Cauliflower soup

Cauliflower soup

Posted by Gary

You can jump to the recipe if you don’t want to read the introduction. 

Introduction 

Dear Reader, 

I hope you are well and feeling ðŸ’¯ 

I wasn’t sure if I’d post anything this weekend. There hasn’t been much food inspiration. 

The weather in Canberra continues to decline in temperature, with the mornings regularly descending below zero degrees Celsius. I regularly eye the weather in places like Adelaide, Brisbane, and Darwin wistfully. I did see that Adelaide suffered badly this week with heavy rain. The local state emergency service responders were kept busy helping residents who experienced damage to their homes and property. Darwin is peak dry season at 32 Â°C and about 50% relative humidity. 

QUEENSLANDER!!! 

Heehee, guess what? The Queensland Maroons (pronounced “ma-rones”) defeated the NSW Blues on Wednesday night. It was a specular game played at Lang Park in Brisbane. I wish I could have been there. It was good to be home and watching the game after missing the first game in Adelaide because I was in Alexandria, Virginia. 

The series’ third game is in Sydney in a few weeks. While Queensland has won the series this year, it would be magnificent if they could win all three games. 

The following night, the Queensland Maroons Women’s team iced the cake and won the 2023 series in a game they lost to NSW. Aggregated points across two games decide the series winner.  I hope the women will play three games like the men next year. In an ideal world, the men and women would play on the same night. 

“12 Rules for Life” 

Last week, I mentioned the “12 Rules for Life“. I’ve almost finished listening to this book. It’s dense, and I think I’ll try to listen to it again soon. Some “rules” resonate with me, while others do not. I need time to consider the lessons from the “rules” which do not resonate with me. 

  • “Stand up straight with your shoulders back.” 
  • “Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping.” 
  • “Make friends with people who want the best for you.” 
  • “Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.” 
  • “Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them.” 
  • “Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world.” 
  • “Pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient).” 
  • “Tell the truth – or, at least, don’t lie.”
  • “Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t.” 
  • “Be precise in your speech.” 
  • “Do not bother children while they are skateboarding.” 
  • “Pet a cat when you encounter one in the street.” 

I’m not sure what I will read next. It may be some science fiction or the sequel to “12 Rules for Life” titled “Beyond Order”, which has twelve more rules to consider.  

Recipe 

Equipment 

  • Saucepan 
  • Stick blender 

Ingredients 

  • Cauliflower 
  • Leek 
  • Brown onion 
  • Garlic 
  • Potato 
  • Black peppercorns 
  • Vegetable stock 
  • Coconut cream (low fat) 
  • Curry powder 

Instructions 

  1. Cut the cauliflower into florets. 
  2. Dice the potato. 
  3. Slice the leek and onion. 
  4. Sweat the leek and onion in the bottom of the saucepan with olive oil. 
  5. Add a tablespoon of curry powder and some whole black peppercorns. 
  6. Add the cauliflower and potato and enough stock without covering the vegetables. 
  7. Put a lid on the saucepan and allow it to simmer until the potato and cauliflower are soft. 
  8. Blend with a stick blender until smooth. 
  9. Bring back to a simmer and slowly add some coconut cream to slightly thicken the soup. 
  10. Serve the soup in a bowl. 
  11. Give thanks to the Lord. 
  12. Eat with a spoon while watching the footy. 
  13. Enjoy the work of your microbiota fermenting carbohydrates and producing hydrocarbon gases. I won’t be lighting any matches tonight. ðŸ˜†

Thoughts on the meal 

This soup is on par with the pumpkin soup I make with laksa paste. It’s hot and spicy and amazing.

This version is meat-free, and unless there are animal products in the curry powder, it’s vegan because the vegetable stock I used is vegan. 

You could add some bacon or a ham hock if you want a meaty mouthfeel and flavour. 

Final thoughts 

  • Do any of the rules resonate with you? 
  • Do you like cauliflower soup? 
  • What is your favourite soup? 

Photographs 

Here is a gallery of photographs. 

Cauliflower Soup

Laksa flavoured cauliflower and gorgonzola soup

Posted by Gary

Hello Reader,

How are you? I hope you had a brilliant week. Life for me is going splendidly. I am loving life. I couldn’t be happier, personally. Professionally, it’s excellent and exciting. The last couple of days have been exceptional at work.

Want to avoid the silly sausage story? Here’s the recipe!

Democracy sausage (roll)

Democracy sausage (roll)! Spicy corned beef fried rice rolled in puff pastry.

Today we get an opportunity to exercise our right to a free and fair vote for members of the House of Representatives and jurisdictional senators in the Australian Senate.

It’s become a ‘thing’, almost a tradition, for voters to consume a democracy sausage while lined up waiting to vote or after they’ve done the deed.

In its most basic form, a democracy sausage is a snag1 cooked on an outdoor hotplate and served in a folded slice of the cheapest white bread. There is no butter, the fat from the sausage being sufficient to lubricate the snag and offer some moisture to the dry bread. Some people will provide tomato or barbecue sauce. I’ve seen some people combine both the tomato and barbecue sauces and have it with their sausage. I will not judge them.

Democracy sausage (roll)! Spicy corned beef fried rice rolled in puff pastry.

We now see all manner of diversity in terms of the sausage sandwiches. There are vegetarian and vegan sausages. The bread can be gluten-free or sourdough or multi-grain, or any other type of bread.

Apart from the sauce, extras often include cooked onions, and we get the debate of onions under or over the sausage2. Some people have kimchi, others sauerkraut, and others also have cheese.

My democracy sausage was a sausage roll because that’s how I roll 😉

Last night, I got home late and felt like making fried rice with tinned corned beef. I made it spicy with some Bird’s-eye chillies.

Corned beef fried rice
Corned beef fried rice

My democracy sausage (roll) is leftover spicy corned beef fried rice in puff pastry.

While I’m having a little fun here, I’m conscious that there are foreign governments that do not hold free and fair elections. I respect the right of a foreign government to conduct itself sovereignly. While not a fan of the United Nations nor any of its derivative organisations, I hope that humankind will enjoy total freedom and an abundance of life.

Democracy sausage (roll)! Spicy corned beef fried rice rolled in puff pastry.

Back to the soup!

Cauliflower

Ingredients

  • Cauliflower
  • Potato
  • White onion
  • Leek
  • Bacon
  • Laksa paste (a commercial paste because life is too short)
  • White peppercorns
  • Vegetable stock
  • White wine
  • Gorgonzola

Instructions

  1. Dissect a cauliflower into florets.
  2. Roughly slice a leek. You can be rough with this leek. In the end, it’s all blended.
  3. Dice an onion.
  4. Dice the spud.
  5. Dice the bacon.
  6. Pound the white peppercorns in a mortar with a heavy hard pestle. Please give it a good pounding because you don’t want a gritty result from your pounding.
  7. Crumble the gorgonzola.
  8. Heat a saucepan on a hob.
  9. Sauté the bacon to render some fat, and then add the onion and leek to get the aromas in the air, so your kitchen area is rich with fragrance. If you like, you could add garlic too.
  10. Add the cauliflower and potato to the cooked bacon, onion, and leek.
  11. Cover everything with wine and vegetable stock and add a tablespoon of the laksa paste.
  12. Bring the soup to a boil and then simmer until the potato and cauliflower are soft.
  13. Turn off the heat and process the soup with a stick blender until smooth.
  14. Turn the heat back on to low.
  15. Add in the crumbled gorgonzola cheese and season with the pepper to taste.
  16. Ladle the soup to a bowl.
  17. Place the rest in vacuum bags and, using a vacuum chamber sealing device, seal the bags and freeze for another day.
  18. Give thanks to the Lord.
  19. Enjoy the soup and ponder life and love and how everything seems to fit together. Each part complements the other elements in life.
Vacuum sealed cauliflower soup Laksa paste Gorgonzola cheese

Thoughts on the soup

I know cauliflower soup isn’t a favourite for one of my daughters. She dislikes it intensely. For me, though, it has flavour, and the cheese gives it a thickness almost like a sauce. It’s rich and flavourful.

Combining something distinctly Asian and European seems to be a thing with me. Laksa paste and gorgonzola cheese. Who knew?

Final thoughts

  1. Is combining laksa paste and gorgonzola cheese an abomination or brilliance on my part? I liked it. You might like it too. Please give it a go and let me know.
  2. Does cauliflower give you flatus? I reckon tonight, my freshly laundered sheets will take on a new aroma 😆
  3. How do you feel about the democracy sausage? If you’re not Australian, do you have any election traditions?
  4. A workmate who saw my sausage roll asked if it counts as a democracy sausage. What do you think?

Footnotes

  1. The snag is slang for sausage
  2. A local hardware chain, viz., Bunnings, created controversy when it directed all sausage sandwiches sold at its stores not to have onions over the sausage. The management deemed the risk of slipping on dropped onions to be a safety hazard. The direction is to tuck the onion under the meat sac.
Cauliflower
Cauliflower soup Laksa paste Gorgonzola cheese
Cauliflower soup Laksa paste Gorgonzola cheese

Cauliflower soup

Posted by Gary

In the early 2000s, when I lived in Darwin, I would make a cauliflower soup on a Saturday night for my family.

My youngest daughter didn’t like it. So, as a reasonably stern father, I’d patiently sit with her at the dining table, waiting for her to finish her bowl of soup. I remember one night we sat at the table together until about nine o’clock.

To this day, my youngest daughter expresses a distaste for cauliflower soup.

I regularly comment that one day I want to make a cauliflower soup that she will like. Experiencing her enjoyment of my cauliflower soup is a dream I have.

Cauliflower, white onion, and bacon pieces.

Ingredients

  • Cauliflower
  • Bacon pieces
  • White onion
  • Iodised salt
  • Vegetable stock
  • Cream
  • Rye sourdough bread
  • Butter
  • Extra virginal olive oil
  • Chilean spice blend/Mapuche spice
  • Red hot chilli flakes

Instructions

  1. Break down a whole cauliflower with a paring knife to release the florets.
  2. Place the florets onto a baking sheet and cook in a hot oven for about 20 minutes. Cook until there is a slight browning of the surface of the florets.
  3. Dice the white onion.
  4. In a saucepan, heat some EVOO with low-intensity heat.
  5. Sautée the bacon and onions until the onions become translucent and fond forms on the bottom of the saucepan.
  6. Deglase the fond with a bit of vegetable stock.
  7. Add in the Mapuche spice and chilli flakes and stir around with the bacon and onions.
  8. Add the cauliflower florets to the saucepan and the rest of the vegetable stock.
  9. Bring the liquid to a slow boil.
  10. Simmer until the cauliflower is soft enough to allow the tip of a paring knife to penetrate the stalk without any feeling of resistance.
  11. Blend the soup with a stick blender.
  12. Add some cream, and bring the soup back to a simmer.
  13. Season the soup with salt to taste.
  14. Toast some bread and add a layer of real butter.
  15. Thank the Lord for the meal.
  16. Enjoy the soup while reminiscing about my daughter’s resistance to cauliflower soup when she was a young child.

Final thoughts

My daughter tells me part of the reason she doesn’t like the soup is the colour. I used to make it without any spices apart from salt and white pepper along with the stock. She didn’t appreciate the pale colour.

This soup made with the Chilean spice blend/Mapuche spice plus the red hot chilli flakes gives the soup a reddish-brown hue.

The spiciness of the soup had the mucosa of my buccal cavity excited. The sensations were terrific. I rejoice in having a party in my mouth!

Thanks again to my work friends for the Mapuche spice.

  • Chilean Spice Blend Mapuche Spice
  • Cauliflower, white onion, and bacon pieces.
  • Diced white onion, bacon pieces, Mapuche spice, and red hot chilli flakes
  • Cauliflower soup and rye sourdough toast
  • Cauliflower soup and rye sourdough toast
  • Cauliflower soup and rye sourdough toast
  • Cauliflower soup
  • Rye sourdough toast
  • Moon Queensland nuts and nougat

Thai red curry cauliflower soup

Posted by Gary

Last week I cooked a quick Thai red curry pumpkin soup and I thought if it works for pumpkin it will work for cauliflower.

Thai red curry cauliflower soup

This Thai red curry cauliflower soup is so simple. It could easily be made after work on a weeknight or on a weekend evening after being out all day.

You can’t go wrong with this soup. All you need is a saucepan and a stick blender.

Cauliflower soup with Thai red curry paste, coriander, and black pepper in a bowl.
Cauliflower soup with Thai red curry paste, coriander, and black pepper in a bowl.
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Old Bay cauliflower soup

Posted by Gary

Old Bay cauliflower soup with garlic butter prawns

Dedicated to my youngest daughter

Who I traumatised with cauliflower soup

Old bay cauliflower soup with garlic butter prawns for dinner on a cold winter night. A comfort meal if ever there was one.

When we lived in Darwin, I traumatised my youngest daughter with cauliflower soup.

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