Roasted cauliflower ... soup

[Jonathan Day]

Roasted cauliflower (recipe here) has become a regular item in our house, especially when large cauliflowers are available in the market.

For dinner, from time to time, I make cauliflower soup, a Thomas Keller technique where you simmer a raw cauliflower in milk and then puree it. The result is a smooth, white cream, tasting much richer than it is. It is delicious on its own, or garnished with caviar, bottarga, truffles...

This evening we combined the two techniques. I roasted a large cauliflower à la eGullet. I then cut away (and ate) most of the centre core, broke the florets into small pieces, put them into a saucepan, barely covered them with milk and simmered this until the cauliflower was very, very tender and the milk had picked up some colour from the roasted bits. I had roasted a couple of chopped shallots at the same time as the cauliflower (though they didn't take as long to cook) and these went into the simmering liquid. It took less than an hour -- I didn't time it -- but it was noticeably less than the time usually needed to make a raw cauliflower ready to puree.

I cooled this a bit then blitzed it with a stick blender. I added a dollop of plain yogurt, just to bring the acid up a bit, and some Maldon salt.

The result was wonderful: light brown in colour, with the same smooth richness that normal cauliflower soup has but with an added roundness and depth of flavour. It needed no garnish.

Keller has you strain the puree several times; I didn't do that with this soup, since it wasn't being served to guests. Even unstrained, it was very good.

[fifi]

Oh my...

But I do have a couple of questions.

When I do the roasted cauliflower, I slice it up and toss with olive oil before roasting on a half sheet. Your method seems to roast it whole. How do you do that? Do you oil it? Do you still roast at 400 degrees F?

Now that I am hopelessly addicted to the roasted slices, it occurs to me that a roasted whole one would make a nice presentation that you could carve at table. That would be some fun.

But, good grief, that soup sounds good.

[Jonathan Day]

Linda, I prepared the roasted cauliflower as usual: sliced, on a sheet pan with olive oil and a sprinkling of coarse salt. Hot oven.

When it was nicely browned, I cut the cores out of the slices (this step may have been unnecessary, because they were very tasty, but Keller does say to get rid of the cores), broke the rest into very small pieces, and proceeded as above.

Keller doesn't call for yogurt or lemon juice; I find that a little acid adds lightness to the standard soup. I sometimes add a small amount of Dijon mustard to the Keller version.

In this case, the yogurt was helpful, but it didn't need anything else. No mustard. Nothing but a bit of salt.

Instead of roasting the shallots, it might have been as well to sweat them in a bit of butter, then add the cauliflower and milk to that.

Edited January 24, 2004 by Jonathan Day (log)

[fifi]

Ah... all clear now. I think it was the core talk that sent me astray. What I have been doing is removing the florets and then slicing them so the core has not been an issue.

Heh heh! And here I was thinking a whole roasted cauliflower on a platter with an apple in its mouth.

[KatieLoeb]

This recipe sounds divine! I'll have to try this myself. I might even simmer the cauliflower in a bit of vegetable stock and then add some cream or half & half at the end (or in my case the Land 'o Lakes fat free half & half or a can of evaporated skim milk since I'm South Beaching). Does the straining significantly effect either the taste or the volume of the soup when you're done?

I made the South Beach "faux mashed potatoes" (basically very tender cauliflower, fat free half & half, a bit of cheese and some "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter" liquid replacing real mashed potatoes) the other day and they came out a bit too loose and liquid. I still had a bit of leftover roasted cauliflower from the previous head in the fridge so I quickly tossed that into the processor to give it a bit more texture. It also made it taste soooo much better! I realized when my carbohydrate intake isn't as limited as it is now I could still make the mashed cauliflower and just thicken it up a bit with a 1/4 cup or so of the frozen Ore-Ida mashed potatoes so it would taste more "real". I actually really like the mashed cauliflower, but with just a little bit of potatoes in it you could probably fool almost anyone, and still maintain the high fiber/low carb mantra.

I'll report back when I have tested this theory.

[Jonathan Day]

The milk we have in the house is semi-skimmed, so that's what I've always used for the Keller version. The richness and mouthfeel are such that you would think it had been made with double cream -- in fact we have had guests worry about it being bad for their health.

I personally would keep the recipe as simple as possible. Milk works for the cauliflower, in part because it keeps the result creamy white. For his carrot soup, Keller simmers the sliced carrots in carrot juice -- count the carrots, juice half of them, slice the other half very thin, simmer the sliced carrots in the juice, puree, serve. As with the cauliflower soup, a few drops of lemon juice if you need to bring up the acidity, and salt of course. Some shallots if you want added flavour tones, but it isn't strictly necessary.

I would definitely avoid faux anything: I Can't Believe it's not Butter, pseudo half-and-half, etc. etc. -- something like this is too good to mess up with petrochemicals.

[rancho_gordo]

I just did my first roasted cauliflower. I liked but feel like maybe I used too much oil. I had some pureed flageolets (very dry at this point) and some chicken stock, so I added these to the leftover cauliflower, used that blender stick thing and came up with some great soup.

Edited January 27, 2004 by rancho_gordo (log)

[Mottmott]

You must have had a bigger cauliflower than I did. No leftovers for soup.

BTW, I've made something with a similar taste for years. I parboil the cauliflower, break and cut it into smallish flowerets, dredge in seasoned flour (s, p, and sometimes garlic and oregano) and fry in olive oil. Doing it the oven may be a little easier as you needn't watch it as closely.

[therdogg]

I made this soup last night- mmmmmm- added a squeeze of lemon, wasn't too fastidious about removing the core, and sweated the shallots instead of roasting. The only complaint was that it was sooo decadent that we couldn't eat a big bowl of it! Thanks for the idea!

It's wonderful to eat something so rich and cruciferous at the same time!