Golden Cauliflower Spaghetti

A Seasonal Supper for January that gleams and glistens.

Hello and welcome back to another Seasonal Supper where once a month I drop a dinner for 2 in your inbox that uses an ingredient at it’s very best. Let me start by saying January isn’t technically peak season for Cauliflower, but it is still around and I think it kind of embodies the vibe of this month. It’s pale, tightly wrapped up and a little bit stiff, which is an accurate description of me when I emerge blinking into the New Year. This recipe transforms it into something ravishing, bold, supple and striking and if that is not a metaphor for my goals for 2024 then I don’t know what is.

Pasta e cavolfiore alla Siciliana is the inspiration for this dish, in fact it’s pretty close to it but with one key difference. In the classic recipe (from Sicily, you might have guessed) the cauliflower is boiled until tender to form the base of our sauce. I have nothing against boiled cauliflower, I just think this is a wasted opportunity. Cauliflower is the most starchy variation of its family, the Brassicas, and so it behaves slightly more like a potato. It caramelises beautifully, so in this case pan-roasting your cauli florets in oil and butter until they become golden and sweet helps build another layer of flavour that boiling would have missed. You end up with an incredibly rich and savoury sauce that is so much more than the sum of its parts. So that’s what we are going to do today. Veggies - if you want, leave out the anchovies, vegans - leave out the anchovies and the butter.