Four days into the new year. Have you made new year’s resolutions? I haven’t. I don’t really believe in New Year’s Resolutions. Don’t get me wrong. I do believe in reflecting on your life and deciding to change things, in setting goals, making plans. But I don’t think this should only be done once a year and particularly on the first of January. Why wait for New Year’s Day to start to change your life?
If you’re trying to cut down your carb intake, you most likely start with omitting pasta and rice from your evening meals. You might be familiar with substituting rice with cauliflower, like I did in this very simple coconut rice or curried rice. It’s prefect for Asian dishes. But have you tried risotto yet?
Risotto was one of those dishes, I had not tried yet. I love a good creamy risotto. And although we’re not strictly on a low carb diet, we try to eat less of those little buggers. Mind you, carbohydrates aren’t bad, it’s just that we eat way too much carbohydrates for our bodies to burn up (and all the excess is stored as fat). Unless you’re an athlete burning thousands of calories a day. Which I am obviously not. So, I have to watch how much I consume.
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.
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.
I have always loved pasta and rice dishes. I still do. I could eat them every single day. Several times a day. Comforting Italian pasta dishes, spicy Asian rice dishes, there are so many great recipes. But when you’re trying to cut down on your carb intake, those dishes won’t exactly help you with that.
However, there is a great alternative. Cauliflower!
Growing up, I only knew one way to eat cauliflower and it actually made me hate it: cooked to mush and smothered in a floury béchamel sauce. It wasn’t until sometime in my twenties, that I discovered also other ways to eat cauliflower. Raw with a dip, cooked al dente with various spices and sauces, au gratin… And so I learned to appreciate this veg. But never would I have thought that cauliflower, one day, might become one of my favorite vegetables. Yet it just might get there.
