cauliflower with spicy tomato sauce
(vegetarian)

recipe by m-c

just the recipe

what I was looking for

A better experience with Ruta Kahate's Steamed Cauliflower with Spicy Tomato Sauce than Margaret had two weeks ago.

what I made

Basically the same dish, following some (not all) of Ruta's directions more closely than Margaret did, using some (not all) of Margaret's changes, and adding some refinements of my own.

Many of Ruta's recipes remind me of Italian cooking.

If an Italian recipe calls for four ingredients, say pasta, olive oil, garlic, and chard, then the pasta, olive oil, garlic, and chard had better be good going in.

I don't mean you should be using $50-a-bottle olive oil, but neither can you substitute cheap corn oil.

If your Italian recipe tells you to cut the chard, you'd better cut it carefully, a little thinner toward the throat of the fibrous stem, a little thicker toward the tip.

In the same way, if Ruta tells you to roast a spice, you'd better not neglect to roast it. There's nothing else in the recipe to disguise a skipped step. If she tells you to grate fresh ginger, you'd better not use ginger from a jar.

Margaret compensated for omitting some steps by using more of some ingredients -- a Tablespoon of grated ginger from a jar, for instance, instead of a teaspoon fresh grated; a teaspoon of pre-ground cumin rather than a teaspoon of whole seeds toasted and then ground (which will yield less than a teaspoon).

That would be a good strategy for many recipes, but not for Ruta's.

Ruta's recipes are straight down the middle. There's nowhere to hide.

I find her approach quite different from any other Indian cooking I've ever done. I'm accustomed to being sloppy in Indian cooking, a little more of this, a little less of that, to suit my convenience. Not with these recipes.

That's an important thing to understand about a cookbook -- how faithfully you need to follow its directions. Can we generalize here? The shorter the ingredient list, the more careful you need to be about the quality of the ingredients. That seems unassailable to me.

But how about other rules of thumb? The more precise the measurements, the likelier they are to be accurate? The more detailed the method, the likelier it is to be crucial? I'm not sure whether either of those is true, but I'll have plenty of opportunity to think about them in the coming months.

grades for my version

healthy	B	Cauliflower, tomatoes, spices, just what the doctor ordered. On the other hand, all that butter makes this a treat dish, not an everyday dish. Sigh.
fast	B	Not super-fast.
easy	C	Roasting spices and making brown butter are touchy, and you have to pay attention to get the texture of the cauliflower perfect (for your value of perfect).
cheap	A	Yup, cheap.
delicious	A	More work than Margaret's version, more work than Ruta's version, but for such a result, so worth the while.

yield

Ruta's version serves four as a side dish, mine with no scaling served two as a main dish.

equipment

   a small frying pan

   a peppermill

   a pot with a lid, preferably handsome enough to serve from

pan-toasting and grinding spices

ingredients	Ruta	m-c	why?
cumin seeds	½ teaspoon	½ teaspoon	no change
coriander seeds	1 teaspoon	1 teaspoon	no change

   In your small frying pan, toast first the cumin seeds and then the coriander seeds. Don't toast them together, because the cumin will burn while the coriander is still not toasted through and through. (Shape and oil content determine how fast a spice will toast.)

Your nose is your best tool for telling when the spice is done. You might have to burn a few spices to get the hang of how they smell when they're toasted but not burnt. Consider it an investment. Once you know the exact smell of toasted cumin and toasted coriander, you have nailed two important kitchen skills.

   When both the spices are toasted, grind them in your peppermill.

      Put a tiny pinch of the ground spices back in the little frying pan and the rest in your pot with a lid.

the basis for the sauce

ingredients	Ruta	m-c	why?
fat	3 Tablespoons canola oil	2 Tablespoons ghee	tastier [1]
grated ginger	1 teaspoon fresh	1 teaspoon fresh	no change
garlic	2 large cloves grated	4 large cloves chopped	easier [2]
ground turmeric	½ teaspoon	½ teaspoon	no change
Notes
[1]	Tastier to me. Ruta may be thinking healthier is more important than a slight increment of flavor here.
[2]	You get about the same amount of garlic flavor from grating 2 cloves as you do from chopping 4 cloves, and I find chopping easier.

   Save out a tiny pinch of the ginger, garlic, and turmeric and add them to the pinch of ground cumin and coriander in the little frying pan.

   Add the ghee and the rest of the ginger, garlic, and turmeric to the cumin and coriander that are already in the big pot with the lid.

Heat the ghee gently and cook the mixture till the garlic is just beginning to color. This preliminary cooking in fat is like making a soffritto in Italian or Spanish cooking or a mirepoix [MEER-uh-pwah] or a duxelles [dook-SEHL] in French.

the sauce itself

ingredients	Kahate	m-c	why?
canned tomatoes	1 can, 14.5 oz.	1 can, 14.5 oz.	no change
serrano chile	1 medium, quartered	1 medium, sliced thin	tastier? [1]
cayenne	½ teaspoon	½ teaspoon	no change
Notes
[1]	Several places in the cookbook Ruta tells us to cut a chile into halves or quarters (for instance pages 23, 47, and 71) with no mention of removing them later, after they have seasoned the dish. I don't like to make Mark pick carefully through what he's eating, and a quarter or a half of a serrano chile is too much for him to enjoy at a time, so for those recipes I either cook the serrano and then remove it to my plate, or cut it smaller to begin with.

   Add the can of tomatoes, the chile, and the cayenne. Stir the mixture well, turn the heat on to low, and let the sauce simmer uncovered till the tomatoes have cooked down, about 10 minutes.

the cauliflower

ingredients	Ruta	m-c	why?
cauliflower	2 small heads	4 cups florets	easier [1] tastier [2]
water	2 cups	½ cup	tastier [3]
salt	½ teaspoon	to taste	no change [4]
Notes
[1]	Looking ahead to Chapter 4 of Domestic Intelligence (How To Make a Recipe Easier or Faster or Both), I am experimenting with every convenience food that seems plausible. The disadvantage to buying already-cut florets is that I no longer have the core and trimmings to make my favorite cauliflower act 2 -- but I'll surely be able to tell you about it some other time.
[2]	I don't like my cauliflower as crunchy as Margaret does, but I agree that the only way to keep it tender-crisp is to cook cut florets rather than whole heads.
[3]	Ruta steams her cauliflower in water, I cook mine in its sauce. Why cook the tomatoes down and then add water back in for the cauliflower? Because the tomato sugars caramelize slightly when they get cooked down.
[4]	Margaret doesn't mention salt here, which might account for some flatness of taste.

   Put the cauliflower in the pot, cover the pot, and cook the cauliflower until it's as done as you like it. Margaret likes florets cooked about 5 minutes, I like them about 8, Ruta likes whole small heads about 10. Up to you.

Chop the cilantro and make the tadka, working so that both steps are done when the cauliflower is ready to eat.

the cilantro

ingredients	Kahate	m-c	why?
cilantro	2 Tablespoons minced	2 Tablespoons minced	no change

Top the cooked cauliflower with the cilantro.

the tadka

ingredients	Kahate	m-c	why?
brown butter	---	2 Tablespoons	tastier

   At this point you should have little pinches of ground cumin, ground coriander, grated ginger, grated garlic, and ground turmeric in your little cold frying pan.

Add the brown butter to the pan, turn the heat up under it, and cook the ingredients very briefly, just until you can smell them changing ("blooming") with the heat.

(If you're used to making brown butter and you don't have any on hand, you can make it in the little frying pan with the pinches of flavorings.)

Pour the tadka over the cauliflower and serve the dish immediately. (It's best to serve this dish from the cooking pot if it's at all presentable.)

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