cooking can be god through Nash's Farmshare Recipes, September 15th 2006

- stir-fried cauliflower in a garlic beet sauce -


You might wake up in the morning with no mood for the news or any other kind of abuse. You might save your radish greens for soup or Jimmy's rabbits. You might give the diagonal slice treatment to a handful of red-and-white, Alice-in-Wonderland, french-breakfast radishes, melt a soapdish of homemade butter, and get right down to it. No newspaper necessary, no music beyond the crunchings, crispings, and the birds. It could end this cycle of hypertrophy; It could begin something beautiful. Some internal acceptance of the clouds returning and crowds leaving, after their respective summer sojourns. The first whips of our Olympian fall.

For lunch it's Salif Keita on the horn and the neighborhood children playing along. Put a small pot of water to heat as you peel and eighth (one step past quarter) the striated beets. The warm water should barely cover the beets: boil them together until your blender or forearm can handle mashing them towards unity.

Salt and pepper a pot of water to boiling, on the back-right burner, and carve up

the entire cauliflower
one stalk of celery

The cauliflower in fat, heady morsels and the celery politely thin. Let them blanch two minutes while you heat a frypan and saute

1/2 head of garlic, in whole cloves
the lagest tomato in the box, sliced

in a couple of tablespoons of olive oil. When the tomatoes and garlic come up with black spots, the cauliflower should be just soft. Empty the contents of the frypan (oil, garlic, tomato) into the beet-paste and scoop the cauliflower and celery out of the water and into the frypan.

At this point you're moments away from stir-fried cauliflower and celery (left hand) and a warm garlic beet sauce (right hand). Throw pasta, udon, rice, or whatever grain you'd like in the impromptu stock: the meal is basically complete. Perhaps, even, it always was. To finish the vegetables, stir them rapidly on high heat until a shade past tender, adding salt, freshly ground black pepper, and any fresh herbs (rosemary? dill?) visiting town. To finish the sauce, blend/mash until uniform, salt, and add a wee bit of cayenne pepper and apple cider vinegar to round out the flavor parade. A wee bit, mind you.

For decor I'd roll upon a few arugula leaves and cut them thinly into ribbons; serve the pasta (or whatever) into bowls, mix in the cauliflower, and spoon over the sauce. Doll up with arugula and it's all over.