We eat a lot of cauliflower cheese but my wife’s going to try dairy-free for a while. How do we make cauliflower appetising without cheese or cream? I’d like to see if it’s possible to make something tasty without resorting to vegan imitations of cheese sauce.

Bang bang cauliflower ! Lime juice chilli sauce sesame oil in the oven , woof!

Curry. Lamb and cauliflower makes a good curry, chickpeas even better. Madras of the like.

Other vegetables are available 😀

Anything particular about cauliflower? For it though, my first thought was roasting

Co op sell a Firecracker Cauliflower in the chilled cabinet, basically half a cauli covered in a spice paste – just needs roasting for about 35 mins. Might be worth buying one because it must be quite easy to copy it at home.

aloo gobi

Coconut milk, 1 can in a pan, mix in 4 tbl spoons of mild curry powder, 2tsp tumeric, some salt and pepper. Reduce down till its a bit thicker, pour over cauli, leave it for a few hours then oven roast, lime juice at the end.

Cauliflower Kofta

Ingredients

half a medium cauliflower (approximately 350g)
half teaspoon of fine sea salt
1 teaspoon of gharam masala
1 fresh green chilli (optional -very finely chopped)
1 teaspoon of dried fenugreek leaves (or fresh chopped coriander)
7-9 tablespoons gram flour*
Sunflower oil for shallow frying

Method
1. Remove the leaves from the cauliflower and coarsely grate the cleaned cauliflower florets and stems using a food processor, or by using a hand held grater.

2. In a large bowl, combine all the remaining kofta ingredients with the grated cauliflower and with your hands work into a dough-like mixture.
The moisture in the cauliflower should be sufficient to bind the mixture together. Add a drop of cold water if necessary the mixture feels dry. In contrast, add an extra tablespoon of gram flour if the dough does not quite bind together.

3. Roll the kofta mixture using your hands into 2-3cm diameter balls and deep or shallow fry carefully, in hot sunflower oil for 10-12 mins, on a low/medium heat until cooked through and golden brown. Remove from the oil onto kitchen paper and set aside whilst you prepare the kofta sauce.

Kofta sauce ingredients

1 teaspoon whole cumin seeds
1 coarsely chopped shallot or small white onion
2cm cube ginger
2 cloves garlic
1 or 2 finely chopped chillies (optional)
4 chopped plum or cherry tomatoes
3/4 tablespoons of tomato puree
2 teaspoons gharam masala
half a teaspoon ground turmeric
150 ml warm water from kettle
1 tablespoon light olive/sunflower oil
1 teaspoon of fresh coriander for garnish
salt for seasoning

Method for the curry sauce

1. Heat the oil in a heavy-bottomed pan on a medium heat. When hot, add the cumin seeds until they sizzle and become golden brown. Now introduce the onion, garlic and ginger and cook until the onions soften, become translucent, and start to brown.

2. Add the chillies and turmeric powder, stir for 30 seconds before introducing the tomato puree to create a spicy paste. This paste will quickly start sticking to the pan so stir in the chopped tomatoes soon afterwards and season with the gharam masala and salt. Stir continuously, until the sauce becomes glossy in appearance. At this point add 150 ml warm water from the kettle, mix, bring back to the boil, and leave to simmer for about 10 mins.

3. The curry sauce will become smooth and thicken to the consistency of pasta sauce. Slide the cauliflower kofta into the sauce. Mix in the chopped fresh herbs gently, return to the boil and simmer the koftas in the sauce for a further two mins before taking off the heat.

Serve immediately – delicious on their own garnished with chopped chives/coriander or served with fresh chapattis basmati rice, or naan.

Curry is my favourite way to eat cauliflower.

Usually roasted aloo gobi.

I marinade/spice and then roast both potatoes and cauliflower first. Then make the curry gravy. Finally add the pots and cauliflower, also of plenty of coconut milk and a few curry leaves and let finish cooking.

Key flavours: tamarind, curry, coconut. I adapted some Camellia Punjabi recipe/s from the 50 Curries book so don’t have a recipe/link per se. But something like this:

https://www.eatingwell.com/recipe/256519/roasted-cauliflower-potato-curry-soup/

^ Edit – sorry wrong link.

right link

I use tamarind and molasses instead of honey, sugar and lime. Although a little lime juice us still good imo.

Some better ideas for ways to eat cauliflower above, but if you want to make something close to cauliflower cheese without dairy, you can make a decent “cheese” flavour sauce by making a classic bechamel with alternative milk and fat (just made one for a lasagne with oat milk and Naturli vegan block) and flavouring with nutritional yeast (this works really well for that savoury flavour) and mustard, perhaps a bit of paprika. It doesn’t taste like cheese really, but it’s a creamy savoury sauce so does much the same job.

You can attempt vegan cauli cheese, it will be a pale imitation at best.

Roasting is good, either whole, steaks, or florets. Especially with cumin, coriander, chilli etc. You need to get it good and dark.

Cauli fritters are good, again, good with spice.

Curry or course

Cauli rice is quite nice (blitz one in a food processor and then cook)

Also try with some of the nicer looking leaves (not the rice thing though)

https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1019911-cauliflower-cashew-pea-and-coconut-curry

There’s a Thomasina Miers roast cauliflower recipe where you can prepare the sauce (walnuts and stuff) beforehand and makes a cracking meal.

There’s a great cauliflower pasta recipe in thug kitchen. It goes along the lines of…boil florets. Blitz then with some garlic, herbs and some of the water until smooth. Serve as a creamy pasta sauce. It’s actually really very good.

No recipes to suggest.
Should be grown, not harvested and then ploughed back into the soil as natural fertiliser.
It’s no use for anything else.

Other vegetables are available

Yeah we eat those too but cauli is local and very nutritious so a good resource to draw on.

Found a transcript of Punjabi’s recipe 🙂

cauliflower and potato curry

Top left pic:

It’s known as cauliflower gassi (Mangalorian – also ghassi, gashi), a popular curry from Mangalore made using fresh ground spices and coconut. Worth printing off and pasting into a recipe book. Would also highly recommend her book 50 Great Curries Of India. Plenty of used copies around, average about £3.50 posted on ebay

Good shout OP, this on the cards tomorrow now at Chez 7eaven as just got a big cauli in yesterday and was going to do veg soup but now

Baking tray. Cauli florets, diced peppers, onion, cherry tomatoes/quartered tomatoes; minced garlic, cumin, chili, salt, drizzle olive oil over everything, plus lemon juice. Bake in the oven. Dead easy and surprisingly tasty.

I’ll be trying some of those above, too.

Roast with a little bit of garlic, toss in olive oil and sprinkle with za’atar spice mix. Good served with hummus, tzatziki, flatbreads and salad.

Went low carb back in spring and roast cauliflower is my go to substitute. Usually use good rape seed oil and vary spicing depending on what we’re having. The spice blend shakers from the supermarket are a good cheat. Cajun is really good, so is the paprika and onion chip seasoning.
A bit of sesame or coconut oil added in can be good, but tend not to use just them as can be overpowering.

Nutritional yeast flakes help add a savoury background flavour and adding panko breadcrumbs adds some nice crunchy texture.

I prefer it now without the cheese sauce drowning everything.

Cauliflower couscous – my wife made it once as an experiment, I loved it, the kids hated it!

Worth a try (I recommend)

Basically just break it into florets and blitz briefly in a food processor until it looks like couscous. Then steam or boil with not much water. Add flavour (many ideas online)

The last recipe here is a good simple curry, quite filling with the coconut milk, so I tend to eat it on its own or with some chapati rather than rice. I sometimes replace the potato with squash to make it lighter, and often add a handful of peas, broccoli works too.

Cauliflower 65

https://www.indianhealthyrecipes.com/gobi-65-recipe-baked-grilled-version-step-by-step/

Had it a restaurant in Tooting, amazing stuff.

Our local curry house does a Gobi manchurian which is very nice linky

Vegetarian tagine with roasted cauliflower, apricots and chickpeas

How long and at what temp are you roasting your cauli? Slow or fast?

Another vote for cauliflower rice, very easy. Blitz and throw it in with a stir fry for 5 minutes or so.

Roast cauliflower is great as a side too, toss some florets in oil and seasoning of your choice (I like paprika), 200C for 25-30 minutes. Also works with broccoli.

How long and at what temp

Depends on what size you portion it/size of florets how much/how crowded in the tray. Usually 15-25 minutes, it will be within that range.

Decent guide here:

Easy Roasted Cauliflower Recipe

No recipes to suggest.
Should be grown, not harvested and then ploughed back into the soil as natural fertiliser.
It’s no use for anything else.

A brilliant, original, and entirely unpredictable contribution to the thread. Thanks.

Some great ideas in the other posts, glad I opened this thread, and pleased to see the post I quoted was the only one in that vein, was expecting more TBH.

Thread resurrection!

I was searching for a recipe I’d used before (the Thug Kitchen pasta sauce) and Chrome brought up this thread from my history, which reminded me…

Done this Gochujang cauliflower a few times and it’s really easy and proper tasty. My partner doesn’t do spicy, so I only put a little bit of chilli in, but it’s still got loads of flavour. Charring the peppers is fun, though I have to get the camping stove out since we changed to an electric hob.

Personally I like my veg steamed, including cauliflower. Though yes, it goes brilliantly in curry.