Recipe Time: Birthday Curry Cauliflower

This is the recipe for the cauliflower I made on Saturday. As I mentioned before, it was inspired by aloo gobi, an Indian cauliflower and potato dish, and the amazing roasted cauliflower at Zaytinya, a terrific Greek/Mediterranean mezze (aka tapas) restaurant in DC.

Ingredients:

1 head of cauliflower, washed and cut into bite-sized florets
Curry powder
Garam masala
1/2 to 3/4 cup sultana (golden) raisins
1/3 cup pine nuts
Some amount of okra, washed
Salt
Black pepper
Apple cider vinegar
Splenda
Soy sauce or Worcestershire sauce

Directions:

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
2. Coat the cauliflower with curry powder. I found that the easiest way to do this was to put it in a Ziploc bag and shake it until everything was light orange. Be careful not to overdo the curry powder, as too much will taste bitter.
3. Lay the cauliflower in an oven safe dish that you have sprayed with butter or olive oil-flavored nonstick spray.
4. Sprinkle the cauliflower with a little garam masala and a little salt.
5. Spray a bit more nonstick spray on the cauliflower.
6. Roast the cauliflower for about 30 minutes or until fork-tender, but not overdone.
7. While the cauliflower is roasting, measure out your sultanas.
8. Rehydrate the sultanas in a little bit of water, seasoned with soy sauce or Worcestershire sauce, in a pot over low heat for 7-10 minutes.
9. Add the sultanas and some of the juice to a large bowl.
10. Lightly toast the pine nuts by putting them into an ungreased pan over medium heat until they slightly brown, but are not burned. Be careful because burning can happen quickly.
11. Slice the okra into very thin disks.
12. Place the okra on a cookie sheet and spray on some nonstick spray. Lightly salt and pepper the okra.
13. Once the cauliflower is done, turn the oven up to 400 degrees and insert the okra.
14. Check on the okra every 5 minutes until you are pleased with the level of crispness.
15. Add the cauliflower and pine nuts to the big bowl, and stir to combine.
16. While the okra is cooking, combine a little big of the vinegar, curry powder, garam masala, and Splenda to create a vinaigrette.
17. Remove the okra from the oven and add it to your bowl of deliciousness.
18. Toss the vinaigrette with the dish. Ta-da!

This dish has a lot of steps, but not a lot of ingredients. Very budget-friendly and yummy! The vinaigrette is sort of optional, but I added it to keep the dish from being so dry. If you don't need juiciness, you could probably skip it and I believe the dish would taste the same.