cauliflower purée

This side dish is for roast chicken or braised short rib or anything else out of the oven: Chop a head of cauliflower and steam it until soft (about 20 minutes). Add it to the blender with a (very) big hunk of butter and lots of salt and pepper. Blend to smooth; if you have trouble, adjust texture with cream, butter or water. Serve by making it a base layer on each plate, with the meat and vegetables on top. Cauliflower has a truffle-like thing going on that makes any meal seem fancier.

braised short rib

I have made this a few times and it never disappoints! It is an assemblage of ideas from different sources.

Burn a few pounds (I have done up to 4) of beef short rib in a bit of butter in a very hot oven-proof pan. Don't skimp on this step; you want them super-dark on the outside. Remove them to a plate. Then cook a couple onions, chopped coarsely, in the pan until the onions are starting to caramelize. Also don't skimp on this step; you want the onions to get sweet. These two steps take 45 minutes, combined, in reality. While you are doing this, pre-heat the oven to 250F.

Add to the pot one can of cheap beer, a few tablespoons of molasses, a fair bit of salt, and maybe two tablespoons of vinegar. You want some sweet and some sour. The 'Chard recommends trying star anise if you want to go more asian. That's worth trying. Garlic is also a good idea. Put the whole thing, covered, in the 250F oven for three hours. Remove the cover for the last hour of that to reduce the liquid a bit. At the end, the meat falls apart on your fork and is a bit sweet.

If you have a day job, do the two covered hours the night before, save it until tomorrow, and do the last uncovered hour the next day. That's what I'm doing tonight, and maybe it's even better this way. Serve with mashed potatoes or cauliflower purée and some greens like bok choy (sautéed with soy sauce, mirin, and sesame oil). And don't forget the braising pan juices; they are half the point of this dish!

hot pot

The Tragintyres—who have adopted the customs of their home country the Netherlands—taught us this one this summer: Cut up a few potatoes and similar vegetables (tonight we used carrots and cauliflower, but you could use beets or turnips or parsnips or cabbage, of course) and boil them to tender. Meanwhile, saute bacon, then onions, and then finely chopped greens (we used kale that had been blanched). Mash the boiled vegetables with cream, butter, salt and pepper; then add the sauteed part and mix it up. Serve.

This is meat-as-garnish, kid-friendly, hearty, simple, and delicious.

99 cent cauliflower

I sometimes wonder how supermarkets ever make any money on fresh produce. Maybe they don't. Maybe that whole department is a loss leader so people will come and buy breakfast cereals and Pop Tarts. In winter in Quebec, a cauliflower sells for about 3 bucks, but this week I picked one up for 99 cents because it had developed some brown spots (heavens!). The store can't just trim that stuff off because customers wonder just what unwholesome fungus must have been removed, but I can and did. The rest of it made this:

• Chop coarsely and sweat one large cooking onion in about 4 tbsp of butter
• Add chopped cauliflower and light chicken broth (I usually use Campbell's but with two cans of water to one of broth) to cover. Simmer until cauliflower is tender.
• Blend until smooth (an immersion or dipstick blender makes this very easy).
• Adjust body by adding milk. Season to taste (s&p and maybe some nutmeg).

You can stop here and still enjoy this soup; the kids like it this way. A lot of recipes call for this plus grated old cheddar. The tanginess of the cheese works. But just try this base plus chopped fresh coriander. It's unbelievably good. I make a lot of soups along the lines of this one. It's pretty algorithmic:

• potato and leek
• carrot (add minced ginger and garlic to the onions and some white wine to the stock; hold the milk; hold the nutmeg but add curry powder and lemon juice to seasonings)
• parsnip (schmancy option: puree a boiled beet and swirl in some of this for that marbling effect)
• potato and watercress/spinach (blanche cress—abundant unsalted boiling water for a couple of minutes followed by shocking in cold water and squeeze out—to reduce bitterness; cook potato in half stock, half milk then blend with cress)