Chipolte Cauliflower Tots

I love cauliflower, and so I'm always trying to find new ways to cook it and sneak it in dishes. So when I found this recipe on skinnytaste for Cauliflower Tots I wanted to give them a whirl. I've made some really good zucchini pancakes, so I'd love to have another recipe like that. I played with the recipe a little--to change the flavor profile a bit, since I wanted to serve them with the picadillio from the same blog.

Ingredients:
1 medium head cauliflower
1 large egg and 1 egg white
1/2 cup onion
3 tbsp minced cilantro
1 diced chipolte pepper in adobo
1/2 cup reduced fat sharp cheddar cheese, grated
1/2 cup breadcrumbs
salt, pepper cumin, chili powder, garlic powder to taste
cooking spray

 I ended up using the squash later that evening--but it appears in pretty much all of my pictures, even though it isn't in any of the recipes.

First the cauliflower needs to be cooked--I put it in my steamer basket with a little water, but my basket or pan was too small and it didn't cook evenly. So I nuked it for two minutes until it was tender and then drained it and dried it with paper towels. I also let it cool for a while. It needs to be chopped pretty fine--which is a lot of chopping so after trying for a little, I tossed it in my blender and let it do the hard work. This is the messiest part of the whole process, the rest of the batter came together pretty quickly.

Basically everything gets dumped in a bowl and mixed together. I made this a while before I needed to cook them, and refrigerated it. It didn't have any problems sticking together.

The original recipe called for shaping it into spoonful sized tots, but I thought cakes would be better for how I wanted to serve it. This is a bad idea--don't do it. I did two pans, one with tots and one with patties. I put them both in the oven at 400, but when I went to flip them half way they wouldn't come off of the pan. So I thought I'd pan fry the bigger ones, but I couldn't get them to cook through before they burned on the outside and then they stuck to the pan. The problem is that my stove does very low and infernally hot and burn your house down hot, no medium or medium high or medium low. This is probably user error. The tots, for all I couldn't flip them, turned out great!

The Verdict: The tots turned out crunchy on the outside, soft and cheesey inside, with just the perfect smokey and spicy bite--and were a perfect pair to my picadillio with squash. Unfortunately the patties were underdone, so I reheated them over the meat and veggies and ate it like a shepherd's pie. The flavors really worked for that--so I may make something similar intentionally. This recipe requires some work, but is worth playing around with to get another great way to eat cauliflower!

Giving Parsnips a Try, again!

So I was discussing some of my new favorite foods and someone suggested that I give parsnips a try. I'm not sure that I've had them before, so I went out and bought a couple. I peeled and chopped them and tossed them in a crockpot with some carrots, onions, and potato and chicken breasts. After 8 hours in the crock pot, only the chicken was still edible. The parsnips gave everything a nasty metallic taste that I just couldn't handle. Gross! But I am not one to give up--and on the encouragement of fellow Loseit.com posters, I am trying again. This time I'm following a recipe from one of my cookbooks--Robin to the Rescue, and will be pan frying/sauteeing them.

Ingredients:

2 tsp olive oil
3 medium carrots
2 medium parsnips
3 scallions
1 tsp dried Italian seasoning
1/2 c low sodium vegetable broth
salt and pepper

 (I got out the milk instead of the broth, but I did switch it out before I used the wrong thing!)

 This is a pretty easy side dish. First you peel the carrots and parsnips, and then dice them and the scallions.The direction said a 1 inch dice, but I was not sure what that looked like--is that how thick the parsnips are or how thick the slices should be. Carrots and parsnips are both skinny on one end and thick on the other, so I wanted even slices. I did it at an angle so they were all the same thickness.

Heat the oil on medium high, and then drop the scallions and sliced carrots and parsnips in and let the oil coat them and cook for a few minutes. Then add the dried herbs--I used Italian seasoning mix, and cook for several minutes. After that has gotten fragrant and time to cook, than add half a cup of vegetable broth and let simmer until they are cooked through. It took a while for that to happen and all of the broth had cooked off and become syrupy. 

 The Verdict:

I'm still not 100% I like parsnips--it still had that metallic almost bitter taste that I had in the crock pot the last time I made it. The carrots were yummy, and the parsnips were not bad--the peppery taste went well with the sweet carrots. I served it with a Turkey Cutlet roll-up that had a similar seasoning. If I do make this again, I'd increase the ratio of carrots to parsnips. That way they would be more of an accent, than a primary flavor. I'm going to try roasting parsnips next--I keep hearing how yummy they are and I want to taste that!