I bought a cauliflower recently with good intentions. I’ve been doing a little a lot of anxiety eating lately as I sit here in California in Covid19 lockdown. My scale tells me I need to up my nutrition game. I know cruciferous vegetables are super foods. I like cauliflower. I was confident that I could find a unique recipe.

But then I got buried in the possibilities. Whole roasted cauliflower? Ottolenghi’s amazing cauliflower cake? Indian Aloo Gobi? Stir fried Cauliflower Rice? The possibilities were endless and I was like a deer in the headlights–stalled by too many choices. Then, the idea of a creamy and spicy cauliflower soup beckoned. Soup always calms me and feeds both my body and my soul.

And why not a creamy cauliflower soup? Doesn’t the healthy cauliflower compensate for the cream part? Sure it does.

This simple little soup has it all–spice, creaminess, and lots of cauliflower. It was love at first bite (err…slurp).

Here is the recipe.

Spicy Cauliflower and Potato Soup

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Ingredients

• 1 large cauliflower
• 2 medium russet potatoes
• 2 T. olive oil
• 1/2 t. each ground cinnamon, cumin and coriander
• 1/2 to 1 T. harissa paste (or to taste)
• 1 15-ounce can of fire-roasted tomatoes
• 5-6 C. vegetable broth
• 1/2 C. toasted sliced almonds
• 3/4 C. heavy cream
• 3/4 C. half and half
• Salt and pepper
• Chopped cilantro and sour cream to garnish

Instructions

1. Cut the cauliflower into small florets. Peel and cube the potatoes.
2. Heat olive oil in a soup pot or Dutch oven. Fry spices and harissa paste in the hot olive oil stirring constantly. This will take one or two minutes. Add the cauliflower, potato cubes, tomatoes, broth and almonds. Cover and cook for about 30 minutes until the cauliflower and potatoes are tender.
3. Blend the soup but leave some texture in the soup. Add the cream and half and half. Season with salt and pepper to your taste. Add more broth if your soup is too thick. Add more harissa paste (I used Trader Joe's brand.) if you want more spice. I enjoy spicy food but 1/2 T. of harissa was enough for me in this soup. I'm sure that depends upon the harissa you are using. (Harissa, for the uninitiated, is a hot Tunisian chili pepper paste. The paste has gotten a lot of attention in recent years and is now pretty commonly available in markets. There is a really special harissa that contains rose petals that is more difficult to source.)
4. Serve garnished with chopped cilantro and a dollop of sour cream.

Nutrition

Calories

2617 cal

Fat

231 g

Carbs

87 g

Protein

67 g

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7.8.1.2

243

https://bluecayenne.com/anxiety-eating-antidote-spicy-cauliflower-and-potato-soup

I know. Indian food two posts in a row.

In my defense, I have that great Indian corn dish that I just posted a day or so ago. I needed another dish to complement it for a proper Indian meal.

I’ve always particularly enjoyed the vivid turmeric-stained aloo gobi dishes that one always finds on Indian buffets–big succulent pieces of cauliflower and potato sauced in a spiced tomatoey sauce. (I looked it up. Tomatoey is a word.)

Ronald Reagan made this observation about people who pick out their favorite jellybeans from a jar: “You can tell a lot about a fella’s character by whether he picks out all of one color or just grabs a handful.”  Call it a character flaw, but I confess that I usually fish the big chunks of potato out of the buffet dish at the expense of the very healthy cauliflower.

Don’t get me wrong. I like cauliflower very much, but I’m Irish. For me, a day without potatoes is a day without sunshine.

I served this dish (and the spiced Indian corn dish previously posted on this site) with fluffy basmati rice. I should have had a yogurt raita as an accompaniment, but I didn’t have yogurt on hand. Next time. For sure.

A special thanks goes to my teacher friend Carol for her gift of a gourmet bottle of garam masala which I used in this dish. It was perfect.

This is an adaptation of a recipe from Kurma Das’ website. The link to his recipe appears at the bottom of this post.

Recipe: Cauliflower-Potato Curry (Aloo Gobi)

1/4 C. ghee or oil
1/2 t. black mustard seeds
1 t. whole cumin seeds
1/4 t. whole fennel seeds
1 t. minced fresh ginger
2 jalapeno chilies (seeded and chopped)
4 medium potatoes (cut into 1 1/2 inch cubes)
1/2 medium cauliflower (cut into small florets)
2 medium tomatoes (blanched, peeled and diced)
1/2 t. turmeric
1/2 t. garam masala
2 t. ground coriander
1 t. brown sugar
2 t. salt
2 T. coarsely chopped fresh coriander
1 T. fresh lemon juice
Chopped red onion and chopped red cherry tomato (for garnish)

Directions:
Heat ghee or oil in a large, heavy saucepan over moderate heat. Add mustard seeds when oil is hot and cook seeds until they begin to pop. This will happen in a matter of seconds if your oil is hot. Add whole cumin seeds and whole fennel seeds to the hot oil mixture and saute quickly until the seeds begin to darken. (Do not burn.) Add the minced ginger and diced chiles and saute them in the mixture for a minute or two. Add potato and cauliflower pieces to this mixture and stir-fry for 4-5 minutes until the spices will begin to stick to the bottom of the pan.

Add the tomatoes, turmeric, garam masala, ground coriander, salt and brown sugar to the pan. Stir to mix.

Cover the pan and reduce the heat to low. Stir occasionally. The tomato will give off its juices to make the sauce in this dish. You can add a little water to the pan if there is not enough liquid in the tomatoes to make the sauce. Cook until potatoes and cauliflower are tender, 15 or 20 minutes.

When vegetables are cooked, garnish with fresh coriander, chopped red onions and a bit of chopped red tomato.

Cook’s Notes: I like my potatoes in this dish to be well done but not mushy. I microwaved my potatoes (in their skins) for a few minutes before I peeled them and added them to this dish. As the dish cooked, I kept checking the potatoes by piercing them with a knife. Also, I have found that the cauliflower cooks more quickly than the potatoes. Toward the end of cooking in the covered pan, I took the cooked cauliflower florets out of the pan and set them aside. When everything was ready to serve, I gently stirred the cauliflower back into the dish.

Here is the link to the original recipe:

http://www.krishna.com/blog/2012/09/30/most-delicious-cauliflower-curry