Despite my best intentions, most of the roasted cauliflower I cook doesn’t make it past the sheet pan.
I always start out with a loftier goal, turning those sweet, caramelized florets into soup, or stuffing them into a pita, shawarma style — or, at the very least, putting them on a plate and maybe garnishing with some chopped herbs.
But then I’ll sample one or two, you know, for quality control. Before I know it, I’ve devoured half a sheet pan’s worth standing over the stove, snatching the golden, olive oil-slicked pieces one by one, fingertips burning. For a committed cauliflower admirer, a pan full of hot, roasted florets is just too seductive to resist.
For this recipe, I was determined to turn those lacy-edged pieces into a dish I could share.
The key was to assemble all the other components while the cauliflower was still in the oven. With everything else at the ready when the florets came out, I’d have more of an incentive to exercise restraint — and knowing that I’d put work into the rest of the dish would make it easier to ignore.
I’d had my heart set on a hearty, warm salad, something satisfying enough to give cauliflower a starring role, but light and full of colorful vegetables, with a flavor zesty enough to offset the usual gray bleakness of February’s depths.
Another good thing about cauliflower is that, once roasted, it becomes gentle enough to work with a multitude of flavors, whether rich and creamy cheeses, yogurt, salty pickles or sweet dried fruit.
I chose the sweet-and-sour route by soaking golden raisins and slivers of red onion in lime juice for as long as it took the cauliflower to cook — in effect creating an easy quick pickle with a pleasantly chewy texture.
To add flavor while the cauliflower roasted, I tossed the florets with spices, then sprinkled some briny capers and more red onion onto the sheet pan, letting them get crisp and brown. The hardest part of the whole thing was not gobbling them up as they cooled slightly, a necessary step so it wouldn’t wilt the arugula on contact.
It was worth the wait. This vivacious pink and gold salad, with its array of textures and smack of citrus, lit up my winter evening. And I didn’t have to burn my fingers to enjoy it.