Cauliflower Rice Pilaf - a delicious start to tax season!

Today we bid a fond farewell to a lovely stretch three or four days of glorious clear skies and cold weather (again!). After work and a long walk, Shawn delved, as he does each time this year, into tax preparation. Such a joyous occasion deserved a suitably joyous feast to accompany it, and so I opened up Yamuna Devi's fine book (well, tome really) Lord Krishna's Cuisine: The Art of Indian Vegetarian Cooking. This is a huge volume that lends itself well to my somewhat unorthodox habit of wild improvisation. I will recommend, if you seek it out in all its 800 pages of glory, that you take my advice and cut her salt additions at least in half. Otherwise, it's a splendid cookbook, full of good reading and good recipes. They are excellent prepared just as they are and are equally good if you like to use the written word as a guide or an inspiration and run your own way with it.

I chose a cauliflower rice pilaf tonight. Earlier in the day I condensed a big jar of brown basmati into a smaller job so I could borrow the big jar for a sourdough starter begun ten days ago. I had a little less than a cup of rice that wouldn't fit in the smaller jar, so I set it aside. Then I added about a quarter cup of french lentils that were occupying a nearly empty jar I needed for another purpose and thought to myself...something is brewing. So when leafing through Devi's book for fun this afternoon, I stumbled upon her recipe for Rice and Cauliflower Pilaf. A few items in the list of ingredients I didn't have, and so substituted others for, and a few things, like the french lentils, I added at my own discretion. I used unsweetened soymilk instead of yogurt in the spice blend for the cauliflower. We loved the results of this dish. The cauliflower is cooked in its own spice blend for about five minutes while a simple blend of aromatics are sizzled in hot oil till popping can be heard in preparation for the rice. Then all the ingredients are blended together, water to cook the rice is added, and about 40 minutes later (less if you are using white basmati, but we love the brown) you have a lovely meal. The cauliflower melts down almost completely, everything is tender and delicious. This is a wonderful warming meal.

Here is what I did...adapted from Yamuna Devi's Art of Indian Vegetarian Cooking...

I used my new kitchen aid immersion blender with its awesome little blender attachment (thank you, Diane, for this wonderful gift! Fun!!) to blend the following:

1/4 cup dried coconut, 1 tsp or so red pepper flakes (depends how spicy they are...ours now are not too spicy, from an anaheim pepper. Devi recommends using a seeded hot green chile), about a TBSP of fresh ginger, chopped, one large kale leaf for color (Devi recommends using 3 TBSP parsley or cilantro neither of which I had on hand, sadly!), 1/2 cup unsweetened soy milk (Devi suggests yogurt), a bit less than 1/2 tsp turmeric, and about the same of salt.

Once this was blended nicely (it turns a bright and cheery golden color due to the turmeric, and even if you haven't any herbs on hand, use a little greenery in there as the color is delightful), I set it aside, cut up my cauliflower, heated a cast iron pan and added the oil. When it was nice and hot, I tossed in the cauliflower to stir fry. When a little color showed on the veggies, I added the spice blend and turned down the heat. On to preparing the rice.

The rice and lentil mix I had prepared earlier so I could incorporate washing, soaking and drying. I washed first, then soaked in warm water to cover for ten minutes. I used about two cups since Devi recommended saving the soaking water (which ends up full of vitamin and just general goodness due to the rice soaking in it) to cook the rice in. After the rice soaked, I drained it, reserving the water for cooking, and allowed it to sit for about 20 minutes.

To flavor the rice, I heated 1.5 TBSP of canola in my cooking pot and tossed in the following (I even measured!!) amounts:

one bay leaf

1 1/2 tsp cumin seeds

1/2 teaspoon mustard seeds (Devi recommends dark but I used golden)

4 big cardomon pods, crushed

When these had sizzled to the point where the cumin was crackling (I love that cheery sound!) I tossed in the rice and lentils to cook and coat with oil for about 3 minutes. Then to this mix I added the cauliflower from the other pan. I added one tsp. of sucanat and the two cups of reserved soaking water. I brought the food to a boil, then turned the heat to low and covered it, allowing it to simmer about 40 to 50 minutes or so.

To accompany the dish, which seemed to need another colored food for balance, I cut up a big, sweet carrot from our friend's garden. For a simple impromptu dressing, I minced about a teaspoon of white onion and soaked it in lemon juice and a little salt. When the pilaf had cooked, I pulled it from the heat and allowed it to sit about 5 minutes, during which time I brought a small pan of water to a boil, cooked the carrots just till a bit crisper than tender, then drained and tossed in the dressing, along with a splash of olive oil.

Everything was DELICIOUS!! Shawn thought it was my best Indian meal to date and I was intrigued at his noting that the rice tasted even better than usual, which I chalk up to treating it as it was meant to be treated, washing, soaking and drying before use. I'm reading (among other things) a book called Seductions of Rice by the cookbook and travel writing duo Naomi Duguid and Jeffrey Alford and wanted to try this method out. Usually I just cook my basmati at a 1:2 ratio using the absorption method. This was really fun.

The flavors melded so beautifully! Delicious, enjoyable, every bite. Warming and good! The cauliflower cooked down to a creamy smoothness (you almost couldn't see it) and subtle flavors permeated the whole. The coconut seemed to add a slight sweetness and both the rice and the lentils retained a nice consistency, not mushy at all, and neither was it crunchy in any sense of the word. The carrots were just right and nicely tangy with the lemon. This was a wonderful feast. We had a little garlic relish courtesy of our friends at Patak's to accompany. We did have a momentary hankering for some homemade flatbreads, but it was an oversight we could live with and did with relish!!

We loved our dinner and hope you enjoyed yours, as well as reading about ours.

It's almost the New Year. If we don't post again before then, we wish you all the best in 2010~~~~~~~