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The corona cook. Roasted cauliflower with green tahini

Dear cauliflower, I’m sorry, I didn’t appreciate you and your myriad charms. My only excuse is that I was bought up in an era of overcooked cauliflower cheese (something that still fills me with dread) However thanks to the mighty Yotam Ottolenghi and the equally marvellous josh Katz of Berber & Q I have recently succumbed to the wonder of the whole roast spiced cauliflower in a middle-eastern stylie.
This recipe for the lockdown world is a little less elaborate but no less delicious for that. Cauliflower is local and seems to be pretty plentiful and as yet there has not been a big run on chickpeas that I am aware of. We had it with ottolenghi’s green tahini sauce but it would have been delicious without it too.
To roast an average-sized cauliflower, break it into medium to small florets, (thumb-sized is good)or slice it into ½-inch-thick slabs, drizzle with 3 to 4 tablespoons olive oil and season with salt and pepper ( make sure that you coat it in plenty of olive oil you want it to really sizzle in the oven) It’ll aid its transformation. Add any spices or aromatics you like (a pinch of ground turmeric, whole cumin or fennel seed, red-pepper flakes) and roast at 200 + degrees until browned and caramelized, 20 to 30 minutes.
According to Alison Roman of the NYT a common pitfall when roasting is either doing it at too low a temperature or stopping once the cauliflower is tender: You have to stick with it, continuing to roast until the color goes from creamy white to being , nicely tinged with brown. Don’t take it out too soon, that caramelisation is what you are after.
Because it’s so versatile, cauliflower pairs well with nearly anything you want to roast alongside it: I added a pinch of chilli flakes and a small tin of Rinsed chickpeas. We served it with Moro’s Turkish chopped salad and some fresh pita that the lovely Mezet in Hampton Court we’re handing out for free yesterday.


Green Tahini Sauce
ingredients

80g tahini
3 Tblspn lemon juice
80ml warm water
1 clove of garlic, crushed
15g flat-leaf parsley (if making by hand, it should be finely chopped)
sea salt
method
Put the tahini with the garlic and parsley and blitz for about a minute until the sauce is green. Pour in the water, lemon juice and sea salt and blitz until you have a smooth green sauce with the consistency of double cream – add a little more water if it is too thick. This will keep in the fridge for three days.

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