Roasted Cauliflower Casserole with Tomatoes and Goat Cheese - Yes, goat cheese!

My daughter and I went to the Saturday Farmer's Market and I picked up a huge cauliflower. We all like cauliflower - roasted, sauteed, baked, etc. It took up a lot of space in the refrigerator for a couple of days and I would stare at it every time I opened the door. I kept wondering what I would do with it. The spousal unit wanted me to boil it and cover it with cheddar cheese sauce and breadcrumbs and bake it. That's my idea of ruining a completely beautiful cauliflower. But I did want to make something he would like, that would be comfort food-ish, without boiling the flavor out of a deliciously sweet cauliflower. 

While browsing my favorite recipe sites I found a recipe in the NYT for Roasted Cauliflower with Tomatoes and Goat Cheese. At first I wondered how that would work...would I roast the vegetable with tomatoes and goat cheese right on a baking sheet pan? Then I read through it and saw that it was a casserole.  Hmmmm....  sort of like what the husband wanted but ... not.

So, I sliced the cauliflower into thick slabs (sorry, "slabs" is not a very appetizing word) to get as much surface area exposed to the heat as possible.  I set the oven at 450* and doused the cauliflower in extra virgin olive oil, kosher salt and pepper.  I laid the pieces out onto a baking sheet.  Many of the ends of the head fell apart into florettes, that's what you're seeing in the photo below. I forgot to take a shot of the large, intact slices of the head. 

Anyway, I roasted and turned half way through the 45 mins it spent in the oven. I let it cool a bit before removing to a large bowl. While it was cooling I sauteed some onion, garlic, thyme, cinnamon and crushed coriander seeds in a bit of olive oil until very fragrant, then added a 28 oz can of diced tomatoes.  As the sauce simmered and thickened I beat 4 eggs with 3/4 of a log of goat cheese. I use Laura Chanel goat cheese, I think it has a wonderfully balanced flavor. If you absolutely don't care for goat cheese you can use ricotta or cottage cheese as a substitute. But really, the goat cheese with the spices was just delicious.

I poured the tomato sauce into the bowl of cauliflower and mixed it all together then poured it into the baking dish. I then poured the goat cheese/eggs mixture over that and dotted the top with the remaining 1/4 of the goat cheese log.

Here is the 9 x 13 baking dish full of the cauliflower that was mixed with the tomato sauce.  Before I poured the sauce onto the cauliflower I saw that there were a lot of pieces of the coriander seeds and onion floating around along with pieces of tomatoes and I didn't like the way it looked. I could only imagine the mouthfeel of the sauce so I dumped the entire batch of sauce into my handy-dandy Vitamix and pureed away! It made the sauce a very nice consistency and got rid of the chunks of tomatoes and onions and pulverized the coriander seeds. When I gave it a taste it was perfect! All those spices made a great mix, the cinnamon was an outstanding addition to the tomatoes with the coriander and thyme. And the cloves of garlic gave it all a nice mellow flavor.

I popped it into the oven and turned the temp down to 375* and baked it for an hour until it was bubbly and browned. I must say it ate like a lasagna, I cut it into squares and it was oh so delicious! We all enjoyed it and because it was so substantial we didn't have anything else with it.  It was really great. Hot and cheesy (but not too much) and custardy and so full of flavor.  Very satisfying!

Here's my recipe, adapted from the NYT recipe:

Prehead oven to 450*. Cut away bottom of cauliflower stem and trim leaves. Slice cauliflower into 1/2 inch slices. Coat cauliflower with olive oil, salt and pepper. Arrange on baking sheet and bake for 45 minutes, turning half way through the bake time.

Meanwhile, grease a baking pan, heat some olive oil in a saute pan and add onion. Cook until tender, add salt, garlic cloves, thyme and continue cooking until fragrant. Crush coriander seeds (or use ground coriander) and add to pan, cooking until fragrant. Add cinnamon and 28 oz can of tomatoes. Simmer until sauce thickens.  Remove from stove and add to blender (if you prefer it blended and smooth). Pulse/blend until thoroughly mixed. Just take it to the consistency you would like. 

Set aside 1/4 of the goat cheese log, beat 4 eggs then add cheese and continue beating until smooth.  

Add cooled (somewhat) cauliflower to a large bowl, pour tomato sauce mixture over it and mix gently, then spread into greased baking dish. Pour egg/cheese mixture over the cauliflower and dot the top with the remaining 1/4 of the cheese log.  Bake for about an hour in a 375* oven until it's bubbling and the top is lightly browned.  Remove from oven to a cooling rack and cool for about 20 minutes. Then slice and serve.  It will slice up like lasagna and stay intact.  I know! I was surprised too!

We ate the cauliflower for three days. On the second day it tasted even better. On the third, wow. I made chicken cutlets with it the second day and yesterday, meatloaf.  A great accompaniment to a meat dish, for sure. 

Ingredients:

1 large head of cauliflower - trimmed and rinsed

Salt and Pepper

Olive Oil

1 large yellow onion

4 garlic cloves crushed

2 tsp dried thyme leaves

1 28 oz can tomatoes - if you're going to blend it like I did use any kind. If not, use either tomato sauce or diced tomatoes. Whatever you prefer in consistency.

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp coriander - if seeds, crush well

4 large eggs

1 8oz log of goat cheese

Of course, you can adjust the seasonings to your liking. I really liked the cinnamon/coriander mix so I added a bit more.  Let's just say I eyeballed the amount and didn't use a measuring spoon. 

                                             Mangia e statti zitto!

Voilà! Quiche!

I bought a hunk of Le Gruyère cheese, real Le Gruyère AOP cheese imported from Switzerland. There's nothing like it. So creamy, so savory, so delicious.  I decided to make a quiche since I've not made one in a very long time. I have an abundance of quiche ingredients -- broccoli, an assortment of other types of cheeses, ham, bacon, peas, onions, mushrooms, scallions, roasted peppers, etc. But the Le Gruyère was beckoning yodeling to me.  I could imagine those pretty cows grazing in their Alpine meadows with their beautiful bells around their necks, sending their sweet melody over the mountains to the kitchens of the world below, "Buy our cheese! Buy our cheese!" Here are the lovely ladies coming down from their verdant meadows to be milked.

http://www.cheesesfromswitzerland.com/cheese-assortment/le-gruyere-aop.html

So, getting back to the quiche, I had a box of Trader Joe's frozen pie crusts (gasp! yes, I used a premade crust, which really isn't all that bad, honestly...) and sauteed very thinly sliced potatoes. I chopped about 10 slices of cooked bacon, grated about 1 1/2 cups of the gruyère, and 8 large organic farm-fresh eggs (their taste is so different than eggs from the supermarket).  I beat the eggs with a splash of milk (from the dairy farm down the road, which tastes off-the-deliciousness-charts from supermarket milk), salt and pepper.  Then I built the quiche.

The pie crust had come to room temperature on the counter this morning so it was as easy as just pressing it into the pie plate. I used a deep dish 9" Pyrex glass pie plate.  Then I blind baked the crust for about 30 mins until it was lightly browned and cooked almost through. Quiche tastes so much better in a precooked crust. The crust holds up to the wet ingredients and doesn't get soggy or gooey.  

I then layered the thinly sliced potatoes on the bottom of the crust, added the cooked bacon, sprinkled the cheese in an even layer and sprinkled a couple of scallions on top.  Next came the beaten eggs and I popped it into a 350* oven for 50 minutes.  I used my Breville toaster oven to bake the quiche and it came out perfectly, see? 

The crust is a bit ragged, but it will be eaten shortly and no one will notice.  I notice, but no one I'm serving it to will notice, nor will they care.  When food is made with love for those we love no one cares about whether or not it looks picture perfect.  If I were in a retail business where I was selling the quiche then it would look perfect. Absolutely. But for my family and friends... I'll be forgiven and I forgive myself.  Better it should taste good than look good.  When you're home cooking I believe best efforts always count and are satisfactory.

Well, it's cooled sufficiently to gather my court to the table.  I've paired this quiche with a big salad of iceberg lettuce dressed with fresh lemon juice, a bit of roasted garlic I made earlier, sliced roasted peppers & olive oil.  Plain but oh so good!  

Time to mangia!