Old Bay cauliflower soup

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.

I was one of those parents who expected children to eat all the food served to them at dinner time. As far as I know I never tried to overfeed my children but I did share with them some pretty different meals.

Cauliflower soup isn’t really ‘out there’ but for my youngest daughter, cauliflower soup just wasn’t something she wanted to eat.

One night I served cauliflower soup and when my youngest daughter baulked I stayed with her at the table until about 9.30 pm waiting for her to finish the bowl.

To this day, she has vivid recollections of that evening and still harbours a deep and abiding loathing for cauliflower soup.

I deeply regret the trauma I caused and have sought forgiveness many times. It is my hope that one day, she will enjoy a bowl of cauliflower soup before I die.

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Recipe

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Old Bay cauliflower soup I hope that my youngest daughter will one day enjoy

Prep Time

10 mins

Cook Time

20 mins

Faffing

20 mins

Total Time

50 mins

 

A cauliflower soup I hope that my youngest daughter will one day enjoy before I day. I hope I get to cook it for her.

Course: Main Course

Cuisine: Australian

Keyword: Cauliflower soup, Garlic butter, Garlic prawns, Old Bay

Servings: 1 Hungry human macrophage

Calories: 500 kcal

Author: Gary

Ingredients

Cauliflower soup bit

• 1 head Cauliflower
• 1 cup Bacon diced
• 1 cup Vegetable stock
• 1 cup Cream
• 2 teaspoons Pepper
• 1 teaspoon Parsley
• 1 teaspoon Chilli flakes
• 2 tablespoons Old Bay seasoning
• 1 small White onion
• ½ cup White wine
• 1 splash Balsamic vinegar

Garlic prawn bit

• 100 grams Prawns
• 100 grams Butter
• 1 teaspoon Garlic minced
• 1 tablespoon Tomato sauce
• 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
• 1 teaspoon Chilli flakes
• 1 handful Spinach leaves

Instructions

The Soup bit

1. Put a saucepan on a hob and turn on the heat.
2. Splash in some olive oil or if your blood chemistry is okay, use some butter.
3. Toss in some chopped white onion and sauté until it has sweated out and becomes translucent.
4. If you like you could continue to sauté and add some balsamic vinegar to get some colour which is otherwise known as caramelisation or to those in the know, you’re burning the surface of the onion to make it go brown. The jury is still out on whether doing this enhances your risk of developing some form of malignant disease.
5. Toss in some bacon and keep it moving to stop it from sticking to the bottom of the saucepan too early. If you are eschewing the flesh of animals, you can delete the bacon. I’d add a little more iodised salt though. If you eschew the thought of iodine supplementation to our food, then you are foolish and your position is contributing to cretinism. Don’t be a sheep and follow the hipster new age social media influencer dimwits who are poisoning people with heavy metals from Himalayan rock salt yet depriving pregnant people and babies of intelligence enhancing iodine.
6. Once the bacon and onion has mixed well stop stirring and wait for the bacon to start to stick and change colour. You know, the whole caramelisation business again.
7. Add a splash of white wine and with a spoon or spatula or whatever tool you have at hand that is fit for purpose, scrape the brown bits off the bottom of the saucepan so it all mixes in the white wine as the alcohol in the wine cooks off.
8. Add the cauliflower, Old Bay seasoning, and the vegetable stock so the cauliflower is mostly covered.
9. Put a lid on the saucepan and turn the heat down on the hob so the liquid is simmering gently.
10. Cook until the cauliflower is soft. For me, I usually test my cauliflower with a sharp paring knife. If I can penetrate the cauliflower easily with little to no resistance, then I’m happy. If a spoon can penetrate and break up the cauliflower, you’ve gone too far and ruined the dish. If that happens, don’t despair even though you’ve ruined the dish. I mean, you can sort of recover but you wouldn’t want to tell anyone that you ruined the dish. Let’s hope you don’t overcook the cauliflower. It’s bad enough you’ll be farting all night after eating this soup, you don’t want to be farting alone in bed and contemplating a ruined meal and a waste of money.
11. Drain the cauliflower, bacon, and onion but leave it moist. This is not like last week’s cauliflower cheese when you would want your cauliflower to be dry before adding the creamy cheesy saucy goodness. I love the word moist. It really sums up how I always want to feel.
12. Grab a stick blender if you have one or use a food processor or blender and liquefy your cauliflower, bacon, and onion until it becomes smooth.
13. Put the saucepan back on the hob with the smooth cauliflower purée in it and turn on the heat to low.
14. Add the cream and stir it through until you get a homogenous mixture of creamy cauliflower soup.
15. Add some freshly cracked black pepper.
16. Pour into a bowl and garnish with chilli flakes and chopped parsley.
    

The prawn bit

1. Melt some butter and add to it some minced garlic. I melt my butter with microwave radiation because I’m not a believer in the conspiracy theories about microwave radiation being harmful to our brains and bodies. On the other hand, if you are concerned about microwave radiation, feel free to melt your butter in the pre-modern manner using a source of heat.
2. Mix the minced garlic and butter.
3. In a small bowl or measuring cup or whatever sort of container you have laying around, add a large squirt of tomato sauce and a splash of Worcestershire sauce.
4. Mix the tomato sauce and Worcestershire sauce.
5. In a hot frypan toss in the prawns and stir fry until the shells start turning red.
6. Pour in the garlic butter mixture and make sure the prawns are coated well.
7. Toss in some chilli flakes and stir through.
8. Add the tomato sauce and Worcestershire sauce mixture and make sure the prawns are well coated.
9. Cook for a total of about three to four minutes.

10. Overcooking prawns is a sin if you're religious or a crime if you're not. Either way, don't overcook your prawns. Nothing should ever be overcooked. Even if you fear a deadly food borne disease, there are ways to render food safe without overcooking it. While I'm on the topic of rendering food safe, you know, I get the whole raw dairy thing in terms of enhanced flavour and taste, but with monotonous regularity (almost as regular as my bowel movements) I read reports from around the world of foolish people sharing or worse selling dairy products that have not been made safe by using pasteurised milk. Raw milk is dangerous people. The only time I'd drink raw milk is if my mouth was within a few centimetres or attached to an actual mammal's nipple. Granted, farmers who know what they're doing who milk a cow and immediately put some milk in a container in the refrigerator have about a 24-hour window to enjoy wholesome fresh unpasteurised and unhomogenised milk.

11. Serve the prawns on some spinach leaves. Spinach leaves are a bit of a bugger if you want regular bowel movements. Spinach and some other leafy green vegetables have a lot of iron and it makes your stools go black and sticky. I've increased my intake of Chinese gooseberry to help with the consistency of my faeces.
    

Plating up bit

1. Put the plate of prawns next to the bowl of soup. It’s as simple as that.
2. If you’re an animal like me and you’re eating alone with no one else to care about or no one else who cares about you, feel free to dunk a prawn in the soup and enjoy the garlic enhanced flavours as you suck the soup from the prawn.

Blogging bit

1. Shoot a photograph and a short video because Google now wants video on recipe cards.
2. Eat the meal.
3. Wash the dishes (hint, wash as you cook, it makes life easier).
4. Write the recipe.
5. Write the blog post.
6. Hit publish and hope this blog post gets shared on Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest.

Recipe Video

Recipe Notes

Disclaimer

I have no culinary training nor qualifications. This post is not intended to convey any health or medical advice. If you have any health concerns about anything you read, please contact your registered medical practitioner. The quantities are indicative. Feel free to vary the quantities to suit your taste. I deliberately do not calculate energy for dishes. I deliberately default to 500 Calories or 500,000 calories because I do not make these calculations.

Photographs

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Questions and answers

Will your youngest daughter ever forgive you? Maybe one day she would like Old Bay cauliflower soup

I hope so. I really do. I feel like I’ve really traumatised her and she’s now living a life deprived of something very special. I mean, Old Bay cauliflower soup is really a wonderfully comforting dish in winter.

What is worse? The farts after eating cauliflower or after eating cabbage?

I think the farts from either are much of a muchness. These farts are pure evil. It’s like cauliflower and cabbage release metabolites which favour the replication of pigmented Gram-negative anaerobic bacteria. Old bay cauliflower soup and garlic butter prawns are going to produce some mighty evil farts.

If you ever get a chance try to be present when an anaerobic jar full of plates covered in pigmented Gram-negative anaerobic bacilli is being opened. It’s an experience you will never forget. It’s like the air you breathe has become as thick as mud and the foulness of the odour penetrates every part of your being. In my opinion, it’s fouler than performing a manual disimpaction on a patient and only slightly better than the smell from a retained tampon that has been placed in thioglycolate broth for a week. (Yep, I’ve experienced all this and more).

It’s no wonder I live alone. That, and the fact that my idea of a good night is watching episodes of Star Trek or watching rugby league football.

What’s with the prawns?

Well, during the week, I was reading my favourite food blogger, viz., Lorraine Elliott (aka Not Quite Nigella) and she made a magnificent prawn salad. While I was grocery shopping today, I made an impulse purchase of some prawns. I just couldn’t control myself. I had the thought of Lorraine’s salad in my head even though I knew I was making cauliflower soup.

It just goes to show how much of an influence reading other blogs can have on me. I wonder how Lorraine would feel about Old bay cauliflower soup and garlic butter prawns.

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Final thoughts

• Do you like cauliflower soup?
• Have you ever traumatised someone you love with food or farts?
• Do you find yourself impulse buying something because you read about it in a blog?
• Do you need to use a stool softening agent to help with regularity?

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