This is a typical Arab way of making fried cauliflower. It is a simple dish and simple to eat, but it is truly delicious. Our kids are always excited when they see that we are eating it for dinner. We always make enough to make dinner of it, too. Rice flour is a more traditional ingredient in Arabic and Middle Eastern cooking, and you can even use a clean coffee grinder to make it. However, corn starch is a fine substitute. This recipe makes just enough for all of us to eat it for dinner, it would be more than enough as a side dish for our crowd, and would leave leftovers for a smaller family. You can cut it in half easily.

2 large heads of cauliflower, broken into medium florets
1/2 cup rice flour or corn starch
oil, to fry
salt, to taste
parsley, finely chopped, to garnish
toasted pine nuts, to garnish
Taratoor, to serve
Toum, to serve

In a large bowl, toss the cauliflower with the rice flour or corn starch.

Heat oil to deep fry in a large pot to fit about a third of the cauliflower. Fry the cauliflower, in batches, until golden, and set on a rack over a sheet pan to drain. Season with salt immediately. Most people tell you not to crowd a pan when deep frying. Most people are wrong. Filling it as much as you can, in a single layer, means that the temperature of the oil drops enough that the food cooks internally without burning on the outside. Repeat this process until all the cauliflower is fried.

Place on a platter and sprinkle with parsley and pine nuts. You may drizzle with the taratoor and toum, or pass them at the table.

Toum

Toum just means garlic, but it is also a shorthand for this creamy, salty, garlicky sauce. Just about every recipe uses almost the same proportions of ingredients, but the technique is what you work at to get the texture right. It tastes good, no matter what your sauce's consistency, but the goal is to have a thin mayonnaise texture: thick, but something that can be drizzled. This keeps forever in the refrigerator, so go ahead and make this quantity. If you are using a food processor, it probably won't work that well with a smaller amount, anyway. This should be made ahead of time, so you aren't fiddling with it at the last minute, and to give the ingredients a chance to chill. The chilling is something I learned from the book Bayrut, it does help the sauce come together.

4 heads garlic, peeled
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1 cup safflower or other light oil
juice of one lemon, strained

Place garlic cloves in a bag in your refrigerator overnight. Put the oil in a jar in the freezer overnight.

The next day, put the garlic cloves with the salt into the bowl of a food processor or a large mortar and pestle. Pulse or crush until the garlic becomes like a thick paste. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and repeat.

Either very slowly press in the oil, in a thin, slow drizzle to the mortar and pestle, or use the feeder tube to put about a half cup of oil in at a time to drip out of the tube through the tiny hole in the pusher as you run the food processor until all the oil is incorporated. Remove to a jar and stir in the lemon juice. Cover and refrigerate until ready to use.

Labels: Homemaking, Recipes, Tales from the Kitchen

// posted by Ranee @ Arabian Knits @ 4:18 PM