i did it -- i ate a cauliflower

Hi everyone -- 

It's time to talk food. First food things first: How was Thanksgiving? How did it go?

Mom came down and visited us. We ate Thanksgiving dinner at a restaurant. You're thinking that's awful, aren't you? Here I fill my blog with food, and then Mom comes to town and I take her to a restaurant. For Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving?!? 

But I'm partial to eating Thanksgiving dinner at Chicago restaurants. It's a secret pleasure of mine. Happily, my family seems to like it too. It's because of the walk. See, you walk to the restaurant. You go thru Chicago, lovely Chicago with all it's lovely architecture, and you take the time to notice it all.  It's chilly. You step into the restaurant. You get warm. You eat great food. Then you walk home: It's chilly. You're bundled up so you're warm, but your cheeks are rosy. Lights are on in the houses. You look in. You talk about painting your walls that color, or hanging that print. Everyone points out the chandeliers. And in general, you talk. There's nothing that promotes talking more than a walk. Nothing else to be done BUT talk and that's the joy of it.

So if you -- yes, even you -- come to spend Thanksgiving with me in Chicago we will eat out at a restaurant, and have a nice 45 minute walk before and afterwards. I used to play football with my cousins after Thanksgiving and now I walk. 

Next topic: Farmer's Market Panic. I am desperate for farmer's market food -- desperate, I tell you. And I am jealous of you people who live in California and still have, what I imagine to be cornucopias tumbling with fresh produce. While you eat figs, persimmons, and probably fresh strawberries (don't tell me -- it'll only depress me), in the midwest our farmers market are down to whatever can be grown in hoop houses. There's a lot of cabbage, for instance.

Because I am now used to extremely fresh food -- so much so that I turn up my nose at the produce at Whole Foods (I know, it's sick, but their food is a bit old...)I have now done what I said I would never do. Last week, desperate for fresh produce I bought a cauliflower and a stalk of brussels sprouts. I hate brussels sprouts with a childhood hatred (called them 'little balls of rot'), so what got into me I don't know. I don't care for cauliflower either.

But I am desperate.

So imagine my surprise when I pull out my handy guide to storing fresh produce (Berkeley Farmer's Markets Fact Sheet) and read this about cauliflower:

 Cauliflower -- will last a while in a closed container in the fridge, but they say cauliflower has the best flavor the day it's bought. 

I have to eat it today?!? What?!? Imagine my dismay. I thought I could ease up to the idea of eating it. You know, think about it for a few days. Get hungry. Hungrier. Absolutely starving.

But the cauliflower's best chance to win me? Today. Today! I pulled out my cookbooks and found out Julia Child liked to cook cauliflower. Confession: I bought that cookbook -- The Art of French Cooking --  right after seeing the movie Julia & Julie, hadn't used it yet. I decided this would be a test of both Julia Child AND cauliflower.  If neither of them suited me, good-bye to both. Sometimes you've got to be a brutal declutter-er of both cookbooks and vegetables.

I made Cauliflower A La Mornay (or something like that). Basically a fancy name for cauliflower in a cheese sauce (I'm no dummy). 

Oh yum. Yum, yum, YUM.

What a revelation! First, fresh cauliflower is amazing. I swear to you that I don't think I've ever had it fresh -- not like this. Crisp in the center, a bit of a snap. No floppy florets. All snap. And pretty too.  

Second, this Julia Child recipe -- wow. The sauce was so simple in terms of ingredients -- flour, butter, milk, salt, pinch of nutmeg, a mere 1/2 cup of swiss cheese. (I'm from Wisconsin and we believe in adding more cheese than that -- I had no idea that 1/2 cup of cheese would give all the flavor I needed.)  

The complexity lay in the timing of everything. I had to make a roux (butter & flour). Not something I normally do well. But I followed Julia's direction to the letter. (Over five different pages I tell you -- I've never done this much flipping for one recipe. I did get the sense that Julia expected I would know a little more about cooking than I do and that this was only a basic...). Anyway, the roux foams for two minutes. Meanwhile the milk is brought to boiling. You take the roux off the heat, wait until it stops foaming, then you combine the hot milk and whip vigorously with a wire wisk...

uncooked -- forgot to take a cooked photo...Then this miracle happened: Oh it looked like marshmellow cream -- it got all thick. And delicious. Then I added the other ingredients: the cheese, the nutmeg. (Please read the book for the proper way to do it. I can tell I'm already romanticizing the whole incident.)   

Poured it over the blanched cauliflower. Mixed some bread crumbs with some fresh parmesan for the top. Baked for the 30 minutes. 

I cannot wait for more cauliflower. (Mom, can you believe this?)

So brussel sprouts? They're in the fridge. They keep if you keep them on the stalk. Will they stink up the house like "little balls of rot?" Stay tuned.

Any cooking adventures for you?

Amy