Until recently, cauliflower was one of those vegetables that rarely got a second thought. It sometimes showed up on platters of crudites and in frozen vegetable medleys, but it certainly wasn’t an ingredient anyone got excited about.
Fast-forward to today and you can hardly walk around a grocery store without seeing cauliflower turned into everything from pizza crusts and “rice” to low-carb substitutes for mashed potatoes.
One of the best ways to highlight the white orb is to not do much to it at all. Slice it into a thick slab — call it “steak” if you want to be trendy — sear it in a hot skillet, and then roast until just tender. The deeply browned floret is intensely savory, and the tender core is not unlike a well-cooked potato.
A cauliflower steak alone is not dinner. While the steak roasts, toast half a cup of panko breadcrumbs with a bit of garlic, and saute a bag of baby spinach with a little onion to plate up your dinner, restaurant-style. Make a bed with the tender spinach, place the cauliflower steaks on top, then cover it with garlic breadcrumbs for seasoning and crunch.
Instead of hiding the cauliflower in a pizza or under a stir-fry, this dish celebrates the cruciferous vegetable, and will give you a reason to keep crunching on it long after its fame has faded.
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