whole baked cauliflower with tomato and olive sauce

servings
4

method

This is a great way to cook cauliflower because it half steams and half boils in the delicious sauce. It’s really nice served at the table in the pan it has cooked in, as it looks so different to any other conventional way of cooking cauliflower, but if you prefer you can serve it in a dish like I did in the picture. Even though I made this recipe up, it feels quite Mediterranean in style to me.

First of all, find yourself a pan in which your whole head of cauliflower will fit, leaving an inch around the outside of it – this is important, otherwise it won’t cook in the way it’s supposed to. I use my regular porridge-for-four-people pan and it works a treat! Add the onion, garlic, chopped cauliflower stalk and a glug of oil to the pan and slowly fry for 10 minutes until softened and with a little colour. Add the olives, anchovies and parsley stalks and fry for another couple of minutes. Add your tomatoes, then half-fill one of the tins with water and add that to the pan, with a good swig of red wine vinegar. Stir everything together, breaking the tomatoes down with a spoon to make sure there are no big lumps, and bring to the boil.

Take your cauliflower and gently push it down into the sauce. If you’ve got the size of your pan right, half of the cauliflower will be in the sauce, half above it. Drizzle with olive oil, put the lid on and let it tick over on a low heat for 50 minutes. Serve sprinkled with the parsley leaves. Again, this is a pretty well-behaved dish when it comes to cooking it in advance and then reheating it just before you want to serve it. Lovely with roast lamb, and it’s also a delicious main course for a vegetarian if you leave out the anchovies.

• from Cook With Jamie

ingredients

• 1 red onion, peeled and sliced
• 5 cloves of garlic, peeled and chopped
• 1 large head of cauliflower, outer green leaves discarded, stalk chopped
• olive oil
• a handful of black olives, stoned
• 4 good-quality salted anchovy filets in oil, drained and sliced
a handful of fresh flat-leaf parsley, leaves roughly chopped, stalks finely chopped
• 2 x 400g tins good-quality chopped plum tomatoes
• red wine vinegar

share this page

daily recipe rss

new recipe rss

tried this recipe or a similar one? share your tips...

1. by soomel on Sun 10 Jul 2011 @ 06:00

this is simply best thanks a lot

2. by danthemackem on Thu 09 Sep 2010 @ 16:29

I'm not a big fan of Cauli' to be honest (unless it's covered in cheese sauce and baked in the oven) but the wife is so I made this last night and it was delicious.

There was a bit of sauce left over so I had that with pasta for my lunch today.

Great recipe, will definitely be doing it again.

3. by Shala on Thu 09 Jul 2009 @ 14:58

This recipe looks simple enough and yet so unique. I've never seen Cauliflower cooked this way before. My mum just bought a cauliflower so I'm thinking of trying this out!

4. by Mike on Wed 29 Apr 2009 @ 13:51

Jamie i wanna really thank u for this recipe, because me and my girlfriend started a diet a couple of weeks ago* well not a diet acctually, just stoped ordering out and started to cook our own meals. And since in Greece this time of season Vegetables are on fire we found out that baked cauliflower is just delicious!!!

Ps: i really tried to help out my girlfriend cook the meal cause i really get excited every time we see ur show or dvds but i still need a lot of work cause in my mind all seem like spices and aromas floating around but in real life(or kitchen) is more complicated :P. thanx again and greetings from Greece

5. by Adriane Pompeu on Thu 16 Apr 2009 @ 17:55

Hi Jamie,

I´m from Brazil and I love watching your program, eventhough I ca´n not understand very well your accent. Now that I´ve discovered you web, I will no have more excuse for not cooking your recipes.

Congratulations for your beautiful work.
Adriane

6. by FAY on Thu 09 Apr 2009 @ 13:29

Hi Jamie, ive got a 7 month old son and i cook all his meals homemade and because i cook in bulk, i tend to freeze a lot of his meals. Ive got a couple of recipes for using cauliflower and i just wanted to know can u freeze cauliflower as most other veg u can? Thanks, Fay

7. by ed mc donnell on Mon 06 Apr 2009 @ 14:15

i will be cooking for 4 people and 1 of them is a veggie. i love to cook but a lil lost as what to do. could you please with some advice looking for a starter main and dessert please
kind regards
ed

8. by Barbara Bradbury on Sat 04 Apr 2009 @ 17:03

Where can I find the Asparagus Recipe aired at 10:30 Eastern on the Food Network Canada Saturday April 4th,2009. It looked really good. Thanks,Barbara

leave comments

related recipes

cheese and onion salad with creamy herb dressing
In this recipe, you basically pickle the onions very quickly. Usually pickling is a lengthy process,...
Read more