Chou-fleur au beurre noir

Sometimes a dish sneaks up on you with its goodness. You make it, set it on the table, and then are dumbfounded by the result. This is exactly what happened to me last week as I was unthinkingly trying to get rid of some surplus cauliflower from my organic produce box. As you may know, I love cauliflower—actually all of the cruciferous vegetables: broccoli, cabbage, kohlrabi, Brussels sprouts, rapini, all of them.

A couple of weeks ago I bought a copy of LaRousse Gastronomique. The consensus of the interewebs said to get the pre-revision version, so I bought the 1961 edition. It’s not really a cookbook, but more of an encyclopedia of food. Each entry describes the food/dish/technique in detail and then gives practical examples. I was reading through the “C” section and stumbled upon “cauliflower” or chou-fleur as the French say. I read through all of suggestions for preparation and they sounded all right, but mostly involved boiling in well-salted water, serving either hot or cold and covering with something like cheese or butter or herbs.

Later that day, I’m staring mindlessly into the fridge trying to come up with something for dinner and I thought, What the hell. I’ll just boil that cauliflower up. So I followed the directions and boiled the head whole and topped it with browned butter. Then I sliced the cooked cauliflower like a loaf of bread, plated it, and on went the browned butter (good, European-style). I served it as an entrée with a mesclun salad. It was amazing. Rich, savory, and very satisfying. This is exactly what people mean when they say “more than the sum of its parts.” Cauliflower with browned butter will most certainly make it into regular rotation at my house. I realize it doesn’t sound like much, but you really will just have to take my word for it.

Nibbles

Saturday was my writing partner's birthday. Nicholas was hosting a cocktail party and since I really didn't get it together to get him a proper present I thought, Why don't I make some party snacks. What I had in mind was something like Chex Party Mix, but you know, more Culinary Art Institutey. Of course I turned to 250 Tasty Snacks (1970). You might remember this title from back in November with the discussion of cheese balls. Anyway, there were two recipes, "Nibbles" and "Crunchy Nibblers." The recipes were very similar, but I chose the "Nibbles" because of the reliance on Worchestershire sauce as the main seasoning. I did, however, add the shoe string potatoes from the "Cruchy Nibblers," and am glad I did. I've posted a couple of the pages in case you want to try some of these spectacular snacks yourself. I think the "Creamy Anchovy Dip" looks great. I scanned it hi-res so that you can try the recipes yourself.

This recipe posed a few problems, though. Because it was only 5 degrees outside, our friend Jessie gave us a ride to the store. Serena and I tried desperately to hurry, dividing our list and buying only what we needed for the party. Well, do you know where to find shoestring potatoes? And we had dried onion soup on the list (see next post). Also, the recipe called for onion salt, garlic salt, celery salt, and salt. Well, all we had at home was celery salt and of course gray sea salt. I was really surprised at how expensive those adulterated salts are, so we just bought one--onion salt.

It turned out well. Serena called it "subtle," which it was. But I made a few choices along the way that added to the subtlety. First, I used celery salt, onion salt, and dried garlic. I left out the garlic salt and...the salt. Really, it seemed like there was PLENTY of salt in this recipe. It also called for AN ENTIRE CUP OF BUTTER! Of which half was unsalted. My friend Andrew suggested that back when this recipe was originally copyrighted (1965) people drank and smoked a lot and maybe needed the salt. I think maybe we needed the salt a little, too.