Q: I think I remember you saying that you bake whole cauliflower in olive oil in the oven - can you please tell me the how?
Many thanks, Linda
A: A few years back I was travelling in Israel with my cheffy author friend Yotam Ottolenghi (he of the shared whitebait pizza fame from last week's column) and we ate ourselves stupid around his native homeland. It seemed to be one memorable meal after another from the simplicity of freshly made warm hummus and raw white onion, through to almond and raisin stuffed lamb's neck in an Arab village. One meal, among so many memorable ones, was at a restaurant that a friend of his was cheffing in called North Abraxas (40 Lilenblum St, Tel Aviv). The food was fabulous in many ways, a little clever here and there without being so clever it forgot it was food. The kitchen is headed by Eyal Shani, quite a big name in Israel.
The meal consisted of many tasty things from blue crabs cooked in tomato butter and pounded fresh corn polenta with a cheesy topping through to a strange peach marmalade with creme patisserie which definitely tasted far superior to how it looked. However, it was the whole roast cauliflower that was the most memorable of the dishes that night. I've often roasted florets of cauliflower tossed with olive oil, herbs and olives (in fact there's a recipe for them in my latest book, Everyday) but I'd never seen such a simple, fabulous way of treating this misunderstood brassica. What the kitchen had done was to remove the green leaves and trimmed the stalk, keeping it whole however. It was steamed until cooked, then roasted in a fiercely hot oven, ideally a wood-fired oven, until golden and tender. It was served wrapped in baking paper with a spoon - which at first I couldn't understand as I'd not eaten a cauliflower on its own before, nor with a spoon as though it were a mousse. However, we peeled the paper back and the golden cauliflower was easily scooped out and eaten. It was delicious in that way that only a freshly harvested cauliflower can be.
