Roasted Cauliflower Salad - 1st attempt

One very memorable food experience in Canada was visiting the Rocket Bakery in St John's, Newfoundland after my hike to Signal Hill. I had a black bean burrito with a side of roasted cauliflower salad that was out of this world (my phone was flat, otherwise I would have included it in my Canadian highlights post). It was so good I am determined to add it to my cooking repertoire. I wrote down the ingredients I could recognise, red onion, cherry tomatoes, garlic, mint, capers and roasted cauliflower and googled it when I got back to Australia.

The only recipe I could find was posted by The Shiksa in the Kitchen, apparently it's an Italian recipe ! Who knew! Mine is pretty close to hers, except I added mint + tomatoes and I didn't have any olives... she has a very detailed step by step instructions about how to cook the cauliflower that I did not strictly follow. It turned out really tasty, but not quite the same as my Rocket experience. I added way more herbs which made it almost like a low carb tabouli and the cauliflower in mine was quite soft. At Rocket it was brown and carmelised from roasting but still firm, almost crunchy. I'm going to blame my crappy oven and my slightly overcrowded roasting trays. Maybe next time will put the oven on a really high heat, or maybe grill it and not add the minced galic (because it will most certainly burn). My first attempt was as follows...

preheat the oven to 180 degrees C

 

Chop half a cauliflower into small, even sized pieces.

 

 To reduce the amount of crumbly cauliflower bits at the end, a good trick to cutting your cauli is to start with your knife cutting down into the solid steam and once you reach the bulbus part of the floret, gently twist your knife (by rotating your wrist) to allow it to break apart into more cohesive bunches. 

 

 

mix the florets in a bowl with 2 cloves of minced garlic and  a generous splash of olive oil. Lay flat on some oven trays and place in a 180 degree C oven

 

while the cauliflower is roasting cut up the rest of your salad ingredients.

 

1/2 a red onion finely diced

2 tbl capers

2 tomatoes deseeded and diced

small bunch of parsely finely chopped

10-15 mint leaves finely chopped

juice of 1/2 a lime

 

Like the Shiksa says, the parts of the cauliflower in contact with the oven tray caramelise the most efficiently. I checked on them every 10 minutes, each time giving it a little stir. In the end, I cooked mine for about 30-40  minutes.

 

 

mix it all up with the juice of 1/2 a lime and you're done!

 

Canadian Highlights



I apologise for my hiatus - I'm finally home from my travels and hoping to get back into a regular blogging routine! Canada was great, I pretty much hiked, rock climbed and ate my way across the country. At times I found eating out challenging, it's hard to stay healthy in some situations... but there were definite highlights..... including..

 

 

bulk blueberries from Cosco = Blueberry heaven..

 

Snacks while hiking - sugar snap peas, tiny (freakish) carrots, laughing cow cheese, ritter sport chocolate (Germany I love ya'), lindt dark chocolate, rye and beer sourdough from Wild Flower Bakery and a packet of BBQ shapes bought by special delivery from Perth to Calgary.

 

Hmmm doesn't food attract bears...?

 

A special lunch at a friends family ranch near Medicine Hat in Alberta. It included macaroni salad, beans, some kind of vegetable dip and home made German Sausages (the highlight!) 

 

 

My first ever cinnamon bun freshly made at Wieners of Waterton was pretty nice. Apparently if you make these at home you can't skimp on the butter syrup sauce...

 

A breakfast burrito at 3pm at Nellie's Cosmic Cafe in Calgary was soooo good. A wholemeal tortilla with scrambled eggs, refried beans, black olives and avocado. Two things Canadians do way better than Aussies - all day breakfasts and Mexican themed food!

 

 

I had a 8 oz steak at Nick's Steakhouse with a giant roast potato, it was meatastic! The local indigenous people used to survive on meat and berries - so really eating a giant piece of meat in Alberta is actually kind of sustainable.... 

 

 

I enjoyed deep fried cod, prawns and scallops at the "World famous" Ches's in St John's, Newfoundland. Washed down with a Dominion Ale (apparently a mans beer). I don't usually get excited about hot chips - but these were super yum! 

 

An espresso and Montreal bagel with cream cheese in St John's, Newfoundland (*not pictured, huge servings of smoked salmon and gravlax from the wedding brunch I attended.... Mmmm salmon)

 

 

My excitement over picking fresh raspberries (for the first time in my life) was impossible to contain!

 

 

Hiking to the top of Mt Bourgeau summit (Banff township in background)... priceless!

 

Welcome to Canada....

This past week I have been visiting a friend in Calgary, Alberta Canada. I've been having a really great time going hiking in the Rockies near Banff, dabbling in a little rock climbing and of course tasting some local cuisine. As an Australian in north America the abundance of chain restaurants, ribs, wings and burgers is all a little confronting and the fact that my 88 cent/pound banana is from Ecuador is difficult to reconcile. It would be really easy to get up on my high horse and carry on about what's wrong with the food in this country. But the thing is, some of the most inspiring food blogs I have read are written by people in the US and Canada. Clearly this country has a lot to teach me. It has dawned on me that the prevalence of the American diet (ribs, wings, burgers etc) is the exact thing that has inspired people here to pull away and make positive changes to how they eat. I think that in Australia we are a bit behind in this regard. I am sure "things Canada taught me" will become a running theme in my blog, but for today I am just going to include a few highlights.

Exhibit A of this positive approach to food is the way Canadians can't get enough of nuts in salad, I found a bunch of these "salad boosters" in the supermarket that contain unusual combinations of nuts and grains that seem like an awesome idea. The majority of bars, cafes and restaurants seems to have at least one salad on the menu with walnuts or toasted pumpkin seeds, it's excellent! Also, these people love kale... I had some purple Kale cooked in a foil pocket on the BBQ at a friends place - I am totally converted!

Alberta is beef country, in fact the local indigenous people used to survive on a diet of bison and berries. I've been told that in Calgary the snow begins to fall some time in August and doesn't stop until May, this doesn't leave much room for locally sourcing your food - unless you are happy to eat dried berries and beef jerky for 8 months of the year... I've eaten asparagus from Ecuador and organic strawberries from USA (both of which have tasted considerably better than the same produce in Australia), I fell pangs of guilt and find it difficult to comprehend how the majority of north Americans eat food that has been transported such great distances and is still somehow affordable. On the flip side I have felt much less guilt about eating as much beef as I want, because it's local and environmentally sustainable for this kind of landscape (unfortunately for me 3 days of beef is my limit and I'm currently taking a break from beef).

Before I hit my beef limit I had this Mexican Beef burger at the Rose & Crown in Banff and it was pretty delicious. It was modest in size and was topped with jalapenos, cheese, tomato, pickle, lettuce, mustard and guacamole, even better you get to choose your side - I chose sauteed seasonal vegetables. In Australia if you don't want chips, you have to ask to swap it with salad or vegetables. I'm not a fan of hot chips because I don't enjoy them enough to justify the calorie intact, a rich chocolate cake on the other hand - totally worth it... But I digress. 

Two things that Canada is not known for is great coffee and great bread - but I didn't have to search very hard to find them. Wild flower bakery in Banff was a great find, their beer and rye bread was almost up to German standards (there was a reason why i gained 16kg living in Germany for a year) and the double espresso was perfect. Speaking of espresso, I just wrote this blog while sipping on one from The Roasterie in Kensington, Calgary, which doesn't have a website, but several reviews proclaiming it the best coffee in Calgary with a warning "watch out for the crazies, the kids and the hippies" love it! you can always find your people, you just have to be open and keep looking until you find them!

One final note, during my travels I am reading a copy of Michael Pollans book "In defense of food", which is an America focused book about what people should be eating and why. It's relevance to myfood journey in Canada cannot be understated. It's excellent. I love Michael Pollans writing and his book, "The Omnivores Dilemma" about the ethics and origins of our food has changed my perspective on what I eat.