Cauliflower Trick 2: Cauliflower Harder

I tried quincy's cauliflower trick today with a few mods of my own. Q already went through the basics, so I will just comment quickly on what I did differently.

First and foremost is the secret ingredient: Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup.


Q and baidawi once advised me to use this as a cheese sauce stretcher in macaroni pie and lasagna. I haven't made a cheese sauce without it since. It adds a good thickness to your sauce, and a rich taste. It's available with less sodium...look for the green tin.

I wanted to season up my sauce a little as well, so I used some Garlic & Parsley Blend and a Maggi Garlic & Onion cube (mostly because I couldn't decide which one to go with) along with the salt and black pepper quincy recommended. I also used a little sweet basil.

You will find out over time that I like to pack my food up with plenty ingredients. Cooking with fewer ingredients is good when you want to savor the flavor of one main ingredient, but...I'm de fella who must take everything with a Subway, for the taste explosion. So I ended up with this. Cauliflower, broccoli, carrots and tomato. I decided to leave out the corn because I didn't think there'd be enough space for the sauce.





This was the final result. I put a small handful of diced cheese (too lazy to grate) straight into the sauce. You really won't need much. I sprinkled some parmesan and bread crumbs on top.

And here's the plate. It went down well with some fish sticks.

Tell me how yours turns out.

the gospel according to naparima

fuh years, the naparima girls' high school cookbook has been the bible when it comes to the dishes of trinbago and the caribbean. just ask overseas college students. it's just right for the homesick trini craving a doubles or a roti or somethin. yuh can't go wrong with the naps cookbook.

after doing it for some years well, they have it down to a science. very simple to follow, helpful conversions, measurements and techniques. but the most impressive feature of all for me, is the inclusion of nutritonal facts for each recipe. that's good info to have no matter if you're goin to use it or not. at least it's fun to see how many calories that pie is costing you.

this particular copy though has a special feature that few others have:



boyaka!!
who say signed copy!!?
through no fault of mine, (my good friend lisa is totally to blame for this) the obviously talented celia teelucksingh signed my copy. bess!!


so you can be sure that i'll be puttin some heat on these recipes. with my own twist maybe, but the book shall be the influence.



leh we bubble.

now we cookin' with gas

so as i mentioned before, the idea was to check some friends and invite them to put their hand in this virtual pot. as they say, it ain't no fun if the homies can't get none. let me introduce them quickly:

the kicker.

this is the designated chef in the lime. a pizza guru. makes the wickedest pizza sauce ever. (or peezat sauce as we call it). also very mean with a minced beef and pita bread. i'm sure he has that blog in mind already. not a big meat man, but into "tasty morsels" as he likes to say it.

VIX

the master of meat. as long as it has flesh on it, he knows how to curry, stew or roast it to perfection. he not easy. don't know just yet if he has the patience or the time to really slap us with some hard core recipes and pics and all that, but i am sure he would drop some noteworthy comments and tips for us to follow. daz how he is.

kayode

relatively new to the fireside, but so adventurous, you would think he's been doin it fuh years. not afraid to ask questions or season ideas with his blend of creativity to concoct unique contributions. expect him to bring some interesting and different things to the table.

there you have it. more people bringing more things to the table.

leh we bubble.

what the hell is a cannelloni?

apparently lots of people knew about this thing. where was i? under some kinda gourmet rock or somethin'? the word sounded made up. no way that existed. then i saw this:



so i guess it is real. obvious next question: so how do you cook it?





well it's pasta, so there must be some kinda boiling. unfortunately, the no boil variation either isn't available or isn't available any where close to us. bring a pot of water to boil and add a generous bit of salt to it. only put the cannelloni pasta in when the water is bubbling. boil the pasta for 4 minutes. they need to be a little firm, because they have to be stuffed later on.





while that's boiling, you can start making your filling. what pops did here was saute some onions and garlic in some olive oil, then added a lean mince beef to it. then he added a little more salt, black pepper, cayenne pepper, basil, thyme, a little rubbed sage, a little paprika and a small dash of bitters. then he added the remains of the sauce that he used in the cauliflower trick. (see previous post). let it cook down until the mixture gets some body.

now at some point during this filling making process, you should have taken the pasta off the stove, poured it into a strainer and set it down to cool. you will be holding it, so the cooler the better for you.





get your baking dish and grease it down with some butter.





now here's some dramatics. take a little of your filling mixture and drizzle it around the baking dish. just gives it a meatty feel when it's done. little chunks of meat to pick up and enjoy.





time to fill it. cover one end of the pasta with your hand while spooning your mixture in to the open end. be gentle, because it's pasta... it tears easily. if yuh know yuh wild, boil a little more than you actually want to cater for the ones you totally shred up.





lay your creations out side by side in the baking dish. fit them however you can, that's cool. in this instance, we sprinkled some parmesan cheese on top of them. a grated cheddar seasoned with some finely chopped celery and parsley could work well too. some pepper jack slices may be interesting. but you know our motto: "do what yuh like!"





oven time. these should be fine sitting in an oven pre-heated at 350° for a while. in cases like these, i cook by colour. of course when the place becomes fragrant, you check the oven. the more fragrant, the more you check.





drag them out the oven, and you're done.





we had it like a side on a big plate, but really, i see no reason why two or three of these with a fresh salad shouldn't be considered a proper meal. but maybe daz just me though.

either way...

leh we bubble.

a cauliflower trick for the new year

once upon a time, my father introduced me to this cauliflower dish. about 10 years later, when i tell people about it, it's usually new to them. as it makes its way into our new year's menu all the time, i thought it was a cool entry for the new year. it's relatively quick and easy, plus it's a nice way to include veggies in your meal. (ingredients in bold)






first, you want to select a big cauliflower. use your pot as a guide. it's simple. get a cauliflower that you can fit into one of your pots. make sense right? yuh just want to boil it in some water to soften it a little, because it has to go into the oven still.






grease an oven safe bowl. and by grease i mean rub a lil butter in it.
drop your cauliflower in with the stem facing downwards... then pause. time to make your sauce.






for this you can use a sauce pan, but yuh know how we duz do it right? iron pot! add to the pot (preferably in this order) evaporated milk, a lil butter, some corn flower, salt and black pepper to your liking. flavour it how you like. pops will drop some basil or oregano in there depending on his mode. put some heat on that and give it an occasional stir. you're lookin for a thickish mixture that's still fluid enough to pour.






attack your cauliflower with the sauce. spoon it over the top as evenly as you can and allow some of the sauce to trickle down inside.






now come at it with some grated cheddar cheese.






sprinkle with some biscuit crumbs.






and then it's oven time. it doesn't take that long to bake. maybe about a 20 minutes or so in an oven preheated at 350. check for a nice brown colour on the top.






whip that out and it's on.







and this is proof that you can teach an old vegetable new tricks.

leh we bubble.

seasoned greetings

i thought it would be cool to save the first real entry for my pops, as he's the one that i started lookin at in the kitchen. still do actually. always comin up with some trick or tryin out somethin he see on tv... he not easy. anyway, he's the one that makes the christmas meal at home, and the star of the show is always this veggie lasagna that he creates. the thing about it is he doesn't use anything to measure the amounts besides his eyes, but it tastes exactly the same every time.
(to see what you need, scan through to the ingredients in bold)



so to start it, yuh put a lil olive oil in a pot. iron pot recommended because... well... because. cut up some onion and some garlic. cut the onions chunky, but the garlic you could mince fine. not everybody could handle biting down on a big piece of garlic. put it all in the oil. yuh let that take some heat to get out the flavours, then yuh add a nice helping of diced mushrooms, eggplant, carrots and pumpkin. mix it up in the pot a little and let it cook a bit. now yuh doh want to cook it too long eh, because it have to bake still, and yuh don't want the filling to get too soft. anyway, add to yuh veggie mix ketchup, tomato paste and spaghetti sauce (select a flavoured sauce like a 4 cheese, or a basil. ragu makes some nice ones). because the sauce will have its own salt, yuh doh really need to put any, but is up to you. take a lil taste and see if you want extra. yuh want the mixture to have a lot of sauce. you could add a lil bit of water if yuh find it a lil too thick. this will be essential for the next step.



time to layer. the modern way to do this is with the ready to bake lasagna pasta. boiling takes up more time because yuh have to boil first, plus dealing with soft, hot pasta is not an easy thing. so get yuh baking dish and cover the bottom with yuh no boil pasta. feel free to break a strip to cover a smaller area and ting. all dat cool. spoon out a portion of the veggie mix and cover the pasta. make sure to get plenty sauce in it. the moisture is what makes the no boil pasta cook in the oven. yuh topping the layer of veggies with some grated cheese. (in our house, anchor vegetarian cheddar win de race. sharp and nice). repeat. yuh want to make about 3 layers of this. on the top layer though, after putting the grated cheese, sprinkle a lil parmesan cheese in de mix.

guess what? oven time. yuh want to have yuh oven hot already... pre-heated as the professionals say. set it on about 350... 400 so. cook dat until the cheese melt down and ting, it get a nice colour and yuh kitchen smellin like niceness.



and daz it there. yuh ready to lasagna dong de place.
our christmas meal is usually the veggie lasagna, pigeon peas in coconut milk, turkey, pastelle, vegetable rice, stuffing and a salad of some sort. i usually duck the salad because i find it distracting.



and daz it... leh we bubble.

We Bubblin'

A few years ago on triniscene.com, I started this thread called BRING IT TO THE TABLE. It was a simple discussion about cooking, and since no one on the forum at the time had Sylvia Hunt or Bobby Flay type skills, it was all about the amateur contribution. Some good things came up in the thread. I remember puttin’ down a macaroni pie recipe with a special little twist that I like to drop in. People actually tried it and came out with bess results. In no time flat, people started puttin’ down a whole set of recipes and tricks that were tried with success. A good breddrin’ even admitted that he started to cook because of the thread. That was enough evidence to show that a forum like that could be a cool thing.

Unfortunately, triniscene upgraded its website and all the threads were deleted… including my bess thread. Anyway, x amount of years later, I’ve decided to add some pictures and bring it back in blog form. Recipes, tricks and dat kinda ting. No professional ting. You wouldn’t see much half cups, half teaspoons and cook for 45 minutes here. This is Trini Bachelor style. Now doh get it twisted. When it comes to cooking, the term bachelor is not really a living status. It’s that style of cooking that is about improvising, adding a unique spin, cooking with feeling, and creating meals that are as filling as they are delicious.

So I'll invite some friends in the mix, whip out the digital cam and we cookin wid gas.

Leh we bubble.