Listen :
Availability:
Available to listen.
Last broadcast on Mon, 17 Aug 2009, 16:00 on BBC Radio 4 (see all broadcasts).
Synopsis
Yotam Ottolenghi, chef and founder of Ottolenghi's food shops and restaurant, brings some much-needed passion to the neglected cauliflower.
Cauliflower has fallen from culinary favour, eclipsed by its superfood cousin broccoli. Bland, white and often smoothered in cheese sauce, the cauliflower is no longer a fashionable ingredient, and sales are falling. But are we missing out?
Yotam grew up in Jewish west Jerusalem, while executive chef and partner in the business Sami Tamimi grew up in the Arab east Jerusalem. Both grew up eating cauliflowers, and in this programe are trying to afford the cauliflower its rightful place alongside the other members of the brassica family, cabbage and brocoli.
Phillip Effingham is chairman of the British Brassicas Association and Director of Farming and Agronomic Development at Marshall Bros, growers of cauliflowers in Boston, Lincolnshire. Cauliflowers are well suited to the rich soils of the Wash, the centre of cauliflower production today. The biggest problem for cauliflower growers is that its peak season, during the warm summer months, coincides with a general drop in sales as shoppers turn to salad. Low prices used to encourage sales often mean it is not worth growers spending the money to harvest them, and excellent quality cauliflowers are left to rot in the field.
But cauliflower is a perfect summer ingredient, and lends itself to many different styles of cooking, from traditional British to Middle Eastern and Indian. Yotam and Sami give the cauliflower the Ottolenghi treatment in two dishes: fritters, a dish from Sami's childhood, and chargrilled in a salad.
The Cauliflower - a personal note from Yotam
It’s funny that of all the vegetables in the world I chose cauliflower. I guess this means that I am now well and truly over a little childhood trauma from when I was growing up in my native Israel.
I assume that I started off liking this beautiful white head very much. Otherwise I probably wouldn’t have told my grandmother that I liked it and as a result I wouldn’t have been served it religiously, every Saturday, for as long as I can remember. Her cauliflower was very delicious, but it was the forced predictability of it that put me off cauliflower for quite a while.
I am now older and wiser and ready to convert the rest of the world. I am absolutely sure that the recent decline in popularity has got nothing to do with cauliflower itself. It’s just that most Brits probably suffer from a similar childhood trauma to mine of over-exposure, and not always to the best versions.
In my restaurants in London we use an abundance of seasonal vegetables, all year round, and we put endless energy and creativity into making them taste great and look sexy. With cauliflower, we tend to do a lot of frying or char-grilling. There is nothing like a deep-fried cauliflower, either in a light tempura batter or in breadcrumbs. This is something my mom used to cook for me and was always a treat. Char-grilling enhances the flavour, and breaks the whiteness: whatever it takes to get the maximum of flavour, texture and look.
Broadcasts
-
Sun 16 Aug 200912:32
-
Mon 17 Aug 200916:00
~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~12~RS~){kind=small}