Preview of the Greek Isles: Fried cauliflower recipe and a cooking class
Excerpt from my next Mel's Kitchen column:
"So my friend Kim and I arrived bright and early to learn how to create a Greek meal, which we were very excited about. And we more than got our money’s worth -- $25 covered the cost of the class and the food, which was excellent. Not to mention, even happily married women could appreciate the scenery.
"The class was taught by Ben Sullivan, a graduate of Johnson & Wales who became the executive chef of Ganache about seven months ago. He once worked as an archaeologist in Greece before turning to cooking full-time.
"He started out by showing us how to make a Cucumber and Watermelon Salad with Fennel Salt -- ingredients that I never would have thought to put together, but which turned out quite good. He followed it with souvlaki, tomato and onion orzo, and fried cauliflower. Kim put it best at the end of the lesson: "I think I could actually make this at home!"
The fried cauliflower recipe follows. For recipes for the other great menu items, check out Mel's Kitchen on Wednesdays in the Savor section, or check back here on Thursday.
(Pictured below: Fried cauliflower with souvlaki and orzo made with tomato and onions.)
Fried Cauliflower
1 head of cauliflower
lemon juice
flour
salt
pepper
panco bread crumbs (Japanese bread crumbs -- or you can use more flour or instant potatoes instead)
nutmeg
oregano
sage
egg
vegetable oil
Begin by chopping your cauliflower head up into manageable-sized florets. Rinse well. Bring a pot of water, with a dash of lemon juice, to a boil. Add the cauliflower and boil for 5 minutes. (The lemon juice will keep the cauliflower a vivid white color while boiling, instead of it turning kind of gray. This trick works with any white vegetable.) Pour the cauliflower into a colander and shock it with cold water to stop the cooking process.
The standard breading procedure, according to Sullivan, is dry/wet/dry. The first dry ingredient is flour. Add a cup or so of flour to a plate or shallow dish, season with salt and pepper and stir. The second breading ingredient is eggs, lightly beaten in a shallow bowl. The thir ingredient is panco bread crumbs, mixed with nutmeg, salt, pepper, oregano and sage, and set on another shallow platter. You can also use more seasoned flour or instant potato flakes at this stage.
Keep one hand dry at all times, and use the other hand for the wet part of the breading process.
Roll the top of the cauliflower floret in the first plate of flour. (Don't worry about the stem too much.) Then coat it with the egg, then the bread crumbs. The proteins in the eggs binds everything together because the proteins shrink as they cook, thus tieing everything together.
At this point, you can deep-fry the cauliflower in a deep fryer for a bit of extra crunch. If you're like me and don't have a deep fryer, you can pan-fry it in a half inch of oil heated to 350 degrees. Lightly pan fry it to a golden brown, turning only once.
Season with salt and pepper as you remove from the oil, placing one a paper towel on a plate to drain. When you fry something, you should season it as soon as you remove it from the oil because the oil on the outside sucks back into the veggie when it's removed from heat, and it will carry the seasonings into the vegetable when it does so.
