Creamy Cauliflower with Breaded Eggplant Cutlets and Roasted Red Pepper Sauce

We posted a recipe for eggplant cutlets earlier this month and this is a new twist on how to serve cutlets. This recipe has many moving parts and they all come together to make a divine dining experience! The cauliflower is light and creamy and offers the perfect balance to spicy greens and delicious crispy eggplant. If you don’t want to spend a whole evening cooking this, you can easily make the cauliflower and red pepper sauce ahead of time and just heat it up when the eggplant and greens are finished cooking. This flavor combination can also be achieved with less labor by buying pre-made options. There are several frozen brands of breaded eggplant cutlets available on the market, and in many markets you can also buy roasted red pepper in a can or bottle. Either or both could be substituted in this recipe to achieve this flavor combination in a much faster way.

Serves: 6-8

Time: 2 hours 45 minutes

Ingredients

for the mashed cauliflower:

1 head of cauliflower

3 cloves roasted garlic

1/4 cup olive oil

salt

for the roasted red pepper sauce:

2 red bell peppers, roasted

2 cloves roasted garlic

1 jalepeno, seeds removed

1/2 onion, chopped and sauteed

1/4 cup of almond pulp (can substitute 1/4 soaked cashew/almond blend)

1 tsp apple cider vinegar

water, until desired consistency

1 tsp salt

for the eggplant cutlet:

3 medium eggplants, cut into 1/4” coins

kosher salt

1/2 cup cornstarch

1/2 tsp salt

4 pieces of toast or two cups of bread crumbs (a gluten free bread or crumb will work here)

1/2 cup oats gluten-free option

3/4 cup sunflower seeds

2 tbsp garlic powder

1/4 cup nutritional yeast

1 tbsp salt, if your sunflower seeds are salted, you will need less salt.

3/4 tsp pepper, divided

3 or 4 eggs

olive oil

for the fried greens:

1 bunch dark leafy greens (kale, swiss chard, collards, spinach, etc)

3 T high heat oil (we like avocado)

1/4 tsp szechuan pepper (if available)

squeeze of lemon

Salt

Cut eggplant into 1/4” thick coins. Layer them in a colander salting each layer generously. Leave eggplant to drain about 20 minutes. This will pull the moisture from the eggplant allowing it to cook faster and get sweeter.

There are many ways to roast a red pepper. If you have a gas stove, you can place the pepper directly on the burner, turn the burner on and cook, flipping with tongs until all the sides are charred. If you don’t have a gas stove, it can be done in the broiler. Move a shelf to the top of the oven and turn on the broiler. Place the red peppers under the coils of the broiler and allow to cook about 6 minutes before rotating the peppers. The skins should char. Remove the peppers from the oven once the skins are charred on all sides (about 24 minutes). Either way you cook the peppers, once they are charred on all sides, quickly place them in a bowl and cover with lid (this makes them easier to peel). Set the bowl aside.

Preheat the oven to 375 F. Roast garlic. You can do this a number of ways and our two favorite are to use a garlic roaster or a small cast iron pan. If you are using a garlic roaster, chop the tops off the garlic, drizzle a bit of oil into the garlic cloves, put this into the garlic roaster and roast in oven for about 45 minutes. To use a small cast iron pan, peel the garlic and place cloves in the cast iron pan with a small amount of olive oil. Roast this in the oven for about 20 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes. Either way, the garlic should look golden brown and be very soft. With the cast iron method, it is easier to burn the garlic so make sure to check on it.

Once the eggplant has been salted for 20 minutes it should have released some moisture that you will be able to see on the surface. Press the eggplant between kitchen towels to remove the moisture and some of the salt. Rip your toast into chunks before putting it into the food processor with the oats.  Blend them until they are sandy with slightly larger chunks.  Add the sunflower seeds, garlic powder, nutritional yeast, salt, and 1/2 tsp pepper.  Blend until the majority of the sunflower seeds have been cut at least once, but not so far that the mixture looks homogeneous.  Leave some sunflower seed chunks. Assemble a workstation with a shallow bowl of beaten eggs, a shallow bowl of cornstarch mixed with 1/2 tsp of salt and 1/4 tsp pepper, and a shallow bowl of the breadcrumb mixture. Dip the egg in the cornstarch, then the egg, and then breadcrumbs. Start with two eggs and add more as necessary to coat all the eggplant. Place on oiled baking sheet and bake in the oven for 1 hr flipping every 20 minutes.

While your eggplant cooks chop and saute the onion about 7 minutes until soft and starting to caramelize.

Put a pot of salty water on to boil. The water should taste about as salty as sea water so that the potatoes soak in the water and are perfectly salted when done. Don’t worry if these feels like a lot of salt; you will be draining the water.

Rough chop the cauliflower removing the core and leaves. Add the cauliflower to the heavily salted water and cook until fork tender (about 15 minutes). Drain the cauliflower and allow to sit for 10 min.

Next create the roasted red pepper sauce. Remove the roasted pepper from the covered bowl and remove the skin over the sink, rinsing off the char. Remove the seeds and stems. Add to a food processor with the remaining roasted red pepper ingredients and blend until mostly smooth. If you are using almond pulp, you will need a bit of water to make the sauce a nice texture. If you are using almond milk or cashew crema you may not need water. Put the sauce in a small jar or bowl.

Rinse your food processor and then combine all ingredients for the mashed cauliflower and blend until smooth and fluffy.

Lastly, rinse, de-stem, and thinly slice your greens. Heat a pan with 3 tbsp of high heat oil and wait until oil is very hot. Add greens and flip with tongs until greens are wilted and maybe a bit golden brown on some sides. If using szchuan pepper add to the pan right as greens are starting to wilt. Garnish with a squeeze of lemon juice and a pinch of salt.

To assemble, layer mashed cauliflower on a plate. Next place the eggplant cutlet and pour roasted red pepper sauce over the eggplant. Finally top with fried greens and enjoy!

Chickpea Crepe with Tofu Scramble and harissa veggies

Do Better Consulting re-posted a tweet from MerQueenJude’s instagram… and we love it. Here’s the tweet:

It’s okay to be fat. Fat is simply a size and people come in different sizes. People often ask us what we blog about, and for us it’s simple: we share recipes of the food that we like to eat. This blog is about our creativity and joy in the kitchen. Because we often share recipes full of vegetables and because we use ingredients that are often expensive, people label our food as ‘healthy’ or morally superior. These ideas are a manifestation of diet culture which ties superiority and ‘health‘ to thinness. If you haven’t seen the Poodle Science video we highly recommend watching it.

Now that we’re clear that our food is not ‘better’, ‘the right thing to eat’, or somehow going to make you the perfect tool of capitalism or object of beauty, let us share with you a delicious chickpea crepe recipe!

Note that you can cook all the crepes at once, but when we aren’t planning to eat them all at once we will often only cook a couple of crepes for that night and then cook off more crepes during the week so that we can eat this for multiple meals. If you decide to do that, it will shorten the cooking time on the recipe below by at least 30 minutes.

Serves: 6-8

Time: 2 hrs

For the Chickpea Crepe

3 cups chickpea flour

2 1/2 tsp sea salt

3 1/2 cups water

3/8 cup or 6 tbsp olive oil

2 tsp turmeric

2 tsp coriander

2 tsp cumin

For the Carrot Top Pesto

small handful of carrot tops

2 cloves garlic

1/4 cup almonds or nut milk pulp from making milk

1/4 cup olive oil

1 1/2 tsp apple cider vinegar

1 tsp salt

For the Tofu Scramble

carrot top pesto

1 block tofu

1 tbsp corn starch

2 tbsp cooking oil

1/2 tsp turmeric

1/2 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp bouillon

1/4 cup of hot water

For the Roasted Harissa Carrots

4 medium carrots

olive oil

1/2 tsp salt

3 tbsp spicy harissa

1 tbsp agave

1 tbsp lemon juice

For the Roasted Cumin Cauliflower

2 small heads of cauliflower, romanesco, or a combination

2 tbsp olive oil

1 tsp salt

1 tsp cumin

1/4 tsp cayenne

---

Preheat the oven to 375 F. Mix the chickpea flour, salt, water, olive oil, and spices. Whisk until smooth and let sit for 30 minutes.

Cut the cauliflower into florets and the carrots into sticks. Toss the cauliflower with the olive oil and spices. Spread on a baking sheet and put in the preheated oven. Cook these until they are golden brown in places and soft when you stick a fork in them, which takes about 40 minutes. Stir every 15 minutes. Toss the carrots with olive oil and salt, and spread on a separate baking sheet. Roast in the preheated oven about one hour, stirring every 15 minutes. Stir together the remaining ingredients for the harissa carrots and set aside. Stir this mixture into the carrots when there are 15 minutes remaining. It will reduce and stick to the carrots.

To prepare the pesto, add the carrot tops, garlic, almonds or pulp, olive oil, vinegar, and salt to a food processor or blender. Blend, stopping to scrape down the sides regularly, until the ingredients combine in a chunky pesto. In a blender you may require some additional water to allow this to easily blend.

In a large frying pan, heat a small amount of oil. Once the oil is hot, add about 1/3 cup of chickpea batter to the hot pan. Tilt the pan to spread out the batter, and cook until golden brown and crispy on one side. Be patient, when the bottom is golden brown and crispy, the edges of the top will start to show color. Flip the crepe over and cook until speckled with golden brown on the second side. Cooking crepes to have a crisp but flexible texture takes some practice. Some tips are make sure your oil is hot before you add the batter. Don’t add too much batter. Allow the first side to cook until an even color is achieved before flipping. Remember, the first pancake rule applies to crepes as well. Your first crepe might come out under cooked and crumbly. Don’t be discouraged, keep cooking, be patient, and future crepes will be better.

We often cook as many crepes as we want to eat when we first make this dish. We then refrigerate the batter and fry fresh crepes for leftovers. When cooking batter that has been refrigerated, make sure to stir thoroughly before frying and, if it is too thick, you can add a little water to thin it out.

If you have two frying pans, you can make the tofu scramble at the same time as the chickpea crepes. Add oil to the frying pan and heat to medium low. Drain the tofu and crumble it into the hot pan. Add the corn starch and stir to coat. Fry, turning every 5 minutes, until parts are starting to brown, about 10 minutes. Add the turmeric, garlic powder, and salt. Cook about 5 more minutes stirring regularly until the tofu is coated. While it is cooking, dissolve the bouillon in hot water. Add the bouillon liquid to the tofu, and cook until there is no longer any liquid, but before the tofu gets dry again. Stir the pesto into the tofu scramble.

To serve, top chickpea crepes with the tofu mixture, roasted cauliflower, and harissa carrots. Enjoy!

Bash's Cauli N' Cheese

We’re in love with this quick and easy cheesy recipe that our friend Bash taught us to make. It goes great with stir fried vegetables, and can also be delicious as a stand alone dish.

Serves: 4

Time: 30 min

Ingredients

2 T olive oil

1 med size head of cauliflower, diced

1/2 large onion, diced

3 cups cooked chickpeas* (2 cans)

1/2 to 1 tsp salt, according to taste

1/4 tsp garlic powder

1/4 tsp turmeric

1/8 tsp red pepper flakes

2 cups of cashew cheese

green onion, sliced for garnish

---

Cook onions on medium low heat until they start to brown about 7 min. Add cauliflower and cook for another 10min. Add chickpeas and remaining seasoning, cook until the cauliflower is soft and starting to brown and get crispy (another 20min). Pour cashew sauce over and stir until incorporated and warm. Garnish with green onion and enjoy!

*Cooking chickpeas from dry:

In the Instant Pot:

To cook the chickpeas in an Instant Pot, add 1 1/3 cups of dried chickpeas to the pot. Cover the chickpeas with water (in the small Instant Pot this is about 6 cups of water), season with 2 tbsp kosher salt, 2 tbsp turmeric, 2 bay leaf, and 1/4 tsp cayenne. Set the Instant Pot to pressure cook for 35 minutes letting depressurize naturally. Drain and rinse before adding to the dish.

On the stove:

If you don’t have an Instant Pot, you can easily cook chickpeas from scratch with a little planning. First you will need to soak the chickpeas which can be done one of two ways. 1. you can soak them overnight making sure they have enough water and space to double in size or 2. you can put them in a pot and bring to boil, then turn off the water and let soak for one hour. Again, make sure you have enough water and space that they can double in size.

Once you have soaked your beans, rinse them and then put in a pot with salty water. These will be cooking for about 2 hours so you don’t want as much salt as you would use for pasta, but you do want to add enough that you can taste the salt. The best way to get good at this is to practice. Each time you salt the water, taste it and when the beans are done taste them to see if they are well salted. A well salted bean should taste flavorful but not salty. If it tastes like you are eating salt, you added too much. If the bean lacks flavor then you didn’t have enough salt.

For this recipe, also add 1 tbsp turmeric, 1 bay leaf, and 1/4 tsp cayenne to the chickpeas as they cook. Cook the chickpeas until they are soft but not falling apart (this will take 1.5-2 hours). We recommend checking the beans at about an hour and then every 20 minutes until they are soft but not disintegrating. Make sure your pot has enough water as I have definitely cooked all the water off before and burnt the beans! This may seem like a lot of work, however once you get the hang of it the work is almost all passive and the reward is high: chickpeas cooked from scratch taste much better and are much cheaper!

Cauliflower Tikka Masala

This meal is melt in your mouth good. The flavors are balanced and dance on your tongue. My wife says her mouth (and belly) are a full “yes!” to this dinner. We really like having leftovers of this meal, so we often double the recipe!

We like this recipe so much we thought we would share it with you on Anne’s birthday! It’s warming and cozy. What’s better for a winter birthday meal?

Serves: 6

Time: 1 hr 45 min

Ingredients

1/2 cups cashews, soaked

olive oil

salt

2.5 lb cauliflower (1 med size head)

1 lb potatoes (3 small)

1/2 lb onion (1 small), diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 tsp ginger, minced (less than an inch)

1 small red bell pepper

1 tomato

1/2 bunch cilantro

1.5 cups cooked chickpeas* (1 can)

1 1/2 cup of rice

vegetable stock (optional; soy-free option)

Spice Mix

1.5 tsp garam masala

1 tsp ground coriander

1.5 tsp turmeric

1 tsp cinnamon

1.5 tsp salt

1/4 tsp chili powder

---

Preheat the oven to 375 F. Mix the spices in a bowl. Cut the cauliflower into florets, drizzle with olive oil, and sprinkled with half of the spice mix. Roast for 45 minutes until soft and golden brown. Cube the potatoes in 1/2 inch cubes, toss in olive oil and 1/2 tsp of salt. Roast for 45 minutes until soft and golden brown on the edges.

Cook your rice with with salt (and vegetable stock if you like).

Dice the onion. Cook in a large pot over med. heat until soft (about 15 min). Add garlic and ginger and sautée for another 5 min. Add the remaining spice mix and sautée for another minute. Remove from heat.

In a Vitamix combine cashews, 1/2 cup water, red pepper, tomato, cilantro, and onion mix. Blend until smooth. Combine sauce with cooked potatoes, cauliflower, and chickpeas in the large pot from before. Stir to coat and then warm to desired temperature. Serve over rice.

*Cooking chickpeas from dry:

In the Instant Pot:

To cook the chickpeas in an Instant Pot, add 3/4 cup of dried chickpeas to the pot. Cover the chickpeas with water (in the small Instapot this is about 6 cups of water), season with 1 tbsp kosher salt, 2 tsp coriander, 1 tsp turmeric, and 1/4 tsp chili powder. Set the Instapot to pressure cook for 35 minutes letting depressurize naturally. Drain and rinse before adding to the dish.

On the stove:

If you don’t have an Instant Pot, you can easily cook chickpeas from scratch with a little planning. First you will need to soak the chickpeas which can be done one of two ways. 1. you can soak them overnight making sure they have enough water and space to double in size or 2. you can put them in a pot and bring to boil, then turn off the water and let soak for one hour. Again, make sure you have enough water and space that they can double in size.

Once you have soaked your beans, rinse them and then put in a pot with salty water. These will be cooking for about 2 hours so you don’t want as much salt as you would use for pasta, but you do want to add enough that you can taste the salt. The best way to get good at this is to practice. Each time you salt the water, taste it and when the beans are done taste them to see if they are well salted. A well salted bean should taste flavorful but not salty. If it tastes like you are eating salt, you added too much. If the bean lacks flavor then you didn’t have enough salt. For this recipe, also add 2 tsp coriander, 1 tsp turmeric, and 1/4 tsp chili powder to the chickpeas as they cook. Cook the chickpeas until they are soft but not falling apart (this will take 1.5-2 hours). We recommend checking the beans at about an hour and then every 20 minutes until they are soft but not disintegrating. Make sure your pot has enough water as I have definitely cooked all the water off before and burnt the beans! This may seem like a lot of work, however once you get the hang of it the work is almost all passive and the reward is high: chickpeas cooked from scratch taste much better and are much cheaper!