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Cauliflower

31/10/2019

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A few years ago, before the persecution of Rohingya people became clear, I went backpacking round Burma. (The locals separate themselves from supporters of the Myanmar military regime by persisting in calling their country by its old established name.)

It was an eye-opening introduction to a remarkably beautiful country. Once upon a time, its people took Keeping Up With the Joneses to a degree Patricia Routledge’s Hyacinth Bouquet would have accorded the highest respect. On the plains of Bagan alone, an area 104 kilometres square, 3822 surviving temples and pagodas vie with each other in degrees of stature and grandeur. Some of them are as small as an outside loo, some as large as a tool shed, all built so close together you sometimes have to squeeze between them. 

Between 1044 and 1287, Bagan was the capital of the Pagan Empire. Its rulers and subjects built more than 1000 stupas, 10,000 small temples and 3000 monasteries. Why?, I asked a woman passing by on a bicycle. She shrugged. “One villager builds a temple on his piece of land to his god of worship. His neighbour feels obliged to follow, and builds one bigger and better.”


When you see the cauliflowers piled mountainously high in every local market, you might think the Burmese are doing the same today with vegetables. It’s an astonishing country of abundant produce, the great proportion of it grown on man-made floating islands dotting the 113-square kilometres of Inle Lake in the centre of the nation. And its cauliflowers are not the size of a baby’s head. They are the size of a beach ball.


They seemed so incongruous, displayed alongside mounds of bak choi and aubergines and green vegetables more obviously associated with Indian and Chinese dishes. Cauliflowers, more happily grown in cool daytime temperatures, are to me a vegetable of Northern Europe. 


But the people of Burma/Myanmar don’t smother their cauliflowers in cheese and white sauces. They steam their florets and turn them while warm in finely chopped mint, sesame seeds, chillies, fried garlic, and a drizzle of a tahini-like sauce for a delicious one-dish meal or salad. 


It was the English who introduced the cauliflower to a hotter part of the world - to India in 1822. Long before, Pliny had been familiar with the cauliflower, referring to it in the 1st century AD as a pleasant-tasting cabbage he called a ‘cyma’. In the 12th and 13th centuries, Arab botanists pointed to Cyprus as the origin of the plant - another hot country. But the then French rulers of that island in the 16th century began to trade the seeds into western Europe and on into France from Genoa.


Even with such a distinguished lineage, cauliflowers have long suffered the burden of a poor reputation that is mostly the result of being dreadfully overcooked, a circumstance not well disguised by coating it thickly in a cheesy bechamel sauce.


Then suddenly, about a couple of years ago, British hipsters decided the cauliflower would replace kale as the fashion-forward dish of the day. (Whoever decided kale was fashionable? And why?) It may have been due to the rise in vegetarianism, or to the fact that cooks began to recognise that cauliflowers, like haricot beans, and brussels sprouts, and other often maligned vegetables, have acquired ruined repute because they can slide from crunchy to sludgy in a matter of boiling minutes. So take care with this recipe.


Roast cauliflower steaks with spinach pesto


Serves 4


  • 1 whole cauliflower, washed, leaves removed and reserved to roast or steam with another dish
  • Olive oil
  • Juice of half a lemon
  • Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Preheat oven to 200C.


Cut the stem of the cauliflower to stand it upright. Cut down into 2.5 cm slices. Oil a baking sheet, rub the steaks both sides with olive oil, squeeze over the lemon juice, season and roast for 15 minutes and serve with a generous tablespoon of pesto.

Alternatively, rub both sides with olive oil, lay in a very hot dry pan and cook over high heat about 5 minutes each side until soft and charred, squeezing the lemon juice over at the finish. 

Spinach pesto

  • 60g fresh spinach leaves, well-washed and stemmed
  • 15g flat leaf parsley
  • 65g walnuts, toasted
  • 20g Parmesan cheese, freshly grated
  • 3 garlic cloves, peeled and roughly chopped
  • 4 tablespoons olive oil
  • Salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste

Put all ingredients into food processor and process to a fine paste the thickness of double cream. Season to taste and scrape into a glass container, loosening the pesto with a little warm water if necessary. Top with a thin coat of olive oil to prevent the pesto from discolouring and store in the refrigerator. Will keep for several months.


This column written by Julia Watson originally appeared in the November 2019 edition of The Bugle.
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Celery

7/10/2019

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My father used to call the once winter-season vegetable coming into its best right now ‘cerely’, much as my eldest daughter, when little, used to call trucks ‘rollies’, which made lorries seem so much more effervescent and roadworthy.

Celery is that dieter’s darling - an edible that burns more calories in the digesting of it than it delivers in the eating of it. But it’s a vegetable that doesn’t inspire much respect, although a ‘mirepoix’ or ‘soffrito’ would be lost without it. Combined with finely diced onion and carrot, celery provides that foundation flavouring to so many braised dishes, from soups to stews. 

And yet, even while being patronised, celery has proudly survived many decades of food fashion as its own self. From the 1830s to early 1900s, it was such an expensive vegetable, because of the care and attention it demanded in its cultivation, that wealthy families displayed it on the dining table in water like flowers in ‘celery vases’, intricate glass pieces now part of museum collections. 

In a not too distant decade past, soft blue cheese was smeared down each stalk’s gutter for passing around with wicked cocktails. In the US, it has always been served - incongruously but oh-so-rightly - with spicy-hot chicken wings. Jamie Oliver gave it pizzazz when he took a whole head and sliced it finely right across in thin half moons, dressing it with vinaigrette as a new kind of refreshing salad to which, in Jamie lingo, you could add ‘other pukka stuff’. 

You can’t make elegant Waldorf salad without a head of celery. A chicken salad of yesterday’s roast mixed up in a generous blanketing of mustardy mayonnaise with handfuls of toasted walnuts and capers is cranked up more than a notch by a folding in of copious amounts of sliced celery.

Celery, Apium graveolens var. graveolens, is not to be confused with celeriac, Apium graveolens var. Rapaceum, of which more another time. It’s been around f-o-r-e-v-e-r. (What decent vegetable hasn’t?) It was originally a marshland plant, which may explain why you might be finding it hard to cultivate in the hot and dry south west France. It was found around the Mediterranean in salty, marshy soil near the coast. It isn’t too happy in soil that lacks a salt content or isn’t constantly damp. 

Like leeks, it needs earthing up as it grows, in order to develop that white stalk. Celery that has been left unearthed to its own wayward devices in the potager develops a bitter and emphatic flavour hard to welcome in the mouth. 

But let that tangle go on to flower, and you’ll have seeds to use as a spice and, if you are homeopathically inclined, to apply in various cures. Back in time, celery seeds were employed by Ayurvedic practitioners in India to treat colds, flu, arthritis, some diseases of the liver and spleen, and against water retention. This versatile seed is still used as a diuretic. It promises a number of other medical benefits, all of which tend to be prefaced by the ambivalent ‘hedge-your-bets’ verb: ‘May’. 

Why should the poor maligned head of celery be held responsible for so much? It’s deliciously crunchy, it’s a healthy snack, it makes your slow-braised recipes taste good - what more do you want? It’s not celery’s fault it cooks out limp and grey.

Here’s a more colourful use for it, which goes well with roast meats and with game, and makes a delicious vegetarian dish or supper dish served with no more than a crusty baguette and perhaps a salad on the side.

Braised celery with dried cèpes 
Serves 4

  • 200ml chicken stock
  • 10g dried cèpes
  • 70g butter
  • 4 whole bunches of celery, outer stalks peeled with a potato peeler 
  • 1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
  • 1 small clove garlic, bruised
  • 2 tablespoons capers
  • 50ml vin de noix or Madeira 
  • Salt and freshly milled white pepper
  • 2 tablespoons parsley, finely chopped

Preheat oven to 180C.

Pour hot chicken stock over dried cèpes and leave to soak 15 minutes. 

Melt butter in an ovenproof dish. Peel off the fibers from the outer stalks of the celery hearts with a potato peeler. Halve each celery heart down the middle or tie stalks together and cut heart across its middle, reserving remaining loose stalks for other use. Gently stew in butter till colouring lightly then add vinegar. Reduce liquid at a bubbling simmer to nearly nothing then add stock and cèpes. Bring to the boil and add garlic, capers, vin de noix or Madeira and season. 

Cover dish with foil and bake 40-60 minutes. Check once or twice. If liquid is drying out, add a little more stock and lower heat. If there is too much, remove dish to stovetop and boil down over high heat. The celery and sauce should be syrupy and golden. Remove the garlic, sprinkle with parsley and serve.

Hint: To remove the tough fibres from the outer stalks of a bunch of celery, hold the bunch of celery hearts in one hand and run the potato peeler with the other hand down each of the outer stalks.

This column written by Julia Watson originally appeared in the October 2019 edition of The Bugle.
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