After the long, gray winter, outside is where I want to be more and more. And somehow all I want to eat is vegetables, perhaps as a kind of tonic.
If your climate allows, this light, sunny menu is really more of a daylight meal, relaxed and best eaten outdoors (though, this year, it’s anyone’s guess what surprising things the weather might do).
Salad, made with ingredients of the season, is a necessity for me all year round. What I want right now is a salad of just-picked tender greens with colorful radishes, sweet raw young turnips, roasted beets, asparagus tips, shavings of fennel and fresh herbs. Fresh, fresher, freshissimo.
Some salads are tossed, while others, like this one, are composed. The idea for this delicate, appealing first course is to have an assortment of complementary greens, herbs and vegetables, artfully arranged on a platter or individual plates, dribbled with a tangy vinaigrette. Feel free to improvise: A few spinach leaves, a handful of raw sweet garden peas or fava beans, or thinly sliced raw artichoke can be nice additions, as can edible blossoms like nasturtium, rose or calendula.
For a main, I chose cauliflower “steaks,” which I hadn’t made ages. A large cauliflower steak was all the rage in upscale restaurants a few years ago, when cauliflower was the darling of the cooking world. It’s a vegetable that, cooked correctly, is easy to love.
To get thick slices, you’ll need a couple of medium to large heads. Be warned that there will be trimmings, to be turned into a soup or use for stir-fry for another meal. But I never mind having too much cauliflower. If you don’t want bother with slices, you can make this dish with baked florets just as easily.
It’s a simple dish to prepare. The steaks are painted with extra-virgin olive oil, seasoned on both sides, and then roasted, topped with cheese and bread crumbs, and placed back into the oven to get golden. If you top them with a bit of anchovy, it’s not vegetarian, of course, but it’s awfully good. These steaks are surprisingly substantial and filling. An option to consider is serving the baked cauliflower steaks with a light marinara sauce, but they are very tasty with no sauce at all.
Here, in California, recent torrential rains have pummeled the strawberry fields and prevented the daily harvest. Thankfully, now the sun shines, and organic local strawberries are back.
For dessert, I made them the centerpiece: I sliced some and lightly sugared and spooned them into glasses, topping them with ricotta cream — sweetened ultra-fresh ricotta, lightly whipped. Commonly used in Sicily to fill cannoli or frost traditional cakes, it’s is pretty fabulous. I layered the lovely stuff with the strawberries for a splendid parfait.
Such a pleasant meal it was, a spring awakening.
