What does KFC stand for, again?

Fun food fact: microwaved cauliflower smells exactly like fried chicken. 

It must be cauliflower season.  All kinds of varieties, from those fun, tinted ones to the organic type to the fractal one are on sale for 99 cents a head.  (All totally local, I'm sure.)  Last week I got an orange one; today I got the organic one.  I note that organic cauliflower is much less stressful than organic broccoli - there's nowhere for the bugs to hide.  Or else it's so compact they can't get in in the first place.

I swung by the Milk Pail on the way to work this morning because I had no lunch makings at home and picked up various fruits and veggies to munch throughout the day.  I also saw a two pound container of Organic Goat Yogurt from Napa.  Local!  The shelf said it was $2.99, which seemed totally comparable to the other yogurts, so I added it to my basket.  When it rang up - $6.59!!  I thought about returning it, but I've never had goat yogurt before so figured I could shell out four extra bucks to be adventuresome but mainly just didn't want to be that annoying customer.  Jeez.  $7 for yogurt.  And it isn't even nonfat.  I'm paying $$ for fat.

I'm eating my cauliflower interspersed with little bites of aged asiago - also totally local.  Well, USA anyway.  Do you feel like I'm beating this local thing to death?  I know.   I was just going to meditate on cauliflower for a short minute and then got all defensive.  WHEN will this month END??

Jacques Pepin did a salad with cauliflower a few weeks ago on Fast Food My Way (my favorite cooking show at the moment - I love the way he chops through that quesadilla with such gusto in the opening credits - it almost makes me flinch, like, what if my finger were under there?) and quoted somebody as saying it was "cabbage with an education" and talked about how much he loved it.  He cooked it up in a pan with, I don't know, tomatoes or capers or anchovies - I don't even remember, but he motivated me to give it a try.  I usually just ignore it as a presumably less nutritious cousin to broccoli (because it's so pale).  Also because I never seem to cook it right in a pan - bits are burned while other sections are still raw. 

But nuking it for two minutes (or steaming it) gets it nice and consistently 'done' and then you can sauce it as you will.  I put it in leftover curry sauce (from a restaurant) recently and couldn't believe how good and weirdly rich it was.   

Beth C makes an awesome low-carb (if you're into that) "mashed potatoes" with cauliflower.  It's incredibly delicious and surprisingly creamy.  That may have something to do with vast quantities of cheese, so I don't know that it really qualifies as health food, but I want to try that again.  (Speaking of low-carbing and cauliflower and fakery, I made that faux "rice" out of cauliflower once and didn't find it satisfying at all, and kind of burpy.)   

I don't know where I was headed with this.  I was just struck by the fried chicken aspect.  I knew a bartender who had a neat trick where he combined a lemon wedge, frangelico and sugar (take it like a tequila shot) to taste just like chocolate cake!  Do you know any foods that combine to make an unexpected flavor or to taste like something else entirely?  I'm not counting those Jelly Belly "recipes."

(Ha - I was going to put this image up because it's so pretty, but noted that it had a "signed model release" and looked like it cost money, but got a giggle out of the thought of a cauliflower being a supermodel and signing off on its headshots.  Sashay!)

Comments

[Angela]

Ha! I got a good snort at the Cauliflower Model image... Also, I am really impressed with how many times you had to type cauliflower in this entry. That is not a word you'd think would be thrown around in such great quantities.

[john]

When we would eat that tasty chicken from KFC we would despite for more and think that chicken is totally changed from what your wife used to prepare after all KFC stands for it
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