Cauliflower Gougères

Which came first, the reader/writer or the cook? 

Some days I think it’s the former. I was a voracious reader growing up and still am. I’d have my nose buried in a Babysitter’s Club while vacationing in Hawaii, preferring preteen drama over boiling magma. When I worked in the far reaches of East Williamsburg, I’d spend my 10-minute walk from the subway staring at my Kindle, stepping over broken glass and ignoring honking truck drivers. 

But maybe I was a cook first? In elementary school, I wanted DIY lunches like Lunchables and tuna salad kits, even if my classmates found me weird. In high school, I was sent to the principal’s office for using a George Foreman grill in the cafeteria. 

But it’s dishes like these that prove I’m a little bit of both. I was thinking about cream puffs and their French dough, pâte à choux, meaning cabbage pastry. Literally… cabbage! This is the same dough that’s used for sweets like éclairs, profiteroles and savories like gougères. 

Once I’m fascinated by words and food, I’m off to the races. I immediately thought of cabbage’s versatile cousin, the cauliflower, and then the cauliflower gougère was born. 

I love these because the cauliflower is perfectly tender -- enough bite to give the rich gougère some texture and freshness, but supple enough to melt with the buttery, cheesy dough. See? It pays to be a bookworm.

RECIPE 

Adapted from David Lebovitz

½ cup water
3 tablespoons butter
¼ teaspoon salt
⅛ teaspoon freshly-ground pepper
½ cup flour
2 large eggs
⅜ cup grated Gruyère
⅜ cup cauliflower rice 

Preheat oven to 425 degrees and line baking sheet with parchment paper. 

Mix water, butter, salt and pepper in saucepan. Heat on medium until butter is melted. Add flour all at once, then mix until well incorporated and the dough pulls from the side of the saucepan. Remove from heat and let cool for 2 minutes. 

Add eggs, one at a time. Mix them immediately so the eggs don’t cook. Mix until there are no more lumps, about 2 minutes (or use a stand mixer with the paddle attachment). Add cheese and cauliflower and mix until incorporated. 

Using hands, form small balls of dough and place on baking sheet. When done, clean the dough off your hands. Keeping hands wet, smooth out the gougères so they are nice and rounded off. 

Bake at 425 for 5 minutes, then lower to 375. Bake for 15-20 minutes, when they are just starting to get color. Remove tray from the oven and create a small slit in the side of each gougère with a sharp knife. Return tray to oven and bake for another 5 minutes, until lightly golden brown.

TIPS & TRICKS 

• Don’t want to buy cauliflower rice? Good for you! It’s easy to make. Just add cauliflower to your blender with enough water to cover it. Pulse on its highest speed until you get the consistency you want. Then drain the cauliflower.

• Typically gougères are piped using a pastry bag. The cauliflower rice makes the dough a bit less fluid, so I opted to use my hands instead. But if you want these to look perfect, feel free to use a pastry bag with the largest tip or no tip at all.

• Why puncture the side? This allows steam to exit -- extra important because we’re using moist cauliflower rice -- resulting in a crisp exterior.

Book Club Bites: Cauliflower Soup with Balsamic-Olive “Caviar”

People have asked me why there aren’t more modernist cuisine (aka molecular gastronomy) dishes in Food Whore. You know, foams and clouds, things made with aerators and anti-griddles. I find that type of cooking extremely fascinating, but looking back, I must have subconsciously only included dishes I know and understand. I’ve never experimented with sodium alginate or soy lecithin. Never made a consommé with a centrifuge.

But there is one exception -- “potato pearls with black, green, and crimson ‘caviar’ in a cauliflower cream nage”, which pops up in Chapter 14. You can easily make “caviar” using agar-agar, a plant-based gelatin that’s available in health food stores, gourmet shops, and Asian markets. It looks fancy, but it’s not. And the process is so fun. 

INGREDIENTS

A video posted by Jessica Tom (@jessica_tom) on Oct 15, 2015 at 8:08am PDT

“Caviar”
8 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
2 tablespoons Kalamata olive brine
2 tablespoons fish sauce
2 grams powdered agar-agar
vegetable oil

Soup
1 head of cauliflower (about 1.5 lbs)
2 shallots
1 large white onion
5 cups of water
olive oil
salt
ground pepper 

Fill a tall glass with vegetable oil and place in the freezer for 30 minutes. Briefly boil the balsamic vinegar, olive brine and fish sauce with the agar-agar, until dissolved. Using a pipette, drop the liquid into the cold oil. The drops will immediately solidify and turn into spheres. (If yours don’t, try chilling your oil longer or using a taller glass. The droplets need to cool and congeal by the time they reach the bottom of the glass). Refrigerate until ready to use.

In a large pot, heat olive oil and sweat chopped shallots and onion on low for about 15 minutes. They should be translucent and not brown (you want the soup to be as white as possible so the “caviar” will visually pop).

Add diced cauliflower and water and boil on medium-high for 20 minutes, until cauliflower is very soft but not sulfurous (as overcooked cauliflower is prone to be). Add one tablespoon of butter and blend on the highest setting your blender has. You want the soup very, very smooth.   

Let the soup cool for 10 minutes, so the “caviar” doesn’t melt. Spoon the “caviar” on top. Serves 4-6.   

Whole Roasted Cauliflower with Tomato, Capers & Beluga Lentils

Or, in praise of the mushy vegetable. 

It's not in vogue to eat mushy vegetables. They must be crispy and seared. Fried or pickled. They must snap, appear vibrant green rather than murky olive. But, can we admit that mushy vegetables are kinda good? 

I'm talking good in an nostalgic way, sure. The way mushy green beans taste like your summer camp in the Catskills. Or how mushy, underseasoned peas take you to the time you licked your baby brother's spoon clean. 

But also good in an objective way. Cruciferous vegetables are unequivocally stinky when they're cook to oblivion -- but isn't that the whole point? Sauerkraut, boiled cabbage, collard greens and ham hocks. All overcooked, the opposite of al dente, all delicious. 

Leave it to April Bloomfield to take the cliché of the greenish-gray British veg and turn it into something delicious. This recipe is adapted from her excellent new cookbook, A Girl and Her Greens: Hearty Meals from the Garden. 

I made one modification out of necessity. I was cooking for vegetarians and someone allergic to fish, so anchovies were out of the question. In went capers, lentils, and some caramelized onions to give this some brine and body. I served this as the main course -- like a whole roast chicken and leg of lamb -- and carved it tableside. No knife needed though. The cauliflower was soft and I used a serving spoon. 

RECIPE: 
(adapted from April Bloomfield's A Girl and her Greens )

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Trim and core cauliflower. Heat olive oil in a cast-iron pot (I used a 7-quart Le Creuset) and sear the cauliflower on all sides. Remove cauliflower and add 3 diced garlic cloves, 2 tablespoons of capers, and 3/4 teaspoon finely chopped rosemary. Stir until fragrant, then add 1 28-oz can of peeled plum tomatoes (cut the tomatoes before hand), 1/4 cup dry white wine, 3 large pinches of chili flakes. 

Return cauliflower to pot and baste with tomato liquid. Simmer for 5 minutes until the tomato mixture is thickened, then cover and place in oven and roast for 30-45 minutes, depending on your preferred mushy level (I did 45 minutes for peak softness). Every 10 minutes, baste the cauliflower with the tomato liquid.

In the meantime, cook 1 cup of beluga lentils in a separate pot (rinse them, cover with 2 cups of water, bring to boil until water is at surface, then cover and simmer on low until lentils are tender, about 20 minutes). Sauté three sliced onions (pearl onions are fun, too) in olive oil until golden brown.

When the cauliflower is ready, mix the lentils and onions with the tomato sauce and serve. 

Kale Miso Soup

There's a Buddhist monastery near my parents' house. It is, technically, all-you-can-eat. Now I'm not ashamed to say I like a good buffet. In the NYC area, the best is no doubt East Buffet in Flushing, a lavish banquet hall that has every permutation of Chinese (and some Japanese) food, plus the crown jewels of any Chinese buffet: lobster and Peking Duck.

The United Nations used to  rotate international lunch buffets in the Delegates' Dining Room, but I've heard they've since downscaled. I overdosed on rice krispie treats at Goofy's Kitchen in DisneyWorld and I haven't touched a krispie since.

But a Buddhist buffet. Sure you can gorge yourself on a cruise or in Vegas, but in an ascetic monastery that practices unleashing yourself from earthly desires? It just doesn't seem right.

But if there were a Buddhist buffet where you could eat with abandon, this is the type of thing you'd eat. I made this because I was sick and I wanted something nourishing and alive. Like, fermented alive. That's where the miso came from.

But that wasn't enough to be a meal so I boosted it with more goodness: seaweed, soft tofu, edamame, cauliflower, broccoli, kale, and whole cloves of garlic. The recipe is too simple and I feel like writing it out is condescending. It's just a pot generously filled with good things, boiled until cooked. It's lavish, but in a simple sort of way.