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09/06/2000 Archived Entry: "Cauliflower"

Frank Garofolo is a senior culinary instructor in the professional program at Peter Kump’s New York Cooking School. We’ve known each other ever-so slightly the last few years through the New York Association of Cooking Teachers (NYACT). Besides being a fellow cooking teacher and an Italian-trained chef, he is of Neapolitan decent, and he recently moved to Brooklyn. We figured, given all that and the instant feeling of simpatico we had for each other, it was about time we got to know each other better.

At a meeting at his cooking school recently, where he will be backing me up for a dinner and demonstration I am cooking and doing on Thursday evening, October 26 (call 212-847-0770 for reservations), we decided not to stand on ceremony any longer and simply get together over a bowl of spaghetti. So Frank invited me for dinner, but when it came down to it I had to tell him I was not eating big portions of pasta these days. Indeed, I am not eating big portions of anything these days, except salad and cooked greens. I am serious about losing weight and although I will eat a two-ounce portion of pasta once or twice a week, I am instead concentrating on fish and vegetables, with fruit for dessert. Could he do me the favor of not tempting me with what would undoubtedly be fantastic pasta?

Frank’s menu was perfect – even if I wasn’t eating so carefully. As a main course, he baked fresh sardines with some cherry tomatoes, and olive oil flavored with a tiny bit of pancetta and garlic. There were juices that I felt compelled to mop up with a piece of bread – but I managed only one piece.

For a first course, I was bowled over by Frank’s creativity. He called the dish cauliflower risotto, which we later dubbed finto risotto, meaning fake risotto, because it looked sort of like risotto but wasn’t rice at all, and because Neapolitans love to call things finto. They regard finto dishes as a sort of magic, akin to fooling the gods. For instance, finto Genovese is very popular; their long-cooked, meat-flavored onion sauce made without the meat.

This cauliflower is one of Frank’s family’s dishes, from Avellino, but the cauliflower usually seasons pasta. He just left out the pasta. I was very happy. The cauliflower, broken by hand into tiny pieces, is enhanced with anchovies, capers, garlic, pine nuts, a bit of hot red pepper – typical Neapolitan condimenti. You can serve it, as Frank did, as a first course, or use it at room temperature as an antipasto, or have it as a vegetable side dish with grilled fish, or chicken, or meat. Or do what Frank’s family would do, use it to dress some pasta. Orecchiette would be traditional, but spaghetti or bucatini or a tubular macaroni such as ditali, ziti or penne would be fine, too. I would also love it with pasta mista, the mixed shapes sold together in one bag that are so frequently used with beans and lentils.

Frank Garofolo’s Avellinese Cauliflower,
With or Without Pasta

Serves 4

1 medium head cauliflower
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
4 salted anchovy fillets
1 clove garlic, finely minced
Big pinch hot red pepper flakes
1/4 cup dry white wine
1 scant tablespoon salted capers, briefly rinsed
2 tablespoons pine nuts, toasted until light brown in a 350-degree oven (about 5 minutes)

Cut the core out of the cauliflower and discard. Break the head into large flowerettes. Pare away the heavy stems and discard them (or save for another use, such a soup). With your fingers, break the cauliflowerettes into pieces the size of a large peas. Wash and set aside. (There’s no need to dry them.)

In a 10- to 12-inch skillet or saute pan, warm the olive oil over medium heat. Add the anchovy fillets and cook, mashing them with the back of a wooden spoon, until they have melted into the oil. Add the garlic and hot red pepper flakes. Cook until the garlic is tender but not colored. Add the dry white wine. Let it sizzle in the pan, then add the capers and pine nuts.

Finally, add the tiny cauliflower pieces and cook, stirring frequently, until just tender, about 5 minutes.

Serve hot as is, or with pasta.

A COOKBOOK NOTE

As requested by many of you, I will in the future and in this space be noting the titles, authors and publishers of cookbooks discussed on Food Talk. Coming this fall there will be a new section of the website devoted to cookbooks. It will list what I consider a basic cookbook library and, eventually, I will also transfer information and reviews of new cookbooks there. The Maven’s Diary is, however, the only place where I can, technologically speaking, keep you abreast of news and new information.

Last week, our Food Talk cookbook author was Susan Gold Purdy, whose new work is called The Perfect Pie, published in paperback by Broadway Books, $17.95. Susan is the author of numerous books, including two very popular low-fat baking books, Let Them Eat Cake and Have Your Cake and Eat It, Too.

I have always had success with Susan’s recipes, although I must add that a listener who called this week had a problem with Susan’s peach cobbler from her new book. Unfortunately, Susan instructs us to boil peaches for two minutes to remove their skins. That’s too long. Thirty seconds to one minute is sufficient. Leaving the peaches in the boiling water for two minutes cooks them too much. Other than that the peaches were too mushy, says my listener, the cobbler was scrumptious.