Pink Cauliflower Soup

One of the things I find with growing vegetables, is that it's similar to Eddie Izzard's skit about putting fruit in fruit bowls, I never fancy eating or cooking with them....one of the things I'm trying to change this year. Another part of this is a huge personal push to cook more seasonal foods, open up my repertoire, try new things.

Back in February we had a very good habit of popping down to the local farmers' market at Parliament Hill. We could grab the seasonal produce that we needed, I could grab a tasty sausage sandwich from The Giggly Pig before we headed off to a local cafe for coffees and for Abi to grab a panini or something. The market is wonderful, but little hot food choice for a vegetarian other than cakes and pastries.

So one weekend, before tucking into some piping hot pork sausages, we saw some unusual pink cauliflowers sitting amongst the melancholy range of green and beige vegetables on display at this time of year. Abi has a clichéd love of all things pink, so it duly went into the shopping bag; whilst I mused that the only things I could do with it were either cauliflower cheese or cauliflower tempura.

Having a vegetarian girlfriend has been a great excuse to procure a number of cookbooks to keep things interesting and when I got home I adapted this recipe from one of my all time favourite cookbooks:

Pink Cauliflower Soup with green peppercorns and avocado oil

100g floury potato
1 small onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 sprig thyme
800mls vegetable stock
1 large pink cauliflower, about 450g net weight
120mls white wine
salt, to season
1 tbsp avocado oil
2 teaspoons freeze-dried green peppercorns

Peel the potato, chop it and put it in a pan with the onion, garlic cloves, thyme and stock. Bring it to the boil and simmer until the potato is soft and breaking up. Remove the thyme sprig and blend the rest to get a smooth, slightly thickened, liquid.

Chop the cauliflower into small pieces, put it in a pan with the wine, over a low heat. Cover and braise the cauliflower for about five minutes until it is tender but not too soft. Add the blended stock, bring to a boil and simmer for one minute. Blend the soup to a smooth puree and season with a little salt.

Serve in bowls with a drizzle of avocado oil on top. You'll notice that the peppercorns on the photo look remarkably like chives, well in the supermarket I felt positive that I had peppercorns in the cupboard.

The recipe is from Denis Cotter's Paradiso Seasons which I first heard about on Radio 4 in 2003. It is certainly one of my desert island cook books should I be stranded on a desert island with a good range of produce.