5 Ingredients or Fewer

Roasted Cauliflower with Walnut Oil and Toasted Cumin

by:
August 21, 2011
5
2 Ratings
  • Serves 4
Author Notes

So I'm not a huge fan of cauliflower. I mean, it's not that I don't like the taste, it's just that what taste it has is so, well, anemic. Like it got mugged by a parsnip that made off with all its mojo. To my thinking, if I have to drown something in a cheesy cream sauce or liberally coat it with curry powder to enjoy it, there's a problem.

My picky four year old Jameson, of course, loves cauliflower and in a (slightly desperate) effort to encourage this streak of vegetable eating, I came up with a recipe that doesn't require a medication to un-stop my husband's arteries and avoids the dreaded curry - which Jameson will not touch with a single tine on his fork. Really, if I didn't carry this child myself for nine months, I'd ask for a DNA test.....

Roasting the cauliflower reluctantly coaxes a nutty flavor out of the vegetable which the walnut oil amps up and the toasted cumin seeds give it a little snap.

And detente was achieved in my house....until Jameson asked for Madness Pancakes for dessert. —Niknud

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Ingredients
  • 1 head cauliflower, cut into bite-sized pieces
  • 1/8 cup (generous) walnut oil
  • sea salt to taste
  • 1 tablespoon cumin seeds, toasted
Directions
  1. Preheat the oven to 420. Drizzle the walnut oil over the cauliflower pieces and toss to coat. Season with sea salt. Arrange in a single layer on a baking sheet (line with aluminum foil unless you are particularly masochistic and LIKE to do dishes).
  2. Roast for around 30-35 minutes or until the pieces start to take on nice tinges of caramel coloring.
  3. Remove from the oven, toss with the toasted cumin and enjoy...as much as one can enjoy cauliflower.

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Recipe by: Niknud

Full-time working wife and mother of two small boys whose obsessive need to cook delicious food is threatening to take over what little free time I have. I grew up in a family of serious cookers but didn't learn to cook myself until I got married and got out of the military and discovered the joys of micro-graters, ethiopian food, immersion blenders and watching my husband roll around on the floor after four servings of pulled pork tamales (with real lard!) complaining that he's so full he can't feel his legs. Trying to graduate from novice cooker to ranked amateur. The days of 'the biscuit incident of aught five' as my husband refers to it are long past but I still haven't tried my hand at paella so I'm a work in progress!

2 Reviews

mrslarkin August 21, 2011
I don't know what I enjoy more, your writing or your recipes! Saving this one for when I feel like attempting another conversion. So far, I've been unsuccessful.
Niknud August 22, 2011
Thanks, mrslarkin! You've got to laugh about your life otherwise you just get glum, right? Good luck with your conversion - in a pinch I've always found that covering an object with peanut butter increases the likelihood of it getting eaten.