{"id":192,"date":"2014-03-22T03:14:00","date_gmt":"2014-03-22T03:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/elitemporaryblog.wordpress.com\/2014\/03\/22\/call-it-a-meal"},"modified":"2015-12-13T17:10:52","modified_gmt":"2015-12-13T22:10:52","slug":"call-it-a-meal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orangette.net\/2014\/03\/call-it-a-meal\/","title":{"rendered":"Call it a meal"},"content":{"rendered":"

We have reached the point in winter, or spring, or whatever it is, when even I<\/i> am tired of making, eating, and talking about\u00a0soup<\/a>. I\u2019ve been meaning to make a batch of vegetable and pearl barley soup<\/a> for the past week, and I even forced myself to chop up everything the other night before bed, thinking it would inspire me to get on it the next morning, but, eh. Eh. I\u2019d rather do what I did twice last week: throw a cauliflower in the oven, eat the whole pan, and call it a meal.<\/p>\n

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Roasted cauliflower! Old news!\u00a0You know how to roast cauliflower. I know how to roast cauliflower. But here I am, talking up roasted cauliflower, because this particular version has become – just as Bon App\u00e9tit <\/i>said it would – my new go-to. The recipe comes from the “BA Arsenal” section of the February 2013 issue, and it\u2019s hardly even a recipe (which is, more and more, my favorite kind of recipe). You\u2019ll probably have it memorized after the first read-through. And I\u2019ll bet you have everything in the house already – except maybe the cauliflower, and that\u2019s easy enough to remedy.<\/p>\n

When I roast cauliflower, I usually just, you know, roast it: sliced cauliflower, olive oil, salt, boom<\/i>. But Allie Lewis Clapp, food editor of Bon App\u00e9tit, apparently swears by the combination of cauliflower and onion, the former caramelized and the latter “just-this-side-of-burnt.” (Color = flavor! Assuming, of course, that you don\u2019t go too far and\u00a0actually<\/i>\u00a0burn the onions, which I did once; see photo below.) To the cauliflower and onion, she suggests that you add a few sprigs of thyme and a few whole, unpeeled cloves of garlic, all of it slicked with some olive oil. Then you chuck it in a hot, hot oven, and after barely half an hour, the cauliflower winds up velvety, meaty, even rich, and the onions relax and soften into sweetness, and the garlic is tender enough to spread on toast, and a dark, savory, somewhat bewitching smell has filled your kitchen – or your entire house, if you\u2019re me and your house is small and the exhaust fan doesn\u2019t really work, even though it roars like the engine of a semi scaling a mountain pass. Then you grate some Parmesan over the whole pan, slide it back into the oven, and pull it out when the cheese has melted and crisped into crisp, lacy,\u00a0frico<\/a>-like webs and shards.<\/p>\n

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At this point, you could divide it between a couple of bowls, put a fried egg on top of each, and call it lunch. You could also divide it between four plates and call it a side dish. \u00a0You could toss it with pasta, probably, though I haven\u2019t tried it, and serve it with more Parmesan. Or you could just eat it, period, which is what I\u2019ve been doing. If you have any leftovers, they\u2019re good at any temperature – even cold, eaten straight from a Mason jar while sitting in your car outside the pottery studio<\/a> after class.<\/p>\n

Happy weekend.<\/p>\n

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Recipe<\/div>\n

Parmesan-Roasted Cauliflower<\/h2>\n

Adapted from Bon App\u00e9tit and Allie Lewis Clapp<\/h3> \n \n <\/header>\n\n
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