Honey Soy Cauli from Every Night of the Week Veg by Lucy Tweed

Lucy Tweeds first book, Every Night of the Week, came out soon after I had a baby and the first thing I cooked after coming out of the newborn haze was Drunken Dumplings. And its one of my favourite recipes still and one of my favourite cookbooks. Everything I've cooked from it is so full of flavour, simple to put together and just delicious so when I was sent her new book, Every Night of the Week Veg. It made me very happy. The cover recipe is mouth watering... pizza rice. I mean omg get in my belly.

With the weekly grocery shop challenges up here in FNQ with barges getting turned around because of wrong temps it does limit the meal planning but turns out cauliflower and rice are not the first things to go in the shops up here. Ha! Until they read this that is. Lucy Tweed is the queen of baked, flavour packed rice and this Honey Soy Cauli is such an easy recipe to get ready and in the oven and dinner is on its way while you wrangle everything else that needs to be done before the madness witching hour.

You can prep the sauce and coat the cauliflower, played monster trucks, then pre-heat your oven, distract a toddler so they don't snack before dinner, prep the rice and put it all in the oven and still have time to go back to making duplo garages for the monster trucks. 

Honey Soy Cauli

Recipe from Every Night of the Week Veg by Lucy Tweed

Serves 4

1/4 cup (70g) white miso paste
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1/4 cup (60ml) honey
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons rice vinegar
2 teaspoons sesame oil
2 spring onions (scallions), finely chopped, white and greens seperated
8cm piece of ginger, peeled and julienned
1 large cauliflower, cut into 8 wedges**
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 cups (440g) white rice
1/2 teaspoon Chinese five-spice
1/2 teaspoon fine salt
1 teaspoon sesame seeds

Optional Ingredients
blanched greens and chilli crisp

The sticky, chewy business of baking rice with flavours is with us to stay, my friends.

It's a classic lazy approach disguised as a big flavour move. (It's actually both!) And so satisfying, because it's basically set and forget.

Cauliflowers are the greatest sauce-trappers, too.

Preheat the oven to 200C (400C) fan-forced.

Blend the miso, garlic, honey, soy, rice vinegar, sesame oil, spring oil (white parts only) and a quarter of the ginger in a food processor until smooth.

Toss the cauliflower through the mix, making sure to coat it really well.

In a large roasting tray big enough to fir the cauliflower in a single layer, combine the oilive oil, rice, remaining ginger, chinese five-spice and salt.

Cover with 3 cups (750ml) of water and gently shake the pan to level out the rice.

Place the cauliflower into the water, then cover tightly with foil.

Bake for 20 minutes, then uncover and bake for a further 25 minutes, basting with any remaining marinade for the final 5v minutes.

Serve with sesame seeds and the green parts of the spring onions.

** Cauliflower can take a while to roast. If you're short on time, blanch (4 minutes), steam (10 minutes) or microwave (4 minutes) the pieces prior to tossing them in the sauce.

Creamy Cauliflower Pasta.

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.