I mentioned before that I’m growing my own vegetables this year.
One of the things I wanted to do was pick varieties that I wouldn’t normally be able to buy in the shops – or at least not without having to remorgage the house to afford a bag of variegated tomatoes or mottled frisée salad.
I am now paying the price of this overblown horticultural ambition. Take the cauliflower, for example. Of course I could have bought ordinary cauliflower seeds… but what’s the fun in that? Instead I picked out a packet of seeds which said “purple cauliflower”. I was thinking along the lines of purple flowering broccoli – which is quite pretty, and in any case turns to normal green when you cook it.
Even so, when I found this growing in the garden…. I have to admit, even I recoiled a bit.
It’s recognisably a cauliflower… but nobody told me it would be that purple.
This is a serious problem. You see, my kids are not great fans of vegetables. Generally I have to hide them in soups, pasta sauces, curries and bakes… adding a tin of tomatoes or a cheesy topping to camouflage the presence of carrots or chopped cabbage.
But how the heck am I going to hide something this colour? If I make cauliflower-cheese, it’ll look like a purple monster lurking in an avalanche. Steamed cauliflower rosettes are going to look like they fell in the beetroot. Hmmm…. now there’s an idea. Can you make borscht with cauliflower?
Help me please! I need recipe ideas for alien cauliflower….
Planet Germany 