Cooked Cauliflower Rice and Cauliflower Rice Salad

From Chef Oonagh Williams of Gluten-Free Cooking with Oonagh

Cauliflower Fried Rice

Directions

1. Break cauliflower in florets and cut off most of stalk. Stalk just doesn’t shred nicely.
2. Rinse cauliflower, drain and pat dry.
3. Put shredding blade into your food processor and shred cauliflower. It shreds into rice looking grains except for little pieces of stalk.
4. Melt some butter and olive oil together in 9 inch skillet.
5. Add finely chopped onion, half a red bell pepper deseeded and cut into small dice, 1-2 cloves garlic crushed. Cook over medium heat for about 3-5 minutes until softening.
6. Add cauliflower rice, cook for about another 5 minutes until cauliflower is as cooked as you like it.

Variations

• Add a knob of butter if you want, it really adds to taste.
• Add a handful of fresh herbs and serve as a side dish.
• Top with some nuts, cheese for meatless Monday.
• Add hot peppers, pepper flakes.

Cauliflower Raw Rice Salad

1. Break cauliflower in florets and cut off most of stalk.  Stalk just doesn’t shred nicely.
2. Rinse cauliflower, drain and pat dry.
3. Put shredding blade into your food processor and shred cauliflower. It shreds into rice looking grains except for pieces of stalk.
4. Add some maple herb vinaigrette (below) to lightly moisten cauliflower rice.
5. Add chopped, fresh tomatoes, including any juice, small diced cucumber, shredded carrot—really whatever you would normally add to a rice salad. Stir and serve.

Salad is crisp when freshly mixed, but cauli does soften if refrigerated overnight. But then you could stir fry it for fried rice. Lovely light crunch without the softness of rice. Stand over bowl eating before serving good.

Maple Herb Vinaigrette

Ingredients:

• 1 Tablespoon white wine or red wine vinegar, apple cider vinegar or fresh lemon juice
• 1 teaspoon Dijon Mustard. You can also use honey Dijon, spicy for variation.
• 2 Tablespoon maple syrup. I use stronger tasting maple syrup—Grade A medium amber. Use honey if you don’t have maple syrup.
• 2 Tablespoon olive oil
• 6 Tablespoon avocado oil or sunflower oil
• 1/2 cup fresh parsley measured before chopping
• Green of 4 green onion/spring onion, scallion stalks
• Few celery leaves if you have them
• Good pinch of salt to taste
• Freshly ground pepper

Directions

1. Put vinegar, mustard, salt, pepper and maple syrup in jug or 2 cup Tupperware style container or clean jam jar. Stir to dissolve salt etc.
2. Add oils and fresh herbs. Run immersion blender to finely chop herbs. If you don’t have immersion blender then chop herbs finely with scissors and add to dressing. If you do use immersion blender, dressing will thicken and go almost white/green in color.  On refrigeration, olive oil will solidify and then revert to liquid at room temperature.

This dressing mellows on standing so that no one ingredient overpowers the others.  Try it this way first and then experiment with different vinegars, other fresh herbs but try less total quantity of herbs, add different mustards etc. Remember your taste for salt or sugar can be different to mine.

This is my go-to dressing, easily made, loved by everyone.  Please don’t substitute fake sugar or agave nectar. Maple syrup or honey add to taste, they’re not just a sweetener.