Imagine making the quintessential South Indian happy meal — thayir saadam or curd rice with cauliflower. Yup, you heard that right! Bengaluru-based author and jazz vocalist has conjured up recipes with what she calls the miracle vegetable to substitute hefty carbs. As she puts it all down in her revolutionary book The Cauliflower Diet, we chat with Radha Thomas, who lets us in on the book that also has recipes for vegans who usually struggle with food options.
If you didn't already know, the cauliflower is the best kept secret in the dieting community. "I've always been on a diet. Because I've always been on the plus side of average, tending towards chubby. I blame it on my genes, not my eating habits… kidding, of course," quips Radha. The premise of the book is that, by eating a low carb, gluten free, high fibre diet, you will be able to starve the body efficiently, so it burns up its own fat reserves. And all this, without having to make a big change to one's dietary habits. "All I'm asking is that people substitute Cauliflower Rice for plain rice and potato, following the recipes I've given. So a person who is used to eating chicken curry and rice can just toss out the nutritionally barren and carb-heavy 'real rice' and move to cauliflower to get the metabolic benefits," she explains.
Radha has been at it since 2010 and everyone at home has stopped eating regular rice too. Since she has been at it for over five years now, she and her trusted 'left-hand woman' Bagya, have concocted recipes from scratch, without stealing them from the almighty, that is the Internet. "My personal favourite is cauliflower thaiyir saadam," she tells us. "Could be because it's so hot right now and nothing's more cooling and satisfying than a cold bowl of CTS with a little prawn balchao on the side. Delicious and non-carb heavy," says Radha, who has come up with all sorts of recipes - everything from plain rice to mashed cauliflower potato, pizza and sushi, to cookies, koftas, fried rice and even adais! Ask her to remember her best, "I served my cauliflower pizza to a bunch of tweenagers. And they gobbled it up with gusto.”
Cauliflower and romano cheese cookies
Ingredients:
200 gms raw cauliflower florets, steamed lightly l 50 gms romano cheese grated l 100 gms raw peanuts (or almonds or walnuts) l ½ tsp baking soda l Butter to grease the pan l A bowl of water to clean your fingers, and a towel to dry off. l Salt to taste
Method:
Pulverise the peanuts (couldn't resist the alliteration) in a food processor and once they're nice and crumbled, say, the consistency of breadcrumbs, kind of, toss in all the other ingredients and spin all of it around. It's nice to have something to chew, so don't make it too mushy. Taste to see if it's to your liking. Unlike sweet cookie dough, this 'raw' tasting may not be a great experience, but visualise the end product, all cooked and crispy. You may need to adjust for taste - according to what you like. More cheese? More salt?
Roll out the dough as thinly as you can and then using a cookie cutter or the cap of a bottle, make cookie-like discs. You'll need to pat them down so the shape is even.
When you're doing this, you'll need to rinse off your fingers each time you press a cookie down, so it doesn't mess up the next one. Keep the bowl of water and towel handy to dry off. It's important to be neat at this stage, since the end product will look messy if you rush it.
Sometimes we just use our palms to flatten out the cookies for a home-made look. Rinsing our fingers and drying them off each time, we plop the cookies on the baking sheet and the result is very nice too.
Grease a baking tray and lay out the cookies, spaced apart, and bake till brown on one side. It should take about 15 minutes in an oven heated to 150°C. Flip them over gently till the other side is brown too. Be careful when flipping so they don't break. Remember that this isn't real dough and you have to treat the cookies like they're porcelain until they've crisped. o It's nice if a few of them are crunchy so you may want to experiment with how long you leave it in the oven, since there are so many variables like oven temperatures and altitude and so on.
Take the cookies out of the oven and allow them to cool (they'll harden as they cool) before you store them in a jar, carefully placing them in, so they don't crumble.
Grilled cauliflower steak
Ingredients:
For the steak: 400 grams of steak-sized cauliflower steak pieces, about ½ an inch thick and wide across the tree.
For the sauce: 3 tbsps olive oil, half a small yellow bell pepper, finely seeded and diced, Half a small red bell pepper, finely seeded and diced, About three or four scallion sprigs, chopped finely, bulb and green parts, 4-6 cloves of garlic, crushed and chopped finely, ¼ tsp fresh dill, chopped finely, 2 tbsp crumbled walnuts, 4 pitted olives chopped up roughly, 2 tbsp sundried tomatoes chopped roughly, Two tbsp. crumbled Blue Cheese (or Feta or Goat Cheese), Salt and pepper to taste
Method
Brush the steak on both sides with a little of the oil and rub a little of the crushed garlic on it as well. l In a preheated oven at 180°, place the steaks on a greased baking tray and grill for about 20 minutes on each side till you see them turning brown. Carefully place the steaks on a plate, the same one you'll be setting the table with.
For the sauce: In a saucepan, heat the oil and toss in the chopped scallion and garlic to brown a little.
Throw in the red and yellow diced bell peppers and stir fry till the flavour of the garlic explodes. Add the chopped dill and give it a whirl.
Add the salt and pepper, you can be mildly generous with the salt because this is it, there's no more salt in the steak.
Take if off the fire and mix in the chopped olives, the walnuts, the sundried tomatoes and blend well.
Sprinkle the crumbled cheese last of all, and toss gently. You should be able to find small chunks of cheese as you eat. Serve with a tomato salad or creamed spinach.
