cauliflower

Welcoming Santa Maria’s Mother Home: A Steamed Cauliflower Recipe

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Santa Maria’s mother was released from the hospital on Sunday, and after enduring a long cab ride home and facing the mountainous climb up our four flights of stairs and across the Hillary Step to our landing, she made it home. I cooked up a fish dinner to welcome her back. It wasn’t the Rose Revived Flounder extravaganza that Santa Maria had planned, but it was pretty tasty all the same—I sautéed the fish, roasted red potatoes, and steamed fresh cauliflower, which I topped with melted sharp cheddar cheese.

When I was growing up, my mother convinced her children to eat broccoli and cauliflower by putting cheddar cheese on them. This side dish was a favorite of my childhood. I still love it, but I don’t often make it, and I don’t know why. Possibly because my roasted cauliflower is so delicious. Or possibly because I have some misguided notion about what it means to grow up. Is it really necessary to leave behind the tastes of childhood? Depends on the childhood, I suppose.

As it turns out, cauliflower is a near-perfect vegetable to serve to an eight-six-year old who just got out of surgery. It is loaded with vitamin C; one cup has 91.5% of an adult’s daily recommend value. And, according to the World’s Healthiest Foods website, cauliflower is:

an excellent source of vitamin K and a very good source of omega-3 fatty acids (in the form of alpha-linolenic acid, or ALA), cauliflower provides us with two hallmark anti-inflammatory nutrients. Vitamin K acts as a direct regulator of our inflammatory response, and ALA is the building block for several of the body's most widely-used families of anti-inflammatory messaging molecules. In addition to these two anti-inflammatory components, one of the glucosinolates found in cauliflower-glucobrassicin-can be readily converted into an isothiocyanate molecule called ITC, or indole-3-carbinol. I3C is an anti-inflammatory compound that can actually operate at the genetic level, and by doing so, prevent the initiation of inflammatory responses at a very early stage.

Cauliflower’s health benefits aside, the best part of the dinner came when Santa Maria’s mother asked for seconds of everything. The whole time she was in the hospital, she ate virtually nothing. Not any more.

Steamed Cauliflower with Ceddar Cheese

  • 1 head of cauliflower, rinsed and cut into small florets
  • slices of cheddar cheese, to taste

Steam the cauliflower until slightly softened.

Toss the florets in a bowl and drape with slices of cheddar cheese.

Cover the dish, and by the time you get everything else to the table, the cheese will be melted.

 

 

The Hopping Best Recipe for Roasted Cauliflower

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Roast_cauliflower

Parents who want  their children to eat vegetables often find themselves in a typical predicament–they start repeating themselves. It’s hard not to do so. The conventional thinking is that kids need to be exposed to vegetables over and over (consider, even, the “50 Exposure Rule”) before they’ll start eating their greens.

I don’t know if this is true. Nina and Pinta have their own crazy logic when it comes to vegetables. They’ll eat broccoli, asparagus, the occasional green bean, spinach (if it’s on pizza or in a frozen empanada), which, come to think of it, is not bad at all. Pinta also loves peas, especially if they are left frozen. How strange is that?

There are a number of tricks that can be employed to get kids to eat what’s good for them. I’m not an advocate of some of them, such as sneaking greens into foods a la Jessica Seinfeld’s “Deceptively Delicious,” but as the King put it, “50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can’t Be Wrong.” People are looking for an easy way to get children to eat better.

I will share a few of my methods. The first and most reliable one is to employ a balsamic vinaigrette. It’s easy to make–go with about one part vinegar to three parts olive oil and add salt and pepper. The children like to dip the heads of broccoli in it. They love it with their asparagus. The dressing will sweeten everything it touches.

Tonight, I came home from work early to have dinner with the family, and Santa Maria introduced me to another way. Actually, Nina told me about it, and I was shocked. I had no idea things like this went on when I was out of the house. Nina said her mother let her jump on the couch (she calls it our trampoline) and eat cauliflower in the living room.

As a rule, we don’t let the kids take food out of the kitchen. Also, I thought that we would want to discourage them from jumping on the furniture. When I was a child I would have gotten in big trouble for jumping on the couch. I told Nina this and asked her which was more crazy–jumping on the couch or eating in the living room. Her answer was “eating in the living room” which goes a long way towards explaining why she calls the couch a trampoline.

Santa Maria had called me on the way home and asked me to pick up a head of cauliflower. She cooked it while we were eating pasta and bolognese. It was ready by the time we finished the dishes. It was almost the children’s bed time, but it’s important to bend the rules when it means they’ll eat their vegetables.

Off we went to the living room, where Nina pulled the cushion off the couch, tossed in on the floor, and proceeded to bounce up and down on the piece of furniture, its slip cover riding up in fruitless protest, while Santa Maria and myself sat on a neighboring couch and watched with one bowl and two plates of the cauliflower in our laps. Pinta joined her and their giddy laughter filled the room. Every so often they’d stop, hop down, and pop a floret in their mouth. We’d enjoin them not to jump while chewing. Most of the time they’d oblige. This repeated itself until the cauliflower was gone. At which point, the jumping continued until Nina hit her head on the wall. Maybe my parents were on to something.

The truth about the cauliflower is that the children don’t need to hurt themselves in order to want to eat it. When roasted the following way, it’s irresistible. I first blogged about roasting cauliflower in April, but at the risk of repeating myself, I’ll post the recipe again. It’s that good.

 

Roasted Cauliflower

  • 1 head cauliflower
  • a very little olive oil (about a teaspoon)
  • salt and pepper to taste

    Turn the oven to 350 degrees.

    Wash and cut the cauliflower into florets.

    Toss the cauliflower in a roasting pan with the olive oil and the salt and pepper.

    Put the pan in the oven, and stir occasionally.

    It should be done in about twenty minutes (the smaller you cut up the head, the faster it will cook).