Two ways with cauliflower: Spicy cauliflower with tomatoes & Cauliflower with sage butter and eggs

I cooked cauliflower two nights in a row, and would probably do it again tonight, if it wasn't for dinner plans with some friends. On Monday night I feasted on sage-flavoured cauliflower (see below), and last night I had an even more delicious cauliflower dish, again nicked from a fellow foodblogger.

Spicy cauliflower with tomatoes
(Vürtsikas lillkapsa-tomatiroog)


Photo updated in June 2009.

Ilva - a Swede living in Tuscany with her Italian family - posted a recipe for cavolfiore piccante on her food and photography blog Lucullian delights just yesterday. It looked delicious and I couldn't help but buy another cauliflower on my way home and follow Ilva's instructions. Here's what I did:

1 cauliflower, divided into florets
250 grams of ripe mini plum tomatoes, halved
2 cloves of garlic, halved
a generous pinch of dried chilli flakes
1 tsp of dried oregano
1 generous tbsp of chopped parsley
Salt
Olive oil

Heat the olive oil in a saucepan, add chilli flakes and garlic halves. Fry gently for 1-2 minutes.
Add cauliflower and chopped tomatoes (if the latter are not particularly sweet and ripe, add a pinch or two of sugar).
Add oregano and salt.
Simmer on a low heat for 15-20 minutes, stirring every now and then (I needed to add a wee bit of water towards the end - I guess Italian tomatoes are way juicier than the Scottish ones:)
The dish is ready when tomatoes have become mushy and cauliflower is 'al dente'.
Garnish with parsley and serve.

Ilva mentions that this would make a nice sauce for pasta - I enjoyed it with some parmesan crusted chicken fillets with sage.

Utterly delicious.

My other cauliflower dish of the week was

Tasty cauliflower with sage butter and eggs
(Salveiga maitsestatud lillkapsas)


I'm not very familiar with sage. I use dried sage in my herbal infusion du jour, but fresh sage makes a rather less frequent visit to my kitchen. My mum grew some in her garden, and complained a year later that she probably won’t do it again as she didn’t know where to use it. I vowed to explore other opportunities for using this herb. I now know it goes well with pork (apparently it reduces the fatty flavour of pork) as certified by my tagliatelle in sage and garlic butter. And I plan to make some saltimbocca soon.

But Monday night I tried a lovely and simple vegetarian dish with sage. It’s more or less a variation of the sage butter theme again. A recipe is from the Finnish Herkut.net site.

1 large organic cauliflower
salt
water

For the sage butter:
50 grams of butter
2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
2 boiled eggs, chopped
12 fresh sage leaves, shredded

Salt and pepper

Cut cauliflower into florets and boil in a slightly salted water for 5-10 minutes, until al dente.

Meanwhile, heat the butter in a small saucepan. Add garlic, after few seconds sage and finally chopped boiled egg. Stir gently.

Drain the cauliflower and arrange on a warmed serving plate.
Pour sage butter on top, sprinkle with Maldon sea salt flakes and freshly crushed peppercorns.

Serve at once.