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Cauliflower Curried
A medium-sized cauliflower 1/2 pint brown sauce Curry powder Prepare the cauliflower exactly as in the following recipe, but it should be divided into pieces about the size of a large walnut. When the cauliflower is tender and well drained, place it in a saucepan, and pour over it the sauce in which a teaspoon of curry powder has been well mixed. Let it stand for ten minutes, where it will not boil, but will keep very hot. The sauce must be made according to the recipe for brown sauce, but a little more thickening must be added. More or less curry powder can be added, but this quantity will suit ordinary tastes.
Serve with boiled rice.
A simple dish of cauliflower held hot in a curried brown sauce. The only real technique is restraint: the cauliflower is cooked first, the sauce second, and the two are married off the heat.
- The half pint of sauceIf the book is American, half a pint is 1 cup; if the measure is imperial, it is 10 fl oz, or about 1 1/4 cups. Either amount will coat one medium head cut into walnut-sized florets.
- Brown sauce means a made sauceNot bottled brown sauce. The period recipe is a roux of butter and flour cooked to a nut colour, moistened with stock and simmered until glossy. A good mushroom stock does the job well now.
- "A little more thickening"The sauce is made stiffer than usual, presumably because the drained cauliflower still gives off water. Add roughly an extra teaspoon of flour per cup of sauce, or simmer it down until it just coats a spoon heavily.
- Bloom the curry powderRaw curry powder stirred into finished sauce tastes dusty. Warm the teaspoon of powder in a little butter for thirty seconds, or add it to the roux before the stock, and the flavour rounds out.
- The ten-minute standThis is the hinge of the recipe. Held below a simmer, the florets absorb the sauce and the spices settle; boiled, the cauliflower collapses and the flour sauce can catch and turn bitter. A covered pan off the heat, or the lowest possible burner, is what is wanted.
- Cooking the cauliflowerBoil or steam the florets until a knife tip meets slight resistance, around 5 to 7 minutes, then drain thoroughly and let the steam escape. Anything softer will not survive the ten minutes in the sauce.
- Seasoning levelA single teaspoon of curry powder in half a pint of sauce is mild by current standards; the original says only that this quantity suits ordinary tastes and that more or less may be used. Two teaspoons, plus salt and a squeeze of lemon at the end, suits most modern palates.
- YieldOne medium head with rice serves three as a main course or four as a side.
Curry powder had long been a British and American grocery staple by the time recipes like this one were written, sold ready-blended so that a cook needed no knowledge of individual spices. This recipe shows how thoroughly it had been absorbed into the European sauce repertoire: the base here is not an Indian gravy at all but a classic flour-thickened brown sauce, with curry powder stirred in as a flavouring much as one might add mushroom ketchup or Worcestershire. Cauliflower suited such dishes, being firm enough to hold its shape, cheap, and available for much of the year; served in a rich sauce over rice it filled the plate in the same shape as a stew of meat.