Cauliflower cashew curry with coconut milk

Cauliflower is not a favourite in our household. So I have to keep cooking it in different ways so that at least it gets tried. While I love a cauliflower bake although everyone agrees it tastes good it's not eaten with much enthusiasm. After the usual turning up of noses this cauliflower curry was devoured and this is the 4th time I'm making it (which in this house says something!)

Garnished with coriander leaves and cashew

Preparation time: 1 hour; serves 4 - 6 (with other curries) 

Ingredients:

400 - 500 g	Fresh cauliflower florets
2 tbsp.	Oil
1/2 tsp.	Brown mustard seeds
1/4 tsp.	Turmeric
1 tsp.	Curry powder
1/4 tsp.	Chili powder (or to taste)
1/2 tsp.	Salt
500 ml	Thick coconut milk (read recipe for options)
65 g	Ground raw cashew nuts
	Rostzwiebel to garnish (for alternatives see below)

Method:

400 - 500 g of cauliflower florets is about one small head of cauliflower. Clean off the green parts and break the florets into bite sized pieces. We need our cauliflower florets to be rather small because we eat with our fingers and breaking cauliflower to pieces with your fingers is a bit cumbersome.

Prepare your spices and set them aside.

And then get your cashew ready. If you happen to have it you can use cashew butter. If you take this route make sure that there are no additives in the cashew butter, like sugar. Else prep your cashews in a mini-prep. Cashew gets very pasty so it may get stuck in the blades and heat your machine up. Thus pay attention to the heat of your machine. If you don't have a mini-prep, grinder or food processor you could try mixing the cashew with the coconut milk and then use a liquidizer or stick to process it. I have not tried this myself but I think that cashew are soft enough that any machine should be able to grind them (I may be wrong though so be careful).

Next prepare your coconut milk. This time I used 1.5 cups of warm water and mixed in 4 very heaped tablespoons of coconut milk powder, then made the liquid up to 2 cups (approx. 500 ml). Last time I used a whole can of coconut milk with water to make up the 2 cups. If you are in SL and use fresh coconut milk use the first thick milk (note that your curry will taste better than mine, be more healthy and have more oil!).

The cooking of this curry is very simple. Just heat the oil on medium-high heat until it sizzles when you drop in a mustard seed. Then add all your spices and stir them continuously so that they fry a bit. If you notice that they are burning remove the pot from the cooker very quickly. You don't want burnt spices. Once the spices start smelling or the mustard starts popping add the coconut milk and bring to the boil over medium-high heat. Just as it begins to boil add your cashew paste and then reduce the heat to medium. Blend in the cashew paste. I do this with the back of a wooden spoon and it takes some time. An alternative would be to put the cashew paste in with the coconut milk and mix them in a blender. Once the cashew paste is blended add in the cauliflower florets. Bring to the boil, cover the pot and allow to simmer for 15 minutes or until the cauliflower is tender. Keep in mind two things 1. you are going to eat this with your fingers so you should be able to break it with your fingers, 2. overcooked cauliflower tastes horrible. The couple of times I made this and knew I would be reheating it the next day for lunch I under cooked the cauliflower a bit so that when re-heated it still tasted okay and didn't turn into mush. I prefer a bit of a struggle on the first day to over cooked cauliflower on the second!

Finally, garnish your dish. I did this with Rostzwiebeln which is a German thing. Instead of Rostzwiebeln you could fry some onions until they caramelize and use this (note add this time on to the preparation time given above).  I've also used cilantro and roasted cashew.

Enjoy!!

Simple version for cooking can be found here