I spent all summer growing 1 cauliflower, and I didn’t even take a fashion picture of the final product.
It’s a pity because I don’t think I ever want to devote garden space (at least not while I have limited space with a porch garden) to they again. I tried eating the leaves like collard greens as it was growing, and my body did not like that. I’ve successfully done that in the past with broccoli, so it could just be that I’m getting more sensitive to large quantities of green leafy vegetables over the years. But it wasn’t a plant – for me – that provided any food through the summer while it grew and took up space.
Also it was very hard to keep pest free. I washed the leaves every night, but toward the end of August on I kept seeing white butterflies near there so I knew they were laying eggs, and I kept searching the leaves and not finding eggs or caterpillars. So I just washed the leaves as well as I could and was puzzled. All summer I managed to find and pick off maybe three caterpillars.
But when I harvested, I found that it was just that the leaf spacing was perfect for them to hide out by the stem between the leaves where it was really hard to get to. So points off for being hard to manage pests without insecticide.
But I did get one lovely head of cauliflower. And I put it in a big pot of water and pulled tiny caterpillars off of it as they came out. After about three hours of (intermittent!) cleaning, I nibbled on a floret and it was significantly more flavorful fresh than store bought! But I still put it in plastic and let it sit in my refrigerator for a day before more cleaning before actually using it in a recipe.
So I started with (purple) onions and (orange) peppers and then added the cauliflower florets. And then I pondered whether I wanted to make it vegetarian or add a protein.
I grew up in a household that didn’t cook seafood because my father didn’t like the smell, but I’ve been trying to experiment and learn how to cook it, so I’d bought some salmon portions at Aldi’s with some fairly unimpressive results. I think that’s because starting with thinner steaks was increasing the level of difficulty. So this was the last of that package, and it being thinner meant I could quickly get it just thawed enough that I could cut it with a cleaver into pasta appropriate chunks!
I don’t remember if I set aside all of the vegetables on a plate while I cooked the salmon or if I started a second skillet, but I did cook the salmon separately too make sure I could see that so the frozen pieces behaved properly and got a little sear on all sides.
I also boiled some penne.
Then I put the salmon and the cauliflower together and added alfredo sauce from a jar. And some of the pasta cooking water to loosen it up. And then I decided I also wanted the taste of a bit of tomato pasta sauce, so I also added about a quarter cup from an already open jar in the fridge.
It all came together very satisfactorily!