Comfort food.
This cauliflower soup is flavorful and oh-so-creamy. Topping it with big buttery bread crumbs elevates it from excellent to exceptional. It’s the perfect comfort food for these difficult times.
By the way, did you know that cauliflower is 92% water? How interesting is that? Clearly, we can eat all we want and not worry if we add a bit of goat cheese to cream up this soup. No serious guilt there.
On the other hand, did you know that cauliflower is under attack? It’s true. The rice industry is pretty annoyed about all the promotion of cauliflower as a rice substitute. They dismiss cauliflower as a “rice pretender.” (Oh! The outrage!)
A rice trade group opposes the use of the word “rice” to describe products being sold as cauliflower rice. They argue that rice is a grain and not a shape. As the Pacific Standard reports it “In the rice industry’s worst nightmare, a harried customer enters the grocery store…. He or she might go to the frozen food aisle, grab a package of fried rice, and check out before realizing that the worst has happened: That rice is not rice at all.”
I know. How awful is that? Could ruin your whole day to feed your kid cauliflower that has less than 1/8 of the calories of white rice and 1/9th of the carbs.
Interestingly, at least four states have passed (or are considering passing) measures to ban food companies from using the word “rice” to describe cauliflower.
Here’s the recipe.
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This recipe is adapted from one that appears in Anna Thomas’ Love Soup cookbook. Thomas is also the author of the classic cookbook The Vegetarian Epicure published in 1973. The Love Soup cookbook and The Vegetarian Epicure cookbook are available here.
Oh, yes! Hold the buttered bread crumbs. This soup with a melty cheese sandwich on sourdough.
You had me LOLing about the rice vs. cauliflower rice controversy. I hadn’t heard there was an uproar about it. I’ve noticed one of my grocery stores now calls the minced up cauliflower “pearls.” They’re not as small as the “rice” style cut. I prefer the rice style rather than the pearls.
I’m seeing some cauliflower rice labeled as riced cauliflower. I’ve read that is more acceptable to the rice industry. Go figure! Thank you for reading my blog.