Cauliflower is my new favorite veg. Well, it’s not new. And I do have more favourites. I just love it. A lot. And that love is growing bigger every day. Why? It’s so extremely versatile. Not only is it a star just on its own, it can be used as a stand-in for so many other things, such as rice.

Stand-in

One of our favourites is to use it as a stand-in for potatoes. People often wonder if you don’t taste too much of the cauliflower. Or that you’d miss the potatoes. Actually, you don’t. Of course, it depends a bit on what you add to it, but you’d be surprised at how little of its own particular flavour shines through.

Spinach and cauliflower

We recently had my mom over for dinner and I made this spinach and cauliflower mash. While I often add sweet potato or sometimes a small regular potato to give the mash more ‘body’, I decided to just use the cauliflower. As our oldest son had requested spinach, my initial thought was to have creamed spinach as a separate side. But last minute, I decided to combine the two.

Gotcha

I had my mom first eat her way through at least half of the food, until I asked whether she liked it or not. I already knew the answer, seeing how she gobbled it all down. But she is a very traditional cook, never experimenting, not even wanting to learn new ways to cook or try new ingredients.

Yes, she liked it. It was really tasty! “So, can you guess what’s it made of?” As I had ‘experimented’ on her a couple of times before, her immediate answer, or actually question, was: “what have you done now?”

“I cooked you dinner. So… what do you think it’s made of?”

A whole list of ingredients was summed up. But no, cauliflower was not one of them. HA! Gotcha!

It is that good…

Ingredients

1 medium cauliflower, cut into florets (600-800g)

300 g fresh spinach, roughly chopped*

1 shallot, finely chopped

1 clove of garlic, minced

100 g cream cheese

salt, pepper and nutmeg to taste

Instructions

Cook the cauliflower florets until they are soft. Drain well.

While cooking the cauliflower, roughly chop the spinach and discard any hard stalks.

Sauté the shallot and garlic for a couple of minutes.

Add the spinach and stir fry it until it starts to wilt.

Mash up the cauliflower. I use a stick blender for the smoothest consistency.

Add cream cheese and mix well.

Season to taste with salt, pepper and nutmeg.

Finally add the spinach, mix well and serve.

We had prawn skewers with it, which I had first marinated in some olive oil, lemon juice and chili flakes. But this is also good with fish, sausage or other meats.

Enjoy!

Need more cauliflower inspiration? Check out this coconut rice or spinach risotto!