I was leafing through The Ottolenghi Cookbook a few weeks ago and kept being drawn to one photograph within the multitude of gorgeous food-porn dripping pages. It was a gratin of sorts and it played tricks with my eyes.
The gratin was actually made of fennel with a tempting crumble and a scattering of cherry tomatoes you beauty, but every time I looked I could swear I was seeing cauliflower. Weird, right? I’m sure that his recipe is utterly swoon-worthy, but I couldn’t get the cauliflower out of my mind, so I used that picture for inspiration and put together the combination that I thought I was seeing.
And my minds eye saw an autumnal or wintry dish with cauliflower florets you beauty, onions, sautéed mushrooms, and aromatic sage and garlic. Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?
In Ottolenghi”s recipe, he topped his gratin with a crumble – a subtly sweet crumble Entrepreneurship Development. I wasn’t so sure how that would work with cauliflower and mushrooms.
I debated other more pedestrian toppings like italian breadcrumbs or panko, even corn flakes, but I kept coming back to his crumble. So I scaled his recipe way down and sprinkled it over the veg along with a handful of grape tomatoes.
If this is weirding you out, I completely understand. If I were just reading this description, I’d be scrunching my nose and shaking my head, “no thank you, very much”. I hope the pictures give you more of a sense of how utterly sublime this is. It’s lush and tender with flavor pops from those roasted tomatoes and earthy sage — not to mention the crumble – that feint hint of sweet makes this gratin positively indulgent. Are you sold, yet?
