Dessert, (urban) homestead style
November 18th, 2008by Lisa
Unlike Caroline, I don’t bake a lot. We were joking the other day about our families and how although we have many things in common, there are some major differences. The fact that we eat meat for one. The fact–as she joked–that I’m going “going urban homestead.” I demurred, but she’s not entirely wrong.
This fall, as we do every year, we roasted and froze 40lbs of tomatoes, made and froze about 20 family-sized servings of pesto, froze 3 flats of raspberries, and picked over 300 apples. My freezer is a sophisticated and delicately balanced puzzle of epic organization.
I do this because it saves me time and money, it adds some variety to our winter diet, but I do this mostly because all this produce tastes better than the canned kind. Bring home mountains of fresh, organic produce, freeze it immediately, and you have a farmers market in your freezer all winter long. Yes, it takes time in those weeks that you’re canning and freezing, but then when school starts and you need a quick dinner, just reach in your freezer and there it is: emergency pesto, tomatoes that cook to the richest, sweetest sauce you’ll ever make, a surprise dessert.
But now, with the weather not turning, the apples are not lasting as well as they should. So this weekend, it was time to invest in an automatic apple peeler and make apple sauce. The gadget worked like a dream, and while I roasted beets and peppers (because, okay, the hoarding & stockpiling instinct is still strong within me), Kory, Ella, and Finn went to town. In about ten seconds flat, a four year old can peel an apple.
And so can his sister:
Or they can peel, core, and slice into cute spirals in the same lightning speed:
They ate a lot of apples, and Ella chomped down the skin like it was a long string of candy.
I made the apple sauce by instinct after reading a few recipes online. Honestly, I made it for the kids. I don’t think I’ve eaten applesauce for 30 years. But after tasting our homemade version, I’m guessing that Ella and Finn will be lucky to have two more bowls.
We ate it warm that night for dessert. With a scoop of vanilla ice cream. It tasted like fresh picked, intensely sweet apples. Dessert gets fancier, and more chocolate-y, but I’m not at all sure it gets any better.
Homemade Apple Sauce
20-30 small apples
1/4 cup organic white sugar
1/4 cup organic brown sugar
2-3 strips lemon zest (from an organic lemon)
juice from 1/2 lemon
1 cup water
1 cinnamon stick
1. Peel, core, and chop or slice the apples. (Alternately, try leaving the skin on for flavor). Put them in a large pot with the other ingredients. Bring to a boil then lower heat and simmer until apples are nearly dissolved.
2. REMOVE lemon zest and cinnamon stick.
3. Mash with a potato masher for a thicker, chunkier sauce. Or pass the mixture through a food mill.
Note: If you use fewer apples, just reduce the amount of sugar and zest accordingly, as long as you keep the brown & white sugars of equal proportion. But you can also freeze this in individual or family-sized servings, just in case you’re compelled to start your own stockpile.
Dinners Everybody Eats: The Second in an Optimistic Series
November 17th, 2008by Caroline
It’s been a month since I posted the first in this series and everybody is still happily eating roasted cauliflower, so I’m emboldened to post again. This time it’s a meal that Tony, years ago (pre-kids, pre-marriage) dubbed Sweetie Pie Supper because it’s what I would make for myself when he was out; the kids heard him refer to the meal that way once and, well, the name has stuck. It takes more preparation than some dinners, but it’s mostly just chopping, and you can do a bit at a time, far in advance, because if some of the dishes are hot and some are lukewarm, it’s really okay. What I’m posting here is not remotely a recipe, just a list of dishes that work well together and everyone (currently) likes.
Sweetie Pie Supper
I’m not dictating amounts, here; just make as much as you think it’ll take to feed your family.
carrots
potatoes
spinach, chard or kale
sweet potatoes
lentils with carmelized onion and/or white beans with tomato sauce
you will also need olive oil, salt and pepper, garlic, lemon juice, milk, butter, and a spoonful of brown sugar
cranberry sauce and gravy are nice additions if you have them
For the carrots:
Traditionally, I roasted them, but lately Ben is in charge of carrots so we make the Carrot Pennies recipe from Mollie Katzen’s cookbook for kids, Pretend Soup. You slice the carrots into pennies and steam them until they’re almost tender. Then melt a tablespoon of butter in a frying pan over medium heat, add a little brown sugar and a healthy squeeze of lemon juice. Add the carrots and stir until they’re nicely coated. The recipe calls for a sprinkling of sesame seeds, but Ben typically omits those.
For the potatoes:
A dear friend, years ago, told me she’d had such a hard time making mashed potatoes for her husband – it hadn’t occurred to her to cook the potatoes before mashing. So with her in mind, I offer the order of things: Scrub, chop, and bring the potatoes to a boil in a pot of water, cook until tender, drain and then mash with milk and butter, salt and pepper.
For the sweet potatoes:
Peel, slice, toss with a bit of olive oil, salt and pepper, and roast at about 425, stirring a couple times, until tender and caramelized around the edges.
For the greens:
Rinse well, remove any tough stems, and steam until tender. Drain, and then really squeeze out any excess water. Now chop the greens and saute them for a minute with some garlic and olive oil; add a squeeze of lemon juice at the end. Sprinkle toasted pine nuts and raisins on top if you’re feeling fancy. Expect that one of your children will pick the nuts and raisins out to eat, while the other one will pick them off and leave them on the side of the plate.
For the lentils and onion:
Slice the onion and saute it in a bit of butter or olive oil over low heat, stirring occasionally, until brown and caramelized. Add cooked lentils and stir. (Lentils boil quickly and don’t require any presoaking; still, the precooked ones can be pretty handy in a pinch).
For the white beans and tomato sauce:
If you’ve thought to presoak and then cook your cannelini beans, you have more foresight than I. For this dish, canned beans are perfectly acceptable; so, really, is jarred tomato sauce: combine the two and warm them up. If you happen to have homemade sauce, so much the better. A bit of rosemary is a nice addition.
Dessert
November 15th, 2008by Caroline
I’m surprised to find I haven’t written about dessert yet in this forum, since I have a lot to say about the subject. And despite how healthy I try to keep my family, we certainly don’t avoid dessert. We’re just as likely to make an afternoon project of making cookies as making paintings, and if we have a bowl of apples, I’m just as likely to bake them into a crisp than to slice them up to feed the kids.
Today, after a late-afternoon romp in Golden Gate Park with frisbee and soccer ball, we walked up to one of our favorite local restaurants, a casual place where they bring the kids mason jars full of crayons and the silverware waits for use in repurposed cans of Hershey’s chocolate syrup. We eat there often (despite some memorably bad evenings there, no fault of the restaurant). After a simple supper (a roasted artichoke to share, pasta of various sorts all around, a nice salad of roasted beets, arugula, endive and manchego), Tony slipped in a quiet dessert order. The ginger cake here is so good we don’t even order the excellent chocolate cake anymore, which might be all you need to know about it. The cake is spicy and moist, a little crispy round the edges, and sits next to a generous scoop of homemade pumpkin ice cream, all surrounded by a pool of rich dark caramel sauce. It might be my favorite restaurant dessert in a city that’s rich in excellent desserts.
Tonight when the waiter put the dessert down, the boys fell on it. Eli practically snarled at me when I used my spoon to force his back down onto the plate and reduce his giant bite by half. Ben, with longer arms, snuck in for bites from the side while Eli stood up to get better access. “Eli!” I cried, appalled at his manners; “Do you even know what the cake tastes like?” He didn’t even pause to answer; didn’t, in fact, even swallow, but answered by shaking his head no. When it was gone, he took a deep breath and sat back, satisfied.
The subtlety of texture and flavor was lost on him; it was sweet and good and for now that’s all he needs. But in the interest of refining his palate, we’ll keep ordering this cake. In fact, I think next time we’ll order two.
Peppers, The Prequel
November 7th, 2008By Lisa
The padrone-eating incident (now updated with pictures) was not without precedent.
One of our family staples, especially when it’s high pepper season, is dish of roasted red peppers bathed in olive oil, with capers, garlic, and anchovies.
Before you stop reading at “anchovy,” please consider this: a mysterious alchemy occurs when the peppers meet anchovies and garlic in a bath of olive oil. The peppers mellow and deepen in flavor, the anchovies sweeten and lose some of their bite. You can choose not to eat the anchovies. Or if you are still squeamish, you can, if you must, leave them out altogether, though you will be missing something.
I have served this dish many, many times at parties, to unsuspecting friends, and it disappears quickly. I have served it to children, at dinner parties–not just my own–who have devoured it. I have served it to my father-in-law, who hates anchovies, but still loves the peppers.
Truly, this is a dish that is more than the sum of its parts.
Every Sunday, all summer long, I made a large dish of these peppers and stashed it away in the refrigerator to marinate. I am not exaggerating when I write that this dish came out nearly every night, as appetizer or side dish. Ella tucked into it with abandon, piling her bread high with peppers, sprinkling a caper or two, then soaking the whole thing in a spoon or two of the marinating oil. By the end of the summer, even Finn, who is a more cautious eater, was fighting her for a pass at the olive oil, which is liquid gold in its own right. At parties and barbecues, Ella’s self-appointed job was to make the plate of the pepper-crostini. They’re bright and pretty on the plate, and they go just as well with beer as with prosecco. We never got tired of them.
In the winter time, or for big parties, I make the same dish from jarred roasted peppers. In summer, when peppers are in season, I bring home my weekly stash of red, yellow, chocolate peppers, and roast them on the grill. If I’m really pressed for time, I can throw the peppers in the convection oven, but they aren’t quite as good this way. It will keep easily for a week, covered in the refrigerator.
The recipe comes from the pages of Marcella Hazan’s Classic Italian Cooking, one of my go-to books when I have a fresh, local, seasonal ingredient and want inspiration.
Below is the basic recipe, with my notes & variations. Once the peppers are roasted, there’s nothing simpler. Consider it insurance for those pre-dinner hunger attacks.
Roasted Peppers with Garlic, Capers, and Anchovies
Ingredients:
- Roasted peppers
- Whole smashed garlic cloves
- Capers
- Anchovies
- Oregano
- Olive oil
- Slice peppers. Smash garlic cloves with the flat edge of the knife, peel and discard skin.
- Layer peppers in a shallow, flat bottomed dish. On top, place a smashed garlic clove, 2-3 anchovies (or more or less to taste), a sprinkling of capers, a sprig or dash of dried oregano. If you roast the peppers yourself, you might sprinkle a very little coarse salt on them. Do not do this if the peppers are jarred.
- Repeat the layering process until your peppers are gone.
- Bathe the entire dish in olive oil.
- Refrigerate overnight.
- Serve with sliced Italian bread
Ingredient notes:
Peppers: Red are traditional and the sweetest, but try different varieties as accent colors and flavors if you’re so inclined.
Anchovies: Only buy anchovies packaged in glass (not tins). My experience has been that the more you pay, the better product you get. There is a vast difference in quality between cheaper and more expensive brands.
Oregano: Dried is just fine. Fresh sprigs are fine. My favorite is to dry sprigs from my bush, and use these. They’re pretty and flavor is best. If you use dried sprigs, you’ll likley need only 3 or so for a large dish.
Capers: If you use salt-packed, rinse them well.
Olive oil: Just a good, decent extra-virgin is fine. Nothing fancy. You need a lot of it, so I just pour from whatever big tin I’ve got on hand that week: Sagra, Whole Foods, etc.
In the case of this recipe, for me, omissions are very often accidents. I’ve forgotten to add: capers, oregano, salt. I’ve run out of anchovies before I started, then it was too late to get to the store. You can assemble it meticulously, so it looks like a beautiful strata of color, or you can throw it together in a haphazard flash. The dish may be best with all of the ingredients, but it’s still delicious in whatever configuration you and your family prefer. Just don’t leave out the garlic.
Some Like ‘em Hot, a Pepper Conundrum
November 6th, 2008By Lisa
Most of the time, we want our kids to eat what we eat, right? And most of the time, we work really hard to get them to eat what we put on the table, right?
It’s been our general philosophy that the kids eat what we eat. End of story. In our home, this has happened pretty much since birth. Both were breast fed, so they quite literally ate what I ate. Both had fewer jars of baby food than I can count on my hands. I steamed, mashed, pureed, froze. And now both eat what I cook or they don’t eat at all. Evidence the new chalkboard door as Exhibit A.
This has generally made for a happy and stress-free family food life.
However, there are some things that Kory and I jealously keep to ourselves. Things we don’t want the kids to eat because that means, well, less for us. And while we want our kids to have good taste, and to taste good things, some things we just don’t want to share.
One of these things is pimientos de padrones, grown by Happy Quail Farms.
Padrones are small green peppers, flash fried in olive oil, sprinkled with coarse salt, some are hot, some are sweet, all are addictively delicious.
They’re eaten tapas style. We eat them every week in the summer. We serve them at every party we give. We bring them as hostess gifts. They never fail to please.
Kory and I discovered padrones nearly the moment they were introduced to Happy Quail’s gorgeous kaleidoscopic stand of peppers nearly ten years ago, and like the rest of the fanatic cabal, we spoil ourselves on the bags of green gold weekly ($6) when they’re in season . As far as we know, Happy Quail is the only producer of true padrones in the area, and they supply markets and restaurants throughout the Bay Area. The legend I remember of their local origin, told to me by the farmer more than half a decade ago, is that a faithful Happy Quail customer, dining in Spain on padrones, decided that Happy Quail needed to culitvate them and smuggled back the seeds….
And so, for many years, Ella and Finn have seen the padrones on our table week after summer week after summer week. We haven’t offered them to the kids, or have done so only half-heartedly, in jest.
But the moral of this story is that it is absolutely true, that boring, old-fashioned truism that your mother and grandmother and all those expert books tell you: expose a child to something for long enough and she will eventually eat. Just leave it there on the table, within reach, within eyesight, eat it yourself. Just wait and see. I dare you.
Because one very sad-happy day, Ella ate a padrone. And there was no turning back.
And from that day on until the end of padrone season, If Kory & I didn’t get to the table fast enough, they’d be gone. Plucked from the plate like so many pieces of candy in the hands of a more normal child, they’d disappear down her gullet faster than she could say “Polly-Piper picked a peck of pickled….” The only good thing to come out of it (for me and Kory) was that our lovely pepper farmer presented Ella with her very own bag of padrones the next week at the market, with the benediction, “Welcome to the Club!”
Of course, this kind of growth is what one wants for one’s child isn’t it? A life full of education and opportunity and new experiences?
It’s wrong to hoard, I know. One is supposed to overflow with goodness, selflesslessness, and generosity for one’s children. One is supposed to share.
Whoever thought that one up probably never had a padrone.
Feeding 3 Generations
November 5th, 2008by Caroline
My parents are visiting from Connecticut this week, and for me it’s a good excuse to slow down and spend a bit more time in the kitchen. I won’t spend every free minute writing or editing; instead, I’ll go through the binders full of torn-out magazine and newspaper recipes, page through the dozens of cookbooks on the kitchen shelves and look for renewed inspiration. Instead of spending all of Eli’s preschool hours at my desk, I’ll probably go to the market.
My parents don’t ask that I do this; for them, simply gathering around the table, all six of us, is really more important than the food we eat. They like a nice meal but aren’t terribly picky. And this is why it’s such a pleasure to feed them. My children lately drop foods from their diet more quickly than they add them. Ben is down to only one kind of cheese, even a particular brand of that cheese, and will only eat it cold, in slices (not grated nor melted). I know this stage will pass, and so I’m not pushing the boys to be what they aren’t. Tony and I will keep trying to set a balanced, interesting meal on the table every night, and hope that the boys will taste what we offer before filling up on plain pasta or bread. But of course, the discussions of what they won’t eat get wearying, and more often than not, Tony and I don’t have the energy to make something creative that we know the boys won’t even touch to their lips. So we fall into a rut of the few simple pastas and vegetables the boys will eat without complaint.
My parents’ visit offers me renewed energy. Here are two eaters who will try almost anything, who don’t at all mind our vegetarian diet, who can be counted on to help prep and clean. They even eat leftovers.
But their first night, I didn’t expect any of that from them, nor did I try out any new dishes. You never know when you pick people up from a flight if they’ll be starving or full of airplane snacks, but either way, I figured they’d want a simple warm meal. I made soup. I’ll post the steps here — it’s hardly a recipe, since I eyeballed everything — and the result was delicious (and unlikely ever to be replicated). The boys didn’t eat it, as I expected, but they were happy with the salad and bread and cheese on the side, and the meal was a nice way to start our visit.
Squash Soup for Travelers at the End of a Journey
Preheat oven to 400.
No matter what direction I’m taking the squash soup (curried, spicy, etc) I always start by following the procedure Deborah Madison suggests in Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone: halve the squash, scoop out the seeds, and then put 4-6 unpeeled cloves of garlic in the cavities. Drizzle some olive oil on the cut edges of the squash, and then set them, cut sides down, on a large roasting pan. Roast until the squash is tender, 30-60 minutes, depending on the size of the squash.
While the squash is roasting, you can saute some diced onion with herbs (thyme, sage, bay leaves are all nice) or without, until the onion is nice and soft. For the soup I made this week, I skipped the herbs, planning instead to grate fresh ginger into the soup. Perhaps deglaze the pan with a big slosh of wine. Remove the bay leaves (if you used them) and put the onions into your blender.
When it’s finished roasting and cool enough to handle, scoop the cooked squash into your blender. Squeeze the roasted garlic out of its skins into the blender, too. Blend, adding some water or stock if necessary to thin it; you can always add more water, stock, wine or (if you’re feeling decadent) cream when you’re heating up the soup.
Transfer the pureed squash to a sauce pan to finish warming. Thin with stock or water to taste, and season with salt and pepper. At this point, I grated a thumb-sized knob of fresh ginger into the pot, which melted nicely into the soup and gave it a gingery warmth without getting spicey.
Chez Nous
November 3rd, 2008
by Lisa
For as long as I can remember I have wanted a chalkboard wall.
I have suggested: the back of the front door, the interior kitchen doors, the children’s exterior hallway doors, the outdoor fence.
It has all come to naught.
No one in my family has understood this deep longing.
Until now.
A few weeks ago, driven by one of the energy-rich auras that is the only good thing about the migraines I sometimes get, I drove to the paint store, bought the paint, the rollers, the foam brush, the drop-cloth, and Finn and I painted the door separating the office from the dining area of our kitchen.
The result: a blackboard, a backdrop, a place to announce the daily menu, or list snack options, or brainstorm, or party plan, or simply write a story or learn letters.
It’s been a big hit. I write our menu daily. Ella adds to it & then some. In between, she writes lists, teaches FInn letters, writes stories. Both kids get a big kick out of it. We tend to have little complaining about dinner. Now we have almost none. Though I do expect the novelty to wear off. Soon.
The first night, pictured above, we had a new dish: Potato Leek Soup, a cheese board, roasted peppers, yellow beans, bread.
Another night, it was all about pie: Cheese pie (actually, quiche, which in fact has no cheese in it, but more about that in another post), Green Beans, Apple Pie.
And it helped to have an artist in the family on Halloween for the party. The Horror D’oeuvres Menu looked like this:
It’s for breakfast, lunch, and everything in between. It may not have improved our cooking, but it’s somewhat improved the dignity of our meals.
‘Tis the season… Pumpkin Bread
November 3rd, 2008by Caroline
This time of year, I start baking even more than usual and Eli doesn’t want to eat anything but another quick bread, be it apple, pear, banana or pumpkin. So I get him to bake with me, which he is happy to do, wielding his whisk with great care. I also try to adjust the recipes a bit to make them more nutritious; he thinks he can live on bread alone, and with this and some milk or yogurt on the side… Well, I still want him to eat green vegetables. But this is pretty good.
I started with a recipe from Gourmet magazine which hasn’t turned up on line yet; I cut the sugar, replaced the white flour with whole wheat, and replaced some of the oil with ground flaxseed. It’s light and delicious.
2 c whole wheat flour
6 T ground flax
3/4 t baking soda
1/2 t ground cinnamon
1/4 t ground allspice
1/4 t ground cloves
1/4 t ground ginger
1/4 t salt
2 large eggs
1/3 c water or milk
1 c brown sugar
1 c pumpkin puree
3 oz vegetable oil
1 t vanilla extract
1 c chopped toasted walnuts (optional; I leave them out because the kids don’t like them)
Preheat the oven to 350 and line a 9 x 5 inch baking pan with parchment.
Whisk together the dry ingredients in one bowl, then whisk together the remaining ingredients in a second bowl. Add the wet to the dry and whisk until blended and smooth. Pour batter into prepared pan.
Bake for 45 minutes, until the bread is firm to the touch and a tester inserted into the middle of the loaf comes out clean. Baked goods with flax in them tend to brown pretty quickly, so if your bread is getting dark and the loaf isn’t cooked through yet, just cover it lightly with foil and continue baking.
You Say Griddle-, I Say Pan-…
October 25th, 2008By Lisa
My offer was innocent enough, and both kids leapt at it, but there was a semantic conflict that nearly brought down the house.
“I want pancakes,” Finn shouted.
“I want griddle cakes,” Ella countered.
“No,” he protested. “Pan. Cakes.”
“They’re Griddle Cakes,” she insisted.
“I. Want. Pancakes.” Finn stomped.
“Finn! They are the same thing!. They are GRIDDLE CAKES!”
“NOT I WANT GRIDDLE CAKES! I WANT PANCAKES.”
At which point I held up the griddle, and Ella said, “Finn, pancakes are griddle cakes.”
He looked at the familiar evidence: the yellow melamine mixing bowl, the whisk, the griddle on the stove, and the tears stopped. He laughed. “Oh! Not I know that pancakes are griddle cakes.”
I grew up eating pacakes on Sunday mornings, which my father made from Bisquick, and which I don’t buy. I have tried recipe after recipe, mix after mix and never quite found the perfect formula until Ella brought home from the library the excellent Fannie in the Kitchen: The Whole Story from Soup to Nuts, a nonfiction story about how Fannie Farmer got her start.
The recipe is a dream: simple, straightforward, failproof, and it makes the perfect pancake. The griddle cakes, as we now call them, because that’s what Fanny called them are not to thin, not too thick, easy to cook, easy to eat. WIth Grade B Maple Syrup, you may well rediscover the family breakfast table. While I do keep a box of mix on hand for emergency dinners, it gets used maybe once a year.
In the book, Fanny teaches her young charge how to cook many things, including griddle cakes, so of course Ella, now 6, has taken this lesson to heart, and so has Finn, age almost-4.
We had few extra frozen blueberries stashed, which we sprinkled on her griddle cakes, and Ella remembered to watch the griddle cakes until they were bubbling and dry around the edges, and then she carefully slid the spatula under the disc and… flip! the perfect pancake.
She stood on a step stool, and I was close by, talking her through the steps, what was to safe to touch, what not. She does have basic knife & kitchen safety skills, so I felt relatively okay about the safety aspect of the experiment. I was less okay about what would happen if the pan–I mean griddle cake collapsed in a gooey mess. But the recipe is, as I said, a dream.
But then Finn wanted a turn.
I took a deep breath. I said okay. I tried to help him, but he is stubborn. I showed him how to flip the pancake a few times, hand over hand. Then I showed him what was very, very hot. Then I stepped back. He, too, has been in the kitchen a lot with me. Kory stood just behind him.
And just to prove that you, too, can make the perfect pancake, my not-quite-4-year old really did flip his own griddle-pancakes.
Of course, the real cooking was nearly as big a hit as the eating, and soon Ella was clamoring:
“It’s my flipping turn!”
And so, for your eating and flipping pleasure:
Fannie Farmer’s Griddle Cakes
2 cups flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 egg
2 cups milk
2 tablespoons melted butter
1. Sift together all dry ingredients into a large bowl. This is an essential step. We just use a sieve, and work over the sink for easy clean up.
2. In a glass measuring cup beat the egg.
3. Add milk to the egg.
3. Pour egg and milk mixture slowly over dry ingredients, whisking to incorporate.
4. Add butter.
4. Cook batter on a hot griddle. Don’t turn the griddle cakes too soon! Wait until they are bubbling all over the center and a little dry around the edges.
Dinners Everybody Eats: An Optimistic Series
October 14th, 2008posted by Caroline
I realize that just by writing that title, I run the risk of losing once-happy eaters from our dinner table; somehow they will sense that I consider this meal a winner, and they’ll cringe and complain next time it appears on the table. Eli, using the phrase he adopted from our winter-long reading of the Pooh books, will shake his head and say mournfully, “I’m not in cauliflower corner anymore.”
But, in the interest of spreading the word about a couple things that have worked for us, in the hopes that they might work for you, here is one dinner that my children have, at least in the past, reliably eaten. Check in next week to see if the power of the blog has somehow reduced its appeal.
Pasta with Roasted Cauliflower
1 head of cauliflower
1/3 c pitted olives, very coarsely chopped (or more, to taste)
2-3 tbsp capers (again, more or less depending on how salty you like things)
1 pound of pasta
olive oil
freshly ground black pepper, grated Parmesan cheese, and chopped parsley to taste; toasted bread crumbs would be a nice addition, too, if you happen to have them
Preheat the oven to 400 and put up a big pot of water to boil.
Break the cauliflower up into bite-sized florets (this is the most time-consuming part of the recipe). Toss the cauliflower onto a large baking pan, with the olives and capers, and drizzle a couple tablespoons of olive oil over the lot. Roast, stirring once or twice, for about 20 minutes, until the cauliflower is tender and starting to brown a bit around the edges.
Toward the end of the cauliflower-cooking time, boil the pasta. When it’s done, drain, reserving a half cup or so of the pasta water. Toss the pasta back into the cooking pot with the roasted cauliflower, olives and capers. Add some of the pasta water if it seems too dry. Serve with lots of freshly ground black pepper, grated cheese, a sprinkling of parsley, and some bread crumbs.