Roasted Cauliflower and Garlic Soup Recipe AND it's PRINTABLE!

You caught me! It's only Tuesday and already I'm cooking for Friday night. That's because I'm so excited that a group of my plant-strong peeps are coming over for dinner. First experiment, a new soup. This soup is special. Real special. And I'm thinking that it's going to taste even better on Friday.

I'm going to walk the line here . . . and provide you with the recipe. I changed it from the original Roasted Cauliflower and Garlic Soup in Terry Walter's Clean Eating. I "Healthy Girl Kitchened" it and it rocked! So here goes (oh, by the way, Ms. Walters, if you are reading this and you think that I have crossed an intellectual property line, just let me know and I will gladly remove the recipe part of this post. I will however keep the photo up and my rave review!).

I also have some very exciting news to announce. I finally figured out how to have a PRINTABLE version of a recipe linked to the blog. What a relief. I know what a pain in the neck it is to have to copy and paste recipes from a blog into a text document. See below for my first printable recipe.

Vegan Roasted Cauliflower and Garlic Soup

adapted from a recipe in Clean Food by Terry Walters

2 large heads cauliflower

coconut oil spray or olive oil spray

6 cups vegetable broth

1 head/bulb of garlic

1 large yellow onion

2 tbsp mirin

1 tsp dried thyme

sea salt

fresh ground pepper

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Wash cauliflower well and cut into florets. If florets are large, cut them in half. Place cut cauliflower into a 9x13" baking dish or onto a cookie sheet lined with aluminum foil and spray cauliflower lightly with cooking spray of your choice.

Cut off the top of the garlic bulb and place garlic onto a sheet of aluminum foil. Spray garlic with cooking spray and wrap foil around garlic bulb, creating a sealed up package. Place garlic onto baking tray with cauliflower and put in oven to roast for at least 1 hour or until cauliflower and garlic is soft. At that point, remove from oven and open garlic package and let it cool a bit.

In a soup pot or dutch oven, pour in enough vegetable broth to cover the bottom of the pot. Over medium heat, bring broth to a bubble and add onion. Saute onion, stirring frequently, until translucent, adding a bit more broth and turning down heat if necessary to prevent burning.

Add roasted cauliflower, the rest of the broth, mirin and thyme. Pick up garlic by holding it in one hand with the aluminum foil still wrapped around it's base and squeeze out all of the roasted garlic into the pot. Increase the heat and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 5 minutes. Remove from heat and, using a hand-held immersion blender, puree soup. Return to heat and simmer for 20 minutes. Taste soup and season with sea salt and pepper. Serve immediately or let cool and refrigerate.

Printable Version

For another take on a roasted cauliflower soup, check out Susan's recipe from Fat Free Vegan.

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Vegan Indian Brown Basmati Rice Pilaf

It was an Indian cooking hey day in my kitchen leading up to my vegan pot luck dinner. The clear winning recipe was this one, so I decided to post it next. It was also tweaked/inspired from a recipe from The Candle Cafe Cookbook, More than 150 Enlightened Recipes from New York's Renowned Vegan Restaurant.  

Traditionally, rice pilafs in Indian cuisine are made with white basmati rice. I thought I would take a risk and substitute in a brown basmati rice, which is much healthier. The results were fantastic!  And there's lot's more vegan Indian dishes to come in the days ahead.

Indian Brown Basmati Rice Pilaf

Printable Recipe

2 cups brown basmati rice

1 1/2 tsp brown or yellow mustard seeds

1 1/2 tsp whole cumin seeds

1 Tbsp coconut or safflower oil or cooking spray

3/4 cup diced onion

1 Tbsp minced garlic

1 cinnamon stick

1/2 tsp whole cloves

1 Tbsp chopped or grated fresh ginger

2 tsp sea salt

1 tsp turmeric

3 1/2 cups water

blanched cauliflower florets from 1/2 head of cauliflower

1/2 cup shredded carrots

1/2 cup currants

1/2 cup toasted slivered almonds

2 Tbsp mirin (Japanese rice wine)

Rinse and drain rice to remove some of the starch.

Coat the bottom of a large pot with 1 Tbsp cooking oil or spray. Heat the on medium and add the mustard and cumin seeds.  Cook, stirring often, until they begin to pop. Add the oil, onion, garlic, cinnamon stick, cloves and ginger and saute over medium heat for about 4 minutes.

Add the rice, salt and turmeric and cook, stirring, until the rice is completely coated, about 1 minute.  Add the water, stir, cover and simmer over low heat about 45 minutes.

When the rice is tender add the blanched cauliflower, carrots, raisins, toasted almonds and mirin and stir well.  Keep warm until serving.

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