley to the bowl. drizzle the dressing over and toss to combine. serve at room temperature.

notes

* this salad was slightly adapted from yotam ottolenghi and sami tamimi in their book, jerusalem. find the book here.

* to roast hazelnuts, spread them out on a baking sheet and roast for 15 - 17 minutes at 325. once cool enough to handle rub the skins off using a clean kitchen towel.

* here is a great video tutorial on seeding a pomegranate. the trick is a large bowl of water.

* i may be a bit neurotic, but i find my oven roasts better with one, not two, pans in the oven. if you have some time, try roasting the cauliflower in two batches. i think it does make a difference.

* this salad is best the day it is made, but leftovers keep well refrigerated for 2 - 3 days if you can make it last that long. it need not be a starter salad. it is great as a side dish as it can be prepared hours ahead of time.

what now, gmo's?

it's the morning after election day, and my fair trade, organic coffee with non-gmo verified coconut milk still tastes as good as it does every day. the nation elected barack obama president for a second term and california, sadly, voted not to have mandatory labels placed on food products containing genetically modified organisms. big business and big agriculture is still capable of spending their money to sway our diet and our votes. it's going to take a lot to change that, but i think yesterday is an indication that we should be incredibly hopeful about a shift in american attitudes about food, a putting down of a pepsi and a picking up of a gloriously crisp, adorably misshapen organic apple. as of right now, 47% of californians voted yes on labeling. that's over 4 million people who want to know more about their food!

maybe i am excessively an optimist, but even having the proposition 37 "right to know" measure on california's ballot tells me we are beginning to head for a saner lunchbox and dinner table. however, it is going to take tireless, concentrated effort on behalf of each and every one of us to direct this change, and it needs to happen right now, in our daily decisions. the good news is, when you start caring about food, life gets more delicious. i present to you, dear reader, just a brief list of personal actions we can make to bring better food to our tables and our communities in light of yesterday's events. here's to your appetite.

since we can't look for the "contains gmo" label look for the "non-gmo verified" label

that's right. there are hundreds of products in the market that contain this label--support them! you can read more about the non-gmo project here. 

spend more on your groceries 

at present, much of our organic food costs more than the pesticide-laden, flavoress, gmo-altered options. one way to drive those prices down is to flood the market with our demand for them, bringing more business to the table. plus, i think it could be argued that spending more on healthy, nourishing groceries in the present could save you thousands in doctor's bills down the road. it's an investment.

if you are looking to save money, buy seasonal items, stock up when items go on sale, and make friends with your freezer. it is possible to eat well on a budget, but you have to be diligent about it.

 join a csa & support local farmers

really, this is a no brainer. joining a csa brings you fresh, seasonal produce and will get you in the kitchen, eating and enjoying your vegetables. and when you support local farmers, you are giving them more power to grow the kind of food our communities so desperately need.

donate your time (and/or money) to the next measure

proposition 37 is not an ending--it is a beginning. we can use the momentum it generated for the next step: re-writing the measure and bringing it to the ballot again. if all 4 million+ citizens who voted for it banded together, we might have a serious fight against giants like monsanto. use social media to continue to share the news and keep the ball rolling.

 eat dinner together

friends--there is no more straightforward way to change our nation's attitudes about food than to discuss it with our children. we must teach them in our actions that food choices are important and there is no better (or more rewarding) place to do this than the family table.

la varenne's lamb in ragout

recipes are peculiar things. some are written, some are murmered, some even die with their maker. there are some we treasure so much we etch them on the cupboard, or know their details by rote, like a poem that plays out on the stove. each one tells a story, some more candidly than others. a recipe can begin to disclose the person who wrote it, and resurrect the place and time they lived, or at least cast a light back. but something happens when you take a recipe into your kitchen, when you roll up your sleeves, brush off the cutting board, and set to the task of making the words a meal. the recipe begins to tell you about you.

francois pierre la varenne, known for creating the founding text of modern french cuisine, wrote his recipe for "lamb in ragout" in the 17th century.  the recipe does not contain measurements, quantities, cuts, temperatures, or details on timing or doneness. in its entirety, it is two sentences, one of which is, "serve." la varenne wrote mostly for a professional audience, so he assumed those encountering it would know what to do with his first direction: roast it.

as a girl in her kitchen in 2012, there were seemingly infinite ways i could attempt la varenne's recipe. i could have chosen any cut of lamb, cubed it, left it whole, simmered it on the stove or in the oven. mushrooms could be wild or cultivated, sliced or left pristine. his recipe relied heavily on the knowledge of the cook, assumed the cook could make certain decisions, or would make certain decisions, and maybe all one really needed was a practical list of ingredients and some basic instructions.

i bring myself (sometimes wittingly, sometimes in imbecilic gesture) to every recipe. i think we all do. when given one as spare as la varenne's reads in the present, i turned to tenets gained through experience: caramelizing increases flavor and slow cooking at low temperatures produces tenderized results. when la varenne called for lamb, onions and mushrooms, i browned them before the braise. i have a penchant for browning ingredients separately, as many of them need different amounts of time to achieve the right shade of dark. it's tedious, but that is who i am in the kitchen. i will work for rewards, even subtle ones. i interpreted "fried flour" to be butter and flour browned together, like a roux. see, caramelizing! and when he directed "everything simmered well together," i slipped my now-brimming le creuset in a low oven for several hours.

i include my adaptation of la varenne's lamb in ragout below because it turned out delicious--earthy and rich, but punctuated by the brightness of citrus and capers. it almost makes me sad to include such specifics and details when the original recipe demanded such creativity and improvisation of me. if not lamb in ragout, i urge you to find a recipe you are uncomfortable with, maybe another that has traveled its way through hundreds of years, still mostly in its original form, ready to engage you and become dinner once more.

lamb in ragout

(serves 4)

2 bone-in lamb leg steaks, about 1 1/4 pound each

coarse salt & pepper

2 yellow onions, coarsely grated

3 cups thinly sliced crimini mushrooms

6 tablespoons olive oil, divided

4 tablespoons unsalted butter

4 tablespoons all-purpose flour

3 cups chicken stock

3 tablespoons aged sherry vinegar

4 cloves

2 tablespoons capers

rind peeled from 1 orange

1 bouquet garni (i used 3 stems of parsley, 3 thyme & 1 sprig rosemary all tied together with butcher twine)

set oven rack to the middle of the oven and preheat to 300. season the lamb steaks with coarse salt and pepper. add two tablespoons of the olive oil to an oven safe pot (that has a fitted lid) over medium-high heat. once the olive oil is shimmering, add the lamb steaks to the pot. brown the lamb, about 3 - 5 minutes per side. remove the lamb to a plate and add an additional 2 tablespoons of olive oil to the pot, followed by the onions. cook, stirring frequently to dislodge any browned bits on the bottom of the pan, until the onions are lightly browned, about 10 minutes. adjust the heat if necessary so the onions do not burn. small splashes of water can be added to the pot, as well, if the onions are sticking to the pan. remove the onions from the pan and set aside.

add the final two tablespoons of olive oil to the pot. once hot, add the mushrooms and cook, stirring frequently, until the mushrooms are browned, about 5 - 7 minutes. remove the mushrooms and set aside. add the four tablespoons of butter to the pot. as soon as the butter melts, add the flour, stirring frequently with a whisk. once the butter and flour smell nutty and are caramel-colored, about 3 minutes, add the chicken stock and vinegar. bring to a boil, then adjust the heat down to a simmer. stir in the capers, orange rind, bouquet garni and cooked onions and mushrooms. push the cloves into the lamb so you can easily find them later and add to the pot. place a lid on the pot and place in the oven.

cook the lamb, turning the steaks every 45 minutes, until the lamb is tender and falling off the bone, about 2 -3 hours. skim off any accumulated fat. serve the lamb with the sauce served on top.

notes

* this recipe was adapted from francois pierre la varrene in la varenne's cookery, translated by terence scully. la varenne's recipe had two sentences, mine has 22, not including ingredients.

* i served the lamb with mashed yukon gold potatoes. one steak amply feeds two this way.