Sunday, October 26, 2008

Weird Science


Cheddar Cauliflower, xoxo
I used to be a straight-up cauliflower hater. Why? Because the typical white, limp cauliflower is nothing but a useless filler on vegetable platters around the world. I pride myself on my ability to avoid cauliflower in any incarnation.

But last week at the market, I was, perhaps unsurprisingly, drawn to a booth with a little hotplate setup that was handing out samples of something smelling lovely. Without even thinking, I plopped a toothpick into the bowl and pronounced the fluffy orange stuff in it delicious. Lo and behold, I was informed that I had consumed cauliflower.
After panicking for a moment, I calmed down. Turns out I had eaten some cheddar cauliflower, which is really pretty and contains 25x more beta carotene than lamewad white cauliflower. So I bought a head, which is delicious when sauteed with a nothing more than garlic, salt and pepper.


Mathematician's Delight
And then D, who is a lover of all things fractal , came home with another crazy cauliflower, the Romanesco variety. It was was even cooler-looking than the cheddar, though I cannot yet vouch for its flavor.

The moral of the story: Try new things. Cauliflower can be good. Nature is cool.

3 comments:

Ari Joseph said...

if i ever catch you hating on cauliflower, we are THROUGH.

Anonymous said...

wait. you eat veggies now? no way! :-P

Jamie said...

@ Ari: baby, don't be like that!

@ Steven: oh, how the times have changed.