Trendy cauliflower but not how you expect - rice? pizza?
"It’s not rice and I don’t think you will be able to fool anyone into thinking it is however, it is pretty damn tasty" The Huffington Post
I had vaguely noticed various references to cauliflower rice - maybe in the Coles Magazine - I'm not sure, but today somebody mentioned it as yet another food trend that is all the rage, so I decided to look into it a bit.
My first thought was, where did it come from? Whose idea was it? One of those very experimental cooks (they're all gathering here for the 50 Best Restaurants do this week), a health freak, or some unsung hero of a home cook somewhere?
Well, as always, I am of course way out of date and it has been around for several years now - and it basically stems from the paleo diet people. Who don't do grains - so what to do as a substitute for rice and/or couscous? Well apparently cauliflower.
Indeed it has become so popular that you can now buy it at your local supermarket - well Woolworths anyway - already riced and cooked for you. I imagine it's frozen. Coles doesn't appear to have a similar product, but I've only checked their online store. And I have to say that you really wonder why people need to have it already made. It's really a very simple thing to do - I have checked out the recipes and all the variations. The Guardian doesn't yet seem to have got around to cooking the perfect cauliflower rice, but it's probably only a matter of time.
The BBC, however, has. And having tried three different methods they came to the following conclusions. First of all to prepare your cauliflower for cooking you either put it in your food processor (not too much at a time - and some suggest a grating cutter), or you grate it on a box cutter - which size you use is most likely up to you. Then you end up with something that looks a bit like this:
To cook it they tried 3 basic methods. In the microwave - with cling film over the top - pretty successful but not all that tasty. Stir fried - tasty but gluggy they found and it clumped together. So I'm guessing you can probably achieve great results but it might take a bit more skill.
Their favourite method was to roast it - toss with a little oil, spread out on a baking tray lined with baking paper and roast at 200º. They said this was nuttier. Oh and you should move it around from time to time.
Of course this is your basic rice - and like real rice you can flavour it with other things - spices, herbs, vegetables - let your imagination run wild.
Then you can use it as just an accompaniment to a curry or something, or as a part of a more composite dish like the one shown below which comes from my 5/2 diet book. Because, of course, the other thing about cauliflower rice as opposed to real rice is that it is lower in carbs.
And I was going to leave it at that, but one of the articles I found made a passing reference to cauliflower pizza bases - I was intrigued and checked it out some more. Now I haven't tried this but I did find a recipe on the mommypotamus's blog site that actually looked quite tasty:
Cauliflower mash is, I guess, pretty obvious, but I guess you could use the pastry concept for other things too - though one article I read implied that pizza bases made from cauliflower were soggy not crisp. The lady who devised the one above may have got over this by cooking the base first. That's my guess anyway.
Cauliflower is cheap at the moment, so maybe I should try.
