Buffalo Cauliflower

photography Blue Caleel

I hated cauliflower as a kid.  It was my least favorite thing on a raw vegetable tray.  And for about 40 years I'd never eaten it any other way except raw, boiled or steamed.  All boring and tasteless.  Then I had this amazing cauliflower soup that Clark Staub from Flatbread made for a field feast.  It was so delicious.  The taste of that soup made me decide to try oven-roasting the cauliflower with just olive oil and kosher salt.  It was so good.

Well one good thing leads to another.  Since you all know I love cheese, butter, bacon, and beef (I pretty much love everything) it has been a challenge to come up with Vegan, Gluten-Free Anti-Cancer recipes Hollye Jacobs The Silver Pen blog week after week.  Especially because I want the food to be delicious above all else.  I don't want something to say "this tastes good for being healthy."  I want them to say "this is delicious" and then they realize afterward that it just happens to be healthy.  This recipe is so good that I ate the entire pan by myself the first night I tested it.  In fact, just writing about it makes me want to go and eat it for lunch right now.  I think Hollye has made it five times since just since we tested it!

Since I'm the queen of having a brain jump all over the place, I just realized this that I never got my "Buffalo Chicken Salad" up on either this blog or my Fiddle Diet Blog.  I need to do that soon.  Here is a little background on traditional chicken wings and how I altered the recipe to make them healthy and still keep all the great taste.  Most restaurants combine Frank's hot sauce with pounds of butter.  First they fry the chicken wings and then they soak them in the butter and hot sauce mixture.  The thing is that Frank's hot sauce by itself is what makes the Buffalo wings taste amazing.  And Frank's Hot Sauce by itself has zero calories and zero fat!  There are also claims that spicy food can help speed your metabolism and it is also known that red and green peppers contain more vitamin C than any other food.  So I make a version of a Chicken Paillard  that I top with Frank's Hot Sauce after quickly sautéing the chicken breasts.  I also have done a version with grilled chicken and it is a big success.  Truly, the hot sauce is so good you can put it on anything.


Now back to our vegan version of cauliflower.  Hollye wrote about all anti-cancer and terrific health benefits of cauliflower.  Click here to get all of that great info.

photography Blue Caleel 

BUFFALO CAULIFLOWER

1 head of cauliflower
2 teaspoons grapeseed oil
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
3-4 tablespoons of Frank's hot sauce, (add more if you like it hotter)



Cut the cauliflower with a knife so the small pieces have at least one flat side if possible.  (The cauliflower will brown more easily in the pan if at least one or two sides are flat.)

Heat the largest sauté pan you have to medium high.  Add grapeseed oil to the pan.

Sauté the cauliflower on medium high for five minutes.  Stir only occasionally so the cauliflower can brown in the pan.

Reduce the heat to medium, cover and cook for 3 minutes.

Remove lid, add hot sauce to cauliflower and mix it in.  Cook for another five minutes.

Serve warm.  (although I found myself loving it cold the next day too!)

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