Genius Recipes
This Creamy, Cozy Indian Cauliflower Dish Is Peak Comfort Food
But you might make the Genius garnish even more often.
Every week in Genius Recipes—often with your help!—Food52 Creative Director and lifelong Genius-hunter Kristen Miglore is unearthing recipes that will change the way you cook.
This recipe has captivated the Food52 team, as we cooked it for photo shoots and video shoots (and all the other things we do here). I overheard murmurs of praise; I lost claim to leftovers after sneaks cleared the platters. “Divine,” our Genius video producer Alik Barsoumian wrote to me, after making it again for herself.
Which is all very fortunate because, if I’m being honest, I was initially in it for the garnish.
I can’t say a topping alone has ever before stopped me flipping through a cookbook and made me want to cook a recipe immediately, but there it was: blackened raisins. Not filler raisins balled up at the bottom of the GORP bag; not tiny, virtue-signalling red boxes from the trick-or-treat bucket where I’d certainly hoped for a Twix bar instead. No—blackened raisins, puffing and crackling and melting at the core. Singed, smoky, jammy, warm.
Now having tasted them (a lot), I could see blackened raisins improving everything from salads to oatmeal to ice cream sundaes to roast chicken to trail mix by the fistful. At least one prescient brewery has used them to flavor their beer.
I’d spotted the recipe in Meera Sodha’s beautiful second cookbook Fresh India, all vegetarian, quick-cooking dishes from her modern Indian canon. (In fact, to give you a sense of how accessible its recipes are to cooks of any interest level, it was the sole cookbook I found in a lovely Airbnb kitchen that otherwise held mostly disposable party supplies.)
Once I looked past my new crush, the blackened raisin, it was easy to see just how smart the rest of the recipe was. “This is a really great dish to make when people come round, as it’s a crowd-pleaser and easy to cook,” Sodha writes in the recipe’s headnote. “Normally the sauce comes together at the same time as the roasted cauliflower, leaving you with more time to tell your best jokes or play the spoons to your guests.”
I love when recipes multitask like this: cauliflower sweetening on its own in the oven while onions relax and spices bloom in the pan. And because—just like so many other korma recipes in Indian cooking—the cozy, creamy sauce is made from yogurt and ground almonds, it’s an ideal plant-based main dish (complete protein and everything!), and one light enough not to put those guests to sleep before your best jokes roll out.
So make Sodha’s cauliflower korma tonight; make it often. And—just as you toast raw nuts and stale bread to jolt them to life—every time you spy a raisin, I hope you’ll consider blackening it.
| 2 | large cauliflowers (about 3 1/2 pounds in total) |
| Neutral oil, like grapeseed or canola | |
| Salt | |
| 2 | large yellow onions, thinly sliced |
| 6 | cloves of garlic (see note above) |
| 2 1/2-inch piece of ginger, peeled (see note above) | |
| 3/4 | teaspoon ground cardamom (or finely ground seeds from 8 pods) |
| 1 | teaspoon ground black pepper |
| 2 | teaspoons garam masala |
| 1/2 | teaspoon ground red chile (we used cayenne) |
| 1 | cup ground almonds |
| 2 | tablespoons honey |
| 2 | cups plain Greek yogurt |
| 3/4 - 1 1/4 | cups milk |
| A handful of raisins | |
| A handful of sliced almonds |
| 2 | large cauliflowers (about 3 1/2 pounds in total) |
| Neutral oil, like grapeseed or canola | |
| Salt | |
| 2 | large yellow onions, thinly sliced |
| 6 | cloves of garlic (see note above) |
| 2 1/2-inch piece of ginger, peeled (see note above) | |
| 3/4 | teaspoon ground cardamom (or finely ground seeds from 8 pods) |
| 1 | teaspoon ground black pepper |
| 2 | teaspoons garam masala |
| 1/2 | teaspoon ground red chile (we used cayenne) |
| 1 | cup ground almonds |
| 2 | tablespoons honey |
| 2 | cups plain Greek yogurt |
| 3/4 - 1 1/4 | cups milk |
| A handful of raisins | |
| A handful of sliced almonds |
Got a genius recipe to share—from a classic cookbook, an online source, or anywhere, really? Perhaps something perfect for beginners? Please send it my way (and tell me what's so smart about it) at [email protected]—thank you to my fun-loving Airbnb host for this one!
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Written by: Kristen Miglore
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44 Comments
BUT then, I tasted espresso soaked raisins at the Purple House in North Yarmouth, Maine. Owned and run by 2020 Beard nominee Kristin Desjarlais, no less.
God, they are good. I don't know how she makes hers, but I do it with equal parts of hot very strong coffee and raisins that have been placed in a small glass container. They're good to go after a few hours, they last forever and I will be blacking some tonight for this dish.
Really, really not good. In fact I would give it a double yuck.
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