Whole Cauliflower in Traditional Curry Sauce

Perhaps Indian cooking is a bit more ambitious of a beginning than some might choose. Many home cooks are familiar with French, Italian, even Chinese cooking (for those not natively of those origins). My parents are English, known the world over as bad cooks, so I have learned to look elsewhere for my culinary skills. I must give props to my mother, though. She is a wonderful, if not intuitive cook. What I mean by intuitive is this: My mother rarely uses recipes. she can somehow cook by intuitive and experience to create wonderful meals. I hope that I can honestly say that I have gained a little bit of this type of cooking myself.

This brings me back to my NYR to actually use the cookbooks at my hands to follow time tested techniques and recipes, rather than relying on intuition alone. Intuition does not always serve me well. In a previous incarnation of my desire to steer away from my intuitive cooking, I took a Indian Dahl class in Los Angeles. It was taught by a most wonderful lady, Neelam Batra. She forced me to be more patient with my cooking, to let things sit and brown, to develop flavor. It was a great class, albeit too short. Three hours, including the time to feast upon the products of our lesson.

I felt it only apropos to start my Year Of Recipes with a book I purchased from that class. The purpose of this blog is to try at least one recipe from each of my cookbooks in my collection, and one recipe a month from either Bon Appetit or Gourmet. I chose Whole Cauliflower in Traditional Curry Sauce. To quote from Ms. Batra's book, "In this recipe, a whole head of cauliflower, smothered in a fragrant curry sauce, makes for a dinner party dish par excellence." The curry itself is made of a onion, ginger, garlic paste, pureed fresh tomatoes, yogurt, and various spices. From start to finish, this recipe took a little under one hour. To make it fair, though, I was also cooking the rest of the meal that would accompany the cauliflower dish. Had I focused solely on the one item, I might have cut the cooking time to 45 minutes. The the main reason the recipe took me so long is the long simmering time in between the addition of three separate componets, the ginger/garlic/onion (10 minutes), the tomato puree (10 minutes), the spices and yogurt with the cauliflower (20 minutes).



I give high marks to this recipe, it was flavorful and interesting. My husband actually went back for seconds. My six year old pronounced it disgusting, and my 1 year old took a few bites. I do not think this is a stand alone dish. It is a side dish, even for the most avid vegetarian. I would definately make it again, but probably not often. It will definately not make it into my everyday rotation.