Sunday 5 April 2020

Creamy Cauliflower Pasta.

Creamy Cauliflower Pasta | Salt sugar and i | Dani Elis


Thought I'd quickly jump on and share what I had for dinner last night. It was a riff on the Alison Roman's Creamy Cauliflower pasta from NYTimes Cooking which is what I had intended to make but then opened my fridge to find a leek that desperately needed to be used and I also didn't have any panko breadcrumbs to make the crunchy topping she calls for. I also couldn't be arsed to get the food processor out to blitz some bread to make my own, sue me.

So instead of following her recipe, I used it as a base and made my own and it was rich and creamy and comforting and delicious. It won't give you abs, but it will fill your belly with the warmth I think we all need.

Creamy Cauliflower Pasta

Serves 3

1 leek, washed and sliced (you can use an onion, shallot or even spring onions instead)
1 medium head of cauliflower, leaves removed and sliced/roughly chopped
A good splosh of olive oil
A knob of butter
1 cup of white wine (you can use a stock cube + 1 cup water here if you don't have white wine)
1 lemon, zest and juice needed
300ml cream
300g short pasta (I used rigatoni)
Parsley (optional - I didn't have it but it would have been a delicious addition)
Salt and Pepper
Parmesan, to serve

Heat oil and butter in a large frying pan on medium heat. Add the leek and a pinch of salt and cook for about 3-5 minutes until it started to soften. Add the cauliflower, breaking up any large pieces and cooking for a further 5 minutes.

(Get your salted water boiling for the pasta.)

Once the cauliflower starts to soften, add the cup of wine and lemon zest and cook until all the liquid has been cooked away and you start to hear a sizzle again. This can take about 8 - 10 minutes, you want to cook all the liquid away until it starts frying again so you get a little bit of colour and caramelisation on the vegetables.

Start cooking your pasta, according to the packet instructions. Make sure you keep about 1 cup of pasta cooking water.

Once the cauliflower starts to colour, turn the heat down to low and add the cream. Cook on low until the sauce thickens.

When your pasta is cooked and the sauce thickened, add the pasta to the sauce along with some of the pasta cooking water bit by bit and give it a good toss. You may not need to add the whole cup, depends on how much your sauce thickened. Turn the heat off.

Add the juice of half the lemon, the chopped parsley and season with salt and pepper to taste.

Serve piping hot with parmesan and maybe a squeeze more lemon juice.

Wednesday 1 April 2020

Hold on.

How are you? I hope you are well. I hope you are holding on. I hope you have someone to hug. Because hugs in this weird time we currently live in are needed. So give the people/furry friends you live with a hug today, just because you can. And those you can't hug right now, remember it's because you love them and it's only temporary, so you can hug them on the other side of all this.
And those of you who like me feel like the internet is full of doom, gloom and everything you can't do, I've got some links that will (hopefully) make you smile and fill your bellies.

Let's start with some Instagram stuff. One of my longtime favourite blogs which like most blogs these days, has taken a hiatus but still going on Instagram, @WednesdayChef. She is Instagram story-ing her lunch and dinners every day from Berlin where she lives. If you have kids and are stuck with what to feed them and are losing your mind with food ideas, then I suggest watching her stories. It shows the simple ideas of feeding a family and that each meal doesn't need to be gourmet, sometimes bagels with cream cheese for dinner is perfect.

Another account I have been following which I may be biased about because she is a good friend who I grew up with is @The_Guilty_Environmentalist. She recently made an Instagram story on how to make gnocchi from scratch which is what I'll be doing with my sprouting potatoes soon because, YUM.

#fliptheswitch and @CelesteBarber for some fun and also, but I am sure you've all seen it... Rudy (sound on!).

I'm also a bit of a nosey parker and like to see what people are making in their kitchens at home so any of the Bon Appetit family are also great to follow. @csaffitz and @mollybaz are my favs.

If you're up for a new hobby, may I suggest you order yourself some knitting needles or a crochet hook and some yarn and get your fingers moving? It's very satisfying. Meet me at Mikes has some great crochet projects and How-To posts. I personally have started this little blanket from, Purl Soho although my Carpal Tunnel lets me get through three-quarters of a line before my fingers go completely numb. But I am getting one line done at a time with plenty of tea and crunchie easter egg breaks in-between.

I am watching fun stuff on You-Tube and so should you. I like the Bon-appetit channel right now. They are a New York based test kitchen but everyone is cooking from their homes right now. I suggest go back and watching the Pastry Chef Attempts episodes, the one below in particular but make sure you have ice cream on hand. Another great cooking person to watch on You-Tube is Alison Roman from the NYTimes cooking channel. I think I'm making her creamy cauliflower pasta tonight for dinner.



Healthy-ish, which is a sister brand of Bon-Appetit online has released 'The healthy-ish guide to being alone' today which is something I am going to follow. Although I am not alone, I currently live alone with hubby being stuck in QLD and this week especially, since being off work (surgery but then cancelled and all that jazz). The days are quite long but also go quickly with not much accomplished except a lot of browsing the internet and wishlist shopping. I think this will be a good thing to follow.

I'm currently reading this YA Fantasy series - it's a great escape. Booktopia are still delivering books if you don't have a 'to-be-read' stack collecting dust at home (like me) and delivery times are quite good. Oh gosh and the smell of a new book - mmmmm mmmmm drool**

Cooking. Actually making dinner, not just reading or watching the stuff (which I am totally guilty of). Making a delicious dinner. And I know the grocery shops are not the nicest places to be right now, actually, they are damn straight depressing. But if you do go to the grocery store (only because you have to and under 70 years old) and you choose not to wear a mask, smile. It can remind people that we are all in this together. Here is some of the food I want to cook right now: One-Pot Gingery Chicken and Rice with Peanut Sauce, One-Pan Sweet Potato Mac & Cheese, Salted Butter Chocolate Chunk Shortbread, Salty Chocolate Caramel Bars, Potato Tuturuga with rice (because carbs are life), Kimchi Fried Rice with an egg, and One-Pan Pea Lemon and Asparagus Pasta. Hmmm I see a trend... one-pan... salty chocolate... guilty.

And I will leave you with this... remember to check on your friends with cats. Stay safe people x


p.s. if you'd like to delve into the past, I've un-archived my old blogs and linked them on the side...

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#giveaway 15 minute meals 30 minute meals 5 Minute Food Fix A Common Table A Kitchen in the Valley A Modern Way to Eat Acquacotta Adam Liaw Alison Roman Alison Thompson almonds Amelia Morris Anna Jones Annie Herron Antonio Carluccio Anya von Bremzen apple apps Apt 2b Baking Co Artisan Sourdough Made Simple Ashley Rodriguez autumn avocado babies baby baby shower bacon Bake baked pasta baking Bali Barcelona Cult Recipes basil BBQ beans beef beetroot Bill Granger biscuits blondies Bon Appetempt Bowl & Spoon bread breadcrumbs broccoli brussel sprouts burgers burrito buttercream butternut squash byo cabbage cake calzone camping Carla Lali Music carrot cauliflower chicken childhood chilli chinese cooking chipotle chocolate chorizo chutney Claire Ptak Classic German Baking Classics 1 Classics 2 coconut Comfort Food cookbook addict cookies cordial corn cucumber curry custard Cynthia Chen McTernan Date Night In David Dale Delicious. magazine dessert Dining In dinner party nightmares Dinner: A Love Story dip doings Donna Hay Donna Hay Magazine dumplings easy egg eggplant Eleanor Ford Emiko Davies Emilie Raffa Emma Spitzer ENOTW Every Night of the Week Veg family Fast Fresh Simple Feast Feasting fennel fiction Fire Islands Five Quarters Flora Sheedan Florentine Food & Wine Food52 Fresh & Light Fress frozen dessert Fuchsia Dunlop galette Gatherings Genius Recipes Gennaro Contaldo Gennaro's Fast Cook Italian Gennaro's Italian Bakery Gennaro's Pasta Perfecto! german ginger gnocchi goats cheese granola Greenfeast gumbo Gwyneth Paltrow Happenings holiday home home-grown herbs How to be a Domestic Goddess hungry Hunter Valley ice-cream indian Indonesian Cooking involtini It's All Easy It's all Good jam Jamie Does Jamie Magazine Jamie Oliver Jamie's America Jamie's Great Britain Jamie's Italy Jane Hornby japanese Jenny Rosenstrach Jessica Fechtor Julia Turshen Justine Schofield. The Weeknight Cookbook kale Karen Martini kimchi Kitchen korean Kylee Newton LA Cult Recipes Land of Fish and Rice leek lemon lentils life Light of Lucia Link Love links long weekends love Luciana Sampogna Lucio Galletto Lucy Tweed Luisa Weiss Maggie Beer maple Marc Grossman Marcella Hazan Marian Burros Martha Stewart Matthew Evans meal planning meatballs meatloaf mess mexican Michael James Michelle Crawford mince mint miso Monte Carlos Mum's cooking mushroom mussels My Berlin Kitchen My Kitchen Year Naturally Ella new beginnings New York Cult recipes Nigel Slater Nigelissima Nigella Bites Nigella Express Nigella Lawson No Time to Cook noodles North West Island nostalgia Not Just Jam NotWithoutSalt oats omelette paddle pops parsley pasta Paul McIntyre Paul West Paulene Christie pea pecans pesto pickle pickles pie pizza Plenty Plenty More plum pork potato prawns preserving prosciutto pudding pumpkin quesadilla quinoa Rachel eats Rachel Khoo Rachel Roddy ragu rambles raspberry recipe rhubarb rice risotto River Cottage Australia romantic Ruth Reichl saffron salad Sally Wise salsa verde Salt Fat Acid Heat Samin Nosrat sandwiches Sara Forte sausage Save with Jamie schupfnudeln seafood sesame Seven Spoons Simon David Simple slow cooker Slow Cooker Central Small Victories Sophie Hansen soup sourdough Sprouted Kitchen starters Stephanie Danler Stir stir-fry stuffed sushi Sweet Amandine sweet potato Sweetbitter tahini Taking Stock Tara O-Brady Taste Tibet Tasting Rome thai Thai Food Made Easy The Art of Pasta The Best of Maggie Beer The Comfort Bake The Dinner Ladies The Little Book of Slow The Little Paris Kitchen The Modern Cook's Year The Modern Preserver The Naked Chef The New Classics The Tivoli Road Baker The Violet Bakery Cookbook The Wednesday Chef The Zen Kitchen thyme Tom Kime tomato tuna turkey tuscany Two Greedy Italians Two Red Bowls Valeria Necchio vanilla veal vegetables vegetarian Veneto vietnamese wedding wedding cake What can I bring? What to Bake and How to Bake it Where Cooking Begins Where the Heart is yoghurt Yossy Arefi Yotam Ottolenghi Yumi Stynes zucchini