Home › The Waldorf Kitchen › Stewed Cauliflower
Stewed Cauliflower
Divide into branches or springs two or three cauliflowers and put these into hot water for three minutes to scald; then drain, put them into a saucepan, cover over with stock, sprinkle over a little grated nutmeg and boil them until they are done. Take them out, drain, put them into a sautepan with a small quantity of butter and some finely-chopped parsley and toss the pan for a few minutes over a brisk fire. Turn them onto a dish, and serve while very hot.
A simple braise-then-saute treatment that stands or falls on not overcooking the cauliflower — it goes through the pan a second time, so it should leave the stock still firm.
- "Branches or springs"Read this as florets; "springs" is most likely a printer's error for "sprigs." Cut them to a uniform size so they finish together, and leave a little stalk on each so they hold shape through two cookings.
- The hinge: stop the boil early"Boil them until they are done" assumes a further few minutes in the sautepan. Pull the florets when a knife meets slight resistance — roughly 5 to 7 minutes in simmering stock for medium pieces — or the finish in butter will collapse them into mash.
- Stock quantityEnough to cover; for two heads that is likely to be in the region of 1.5 to 2 quarts. The recipe does not specify which stock; a light chicken or veal stock suits it, and vegetable stock works, though water alone leaves the dish flat.
- Boil versus simmerThe recipe says boil, but a bare simmer is safer, since a hard boil knocks the florets apart. The scald-and-drain step probably serves to firm the florets and shed the first water.
- Nutmeg"A little grated nutmeg" means a light dusting — about a quarter teaspoon for two heads. Grate it fresh; pre-ground loses most of its aroma within months.
- "Brisk fire"Medium-high heat. Two to three minutes in the butter is plenty: long enough to coat and warm through, not long enough to brown or to cook the parsley to khaki.
- ButterAbout 3 to 4 tablespoons for two heads. Clarified butter is more forgiving over a brisk fire, since the milk solids in whole butter scorch quickly at that heat.
- SeasoningNo salt is mentioned, presumably because the stock was already seasoned. If your stock is unsalted, season in the sautepan.
- YieldTwo to three cauliflowers serve eight to twelve as a side — restaurant scale. Halve it for a household table.
Oscar Tschirky was the Waldorf's maitre d'hotel, and his 1896 book is essentially a working record of what a large American hotel kitchen of the 1890s cooked, filtered through French classical technique. This dish is a plain example of a familiar sequence: blanch, cook in stock rather than water so the vegetable takes on flavour, then finish separately in butter with parsley e ster au beurre with a persillade. Cauliflower had been a fashionable table vegetable in England and America since the eighteenth century and was reliably available from market gardens by Oscar's day; nutmeg with cauliflower and other brassicas is an old European pairing, often said to have come from the Dutch and northern French kitchens, and it survives in cauliflower cheese and bechamel to this day.