Sausage Cauliflower & Kale Pot Pie 2/21

The magazines were big into Cauliflower this month, and I cannot say I minded.  I found a recipe for Sausage Cauliflower and Kale Pot Pie in the Real Simple Magazine, and it looked simple and easy to make, so I grabbed the ingredients for another Cauliflowerfest!  I followed the recipe pretty exactly, with the exception of substituting chicken sausage, and it definitely came out really good.

Salmon Cakes and Turmeric Cauliflower 2/20

I saw a recipe for Salmon cakes in my Food & Wine magazine.  It used fresh salmon and for some reason I was intrigued.  I usually buy my salmon at BJs since it is a way better price and you get a huge piece for ~$18.  I usually cook half and freeze half.  I also saw this beautiful Turmeric Ginger Cauliflower, and figured I would give it a try.  Served it all with some quick coconut jasmine rice, and it was a very flavorful and interesting dish!

The salmon cakes also reheated well, though the cauliflower was better when it was a bit crisper.  If you have a family that doesn't like cauliflower, this may be the way to get them to eat it!! Excellent flavors, and fairly healthy too!

Cauliflower Pasta 2/7

We almost ordered out... but I had this huge head of cauliflower in the fridge that needed to get used up, so I decided to make myself cook!  Eric really wanted pasta of some sort, and I figured I wasnt really feeling the plain old marinara sauce, so I quickly searched the web and hit a few like this Cauliflower Pasta Recipe.  Though even that sounded a little boring, so of course I added my own twists!

First I tossed the Cauliflower in the Oven on a baking sheet at 400 with some olive oil, salt, pepper, onion powder and garlic powder.  I also started the pasta water, and cooked the pasta per the directions.  We had a half a box of penne and half a box of rigatoni, so I just threw them together :)

While that cooked, I tossed some capers into a pan and sauteed them for 2 minutes.  Once the water started to cook out of them, I added some harrisa olive oil (Thanks Cynette & Tom!) and tossed in the garlic. I sauteed that for another 2-3 minutes until the garlic started to brown.  Then I added a few tablespoons of sundried tomatoes and a tablespoon of the oil from the sundried tomatoes. Sauteed that for a few more minutes.

I then added about 1 cup of panko bread crumbs to the pan and tossed and sauteed all of that until the bread crumbs began to brown, and then turned off the heat.

To assemble the dish, I put about a cup of pasta on the plate, I then put about 4 Tablespoons of Ricotta cheese in lumps over it.  I poured a few tablespoons of reserved pasta water over the ricotta and then topped that with the cauliflower.  I put about 1/4cup of the breadcrumb mixture over the top of that, and sprinkled it with 1 Tbsp parmesan cheese and some fresh parsley.

Awesome dish that was incredibly flavorful.  I could have made a thicker ricotta sauce if it was needed, but for a light and fast meal, this definitely worked and brought out the flavors of the cauliflower nicely!

Verdict - Worth doing again!!