Cathy Isom has us craving the vegetable that’s moving from boring side dish to center plate. That’s coming up on This Land of Ours.
Gone are the days when we turned up our nose to the funny looking white veggie on the sides of our dinner plate that resembled mini trees.
Cauliflower is taking center plate and no longer a boring side dish next to that fancy meat or poultry. It’s now offered as the main dish in many restaurants from New York to California. Chefs are finding new and interesting ways to top it, mash it, roast it, steam it and blend it. It’s variety of colors besides white include orange, purple and green, can make any dinner plate pop. There are the types of recipes that use the vegetable as is, and the ones in which it replaces meat or bread. And not just restaurants, food manufacturers have come up with cauliflower concepts such as mashed cauliflower, a frozen cauliflower-and-sweet-potato medley, and cauliflower “rice.” Then you add social media, and all of the do it yourself recipe options that are being viewed hundreds and thousands of times daily, such as cauliflower mac and cheese, pizza with cauliflower crust and cauliflower tater tots, to name a few. Big companies such as B&G Foods, who bought the brand Green Giant from General Mills, and Whole Foods both reported seeing double-digit growth in nationwide sales of the vegetable two years in a row. The cauliflower craze may also have something to do with being low-carb, gluten-free and overall healthy. Remember when Kale was a big deal just a few years ago?
I’m Cathy Isom…Enjoy!
