Cauliflower in a pot
Welcome to To Vegetables, With Love, a celebration of a vegetable life, less ordinary.
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This week has been firmly centered in my kitchen. There was some recipe testing earlier in the week, but by Wednesday, I fully switched over to ‘cooking for fun’ mode and I loved it. I created a menu of dishes that have come to mean something to my family over the past few years. I realized that even though we didn’t grow up with memories of Thanksgiving meals, we had slowly eked out our own traditions which are deeply personal to us. These traditions are, unsurprisingly, focussed upon the food we eat. Huck loves these sour cream and chive dinner rolls by Claire Saffitz - I cannot recommend this recipe enough, I have been making it for years and the recipe never misses. Dash adores my hazelnut potato gratin (in Tenderheart) and lo mai gai (sticky rice parcels) and Scout saves lots of room for pavlova, which I always top with canned passionfruit pulp, which I bring back from Australia.
The day is also about the slow and melodic enactment of rituals - rolling out of bed and enjoying my first cup of coffee while the Macy’s Day Parade plays in the background, eating “sausage” rolls for brunch and watching all the Thanksgiving episodes of Friends. While we don’t call it Thanksgiving, the day has become equally meaningful for our family, centered upon togetherness and food. My friend Doris described my cooking odyssey this week as FOODSGIVING and I instantly fell in love with this sentiment.
I’m taking a small break this week so I’m sharing a not-entirely-new recipe that was a part of the US Tenderheart preorder bonus. The recipe is called Cauliflower in a Pot, a one dish recipe based upon Nigella’s Chicken in a Pot. It’s a good one for the holiday season, weeknight friendly but also celebration-worthy. After all, the best weeknight recipes are the ones that feel a bit like a celebration.
This week
I was Incredibly honored that Tenderheart was included on NPR’s list of 2023 BOOKS WE LOVE. Tenderheart was also included in Epicurious’s list of the Best Cookbooks of 2023.
Cauliflower in a pot with lemony orzo
© by Hetty Lui McKinnon for To Vegetables, With Love
