Cauliflower Salad with Crisp-Fried Chorizo Sausage and a Warm Lemon Dressing

An easy, tapas-style dish with sensational flavours and textures: shaved raw cauliflower with crumbled fried chorizo, crisp breadcrumbs, a whisper of garlic and a warm lemony olive-oil dressing. If you're on a low-carb, #LCHF or diabetic diet, leave out the crumbs and will still taste wonderful.

Cauliflower Salad with Crisp-Fried Chorizo Sausage and a Warm Lemon Dressing

I really like raw cauliflower when it's young, fresh, snappy and unblemished, and reckon it's an ingredient that deserves to be used more often in salads. This vegetable may have a college education, but it's not naturally gifted in the flavour department, so when you serve it raw it's important to give it a kick in the pants with some bright, zingy ingredients. The inspiration for this recipe comes from my version of Robert Carrier's Cauliflower à la Polonaise (which, gratifyingly, remains among the most-viewed recipes on this blog).

It's not easy making neat, thin through-the-stalk slices of cauliflower - there is only so much 'tree-trunk' available on individual florets. Use a mandolin, or a very sharp paring knife. Chop the pieces that don't have a stalk attached, and hide them under the prettiest looking slices.

An authentic Spanish chorizo or Portuguese chouriço, made with smoked red peppers, will give you the best results. These beauties - available at good delis - are not cheap, but you need only one sausage for four servings, and they're of much better quality than most local versions, which tend to be fatty and somewhat, er, flaccid. If you can't find imported chorizo, add a pinch or two of fresh paprika to colour the dressing.

And if you'd like some heat in this dish, add a pinch or two of red chilli flakes to the pan when you cook the garlic.

Cauliflower Salad with Crisp-Fried Chorizo Sausage and a Warm Lemon Dressing

1 young, perfect cauliflower (or two smaller ones)
1 good chorizo sausage (15-20 cm long)
3 Tbsp (45 ml) sunflower oil or similar light vegetable oil
a small clove of garlic, peeled and finely grated
the juice of a lemon
2 breadrolls (or slices of bread),  a day or two old [optional]
6 Tbsp (90 ml) good olive oil
a big handful of chopped flat-leaf parsley
milled black pepper

Cut the core out of the cauliflower and break off the florets. Using mandolin or sharp knife, cut the florets vertically into thin slices and arrange on a platter. Put a piece of kitchen paper on the counter. Cut off a third of the sausage and set aside. Peel the skin off the rest of the sausage and crumble the flesh (or dice into very small pieces).

Heat the sunflower oil in a frying pan, add the sausage bits and fry, over a moderate heat, for a minute or two, until they're beginning to crisp and darken. Crumble the bread into the frying pan - you need some pea-sized nuggets, as well as smaller crumbs - and fry until crisp. (The crumbs tend to carry on browning after you remove them from the heat, so take them off when they're a pale gold, and watch them like a hawk.)

Tip the contents of the pan into a sieve, drain off all the oil and spread them out on the kitchen paper. Return the pan to the heat and add the garlic and a tablespoon of the olive oil. Gently cook the garlic for a minute or two, making sure not to let it brown. Now add the lemon juice, all in one go, and stir briskly to dislodge the sediment on the bottom of the pan. Remove the pan from the heat and whisk in the remaining olive oil.

Pour the warm dressing over the cauliflower and sprinkle with the fried sausage bits, breadcrumbs and chopped fresh parsley. Finely slice the remaining piece of sausage and arrange the slices on the salad. Grind over plenty of black pepper. You shouldn't need to add any more salt.

Serve immediately.

Serves 4 as a starter or side dish. 

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Cauliflower with Butter, Lemon, Parsley and Crispy Breadcrumbs

"Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education." I think of Mark Twain's famous words every time I look at the curious 'brain' of a cauliflower, which I reckon is one of the world's most underrated vegetables, along with parsnips and celeriac.

Okay, I concede that overcooked, flabby cauliflower is just revolting - fartily whiffy, slimy, and stinking of boarding school - but a dishful of fresh, springy white cauliflower florets, cloaked in cheesy Béchamel sauce or a zinging salad dressing, or crunchily pickled with peppery spices, is just a joy.

I only ever make cauliflower cheese (or my cauliflower-cheese soup recipe) so I was interested to come across a recipe, in Robert Carrier's seminal seventies book Great Dishes of the World, for Cauliflower à la Polonaise. The combination of lemon juice and cauliflower had never occurred to me; but it works so well here, with plenty of butter, and crunchy fried breadcrumbs.

You can do this with a whole head of cauliflower, or you can break the cauliflower up into florets and coat them in the sauce. I took the picture above with a whole head, trying to be clever - like a cauliflower! - and then decided this was a ridiculous idea, as the sauce wouldn't be able to coat every chunk. I then broke the cooked head apart, tossed everything together, and served it up to the hordes.

Robert Carrier's original recipe calls for diced ham, but I don't think this dish needs it.

Cauliflower with Butter, Lemon, Parsley and Crispy Breadcrumbs

1 small, fresh head of cauliflower
1 tsp (5 ml) salt
a slice of lemon
2 extra-large free-range eggs
½ cup (125 ml) melted butter
4 Tbsp (60 ml) breadcrumbs (blitz a few slices of white bread in a food-processor)
the juice of 1 lemon
4 Tbsp (60 ml)  finely chopped fresh parsley
salt and milled black pepper

Fill a big saucepan with water, add the salt and the lemon slice, and bring to the boil. Remove the green outer leaves of the cauliflower and trim the stalk, and any brown bits.

Submerge the whole head of cauliflower in the boiling water and cook for 15-20 minutes, or until it's just tender and yields to a knife. (Cauliflower cooks beautifully in a microwave oven: see Cook's Notes at the end of this post.)

In the meantime, put the eggs on to boil. Fill a small saucepan with water and bring to the boil. Gently lower the eggs into the boiling water, and cook for 10 minutes. Take the pan off the heat, pour off the boiling water, and run cold water over the eggs until their shells feel cool to the touch. Crack and peel the eggs, chop them into a fine dice, cover with cling film and set aside.

Remove the head of cauliflower from the water and drain, upside down, in a colander over the sink.

Heat the butter in a frying pan. When it stops foaming, tip in the breadcrumbs and fry them for a few minutes, or until they turn golden brown and crunchy. Remove from the heat and stir in the lemon juice, parsley and chopped boiled egg. Season well with salt and pepper.

Put the head of cauliflower into dish, and pour the buttery mixture over it. Or - if you're not looking for a cheffy result - break the cooked cauliflower into florets, place in a dish, and coat with the butter sauce.

Serve hot, with extra parsley.

Serves 4 as a side dish.Cook's Note:

To cook a whole cauliflower in the microwave oven, put it in a deep glass or ceramic dish and add half a cup of water. Cover with a plate or lid and microwave on high for about eight minutes. Push a sharp knife into the cauliflower to test for doneness. If it feels crunchy and unyielding, continue to cook it in two-minute bursts, or until it is just tender to a sharp knife. At this point, remove it from the microwave, douse it in cool water for a minute, and set it upside down in a colander to drain. Don't allow the cauliflower to sit in its steaming dish: it will turn into an overcooked mush. Print Friendly