Roasted cauliflower & hazelnut salad

August 5, 2012

   

This comes from Yotam Ottolenghi's Guardian column rather than my much-thumbed copy of Plenty. It's basically a bowl of roasted cauliflower dressed up with parsley, some crunchy celery and hazelnuts, a splash of vinegar, and - in the original version - pomegranate seeds. Australia's pomegranate season is brief and not now, so instead I used dried cherries. They added the right little burst of chewy sourness, if not quite the same cheery colour.

Though the ingredients list isn't short, this is at the more manageable end of Ottolenghi's style - pretty much everything can be prepared in the time it takes to cook the cauliflower. (I might even consider tackling this on a weeknight!) Though the florets should be tender, I'd urge you to err on the side of under-baking the cauliflower. A crunchy salad's always preferable to a mushy one, right?

Roasted cauliflower & hazelnut salad
(adapted slightly from Yotam Ottolenghi's Guardian column)

1 head of cauliflower
3 tablespoons olive oil
salt and black pepper
1 large stick of celery
10g small flat-leaf parsley leaves
50g dried cherries
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
     (I was all out and substituted garam masala)
2 teaspoons white wine vinegar
1 teaspoon maple syrup
30g hazelnuts, preferably roasted

Preheat the oven to 200°C. Chop the cauliflower into florets. Place them all in a large baking dish, drizzle over 2 tablespoons of the oil and sprinkle over salt and pepper. Bake the cauliflower until tender and turning golden brown at the edges, about 20 minutes. Set the cauliflower aside to cool.

Roughly chop the celery, parsley and cherries, then stir them into the cauliflower. Whisk together the remaining tablespoon of oil, cinnamon, allspice, vinegar and maple syrup and pour them over the salad, stirring them to combine. Roughly chop the hazelnuts and sprinkle them over the salad, tossing it all together lightly before serving.