Cauliflower Dum: Cauliflower with tomatoes and onions
With thanks to Mangoes and Curry Leaves, by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid and
An Invitation to Indian Cooking by Madhur Jaffrey
One small cauliflower serves 2 with rice as a main dish, or 2-3 as a side. To serve more people, buy two small heads of cauliflower or one large head
See notes for discussion of cooking methods.
Ingredients
one small to medium sized cauliflower
one small onion or shallot, peeled and finely chopped (see notes)
2-4 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
approximately two teaspoons ginger, minced
1 teaspoon cumin seed
1 tablespoon coriander seed
1 half-teaspoon turmeric powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
2 cardamom pods, crushed
1 small bay leaf
1/2 fresh green chili pepper, seeded (see notes)
1 fifteen-ounce/445 ml can crushed tomatoes in juice
fresh lemon juice, to taste
additional salt, if needed
canola or peanut oil, for the pan
1 cup/235 ml water
This recipe takes much longer to describe than it does to cook. Please don’t be put off.
You will need a frying pan and lidded pot or saucepan that will hold your cauliflower and tomato sauce easily. Lacking a lid, foil will work.
A splatter screen is helpful here, as is a small food processor or mortar and pestle.
Cut the cauliflower into florets. Trim the leaves and stem for use in another recipe (stir fry, soup). Set aside.
Using either a mortar and pestle, blender, small food processor, or a really sharp knife, blend the onion, garlic, and ginger into a paste. Add the cumin, coriander, and turmeric. Blend. Add the salt, pepper, and cardamom. You should be able to pluck out the cardamom shells. You want a paste, but it need not be perfectly blended.
Returning to the cauliflower:
Have a lidded saucepan or pot that can hold your cauliflower and sauce ready. If you plan to cook the dish in the oven, preheat to 350F/180C.
Pour about 1/3 cup/75 ml oil into a large frying pan and heat to medium high. Add the cauliflower and brown, as if you were browning meat. Take care not to burn the veg or yourself; you may need to adjust the heat up or down. This is where the splatter screen is useful.
Keeping browning and turning, moving each piece of cauliflower to your pot.
Once all the cauliflower is browned, turn the heat under the frying pan down and add the onions. Stir occasionally, allowing onions to brown gently.
Add the spice paste to the onions. Pour in about 1/4 cup/60ml water and bring to a low boil. Add the hot pepper. Stir to blend.
Carefully transfer contents of frying pan to your cauliflower pot. Add the canned tomatoes. Stir to blend. Taste for seasoning–your may want to add more salt or a bit of lemon juice right away.
Cover and slide into oven, or bring to low simmer stovetop, covered, cooking until cauliflower is tender, 30-45 minutes.
Serve with rice, flatbreads, yogurt, or tandoori chicken.
Cauliflower dum keeps, refrigerated, up to five days (good luck). Do not freeze.
Notes:
Cauliflower dum may be prepared in the oven. Preheat to 350F/180C. Prepare ingredients to point of blending in saucepan. Cover with lid or foil and place in oven, cook about 30-40 minutes stirring occasionally, until cauliflower is soft.
Most cauliflower dum recipes call for up to one cup/454g onions. My husband is not fond of onion, so I substituted an inauthentic small shallot. If he weren’t eating this, I’d use the onion, and more of it.
Garam Masala is a spice mixture containing black peppercorns, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, and coriander. (Mixtures vary, but that’s a standard blueprint.) As I always have these spices in the house, I never buy garam masala. Cauliflower dum recipes generally call for a teaspoon of garam masala. I added a bit of black pepper, two cracked cardamom pods, and additional coriander (the recipe calls for some already). I am not crazy about cinnamon and cloves in savory foods, so I ommitted them.
If you are preparing a larger cauliflower, add 3/4 cup/175 ml water to the cooking pot–or just fill the tomato can with water and pour it in.
Cauliflower dum is spicy. How spicy is up to you; Jaffrey’s recipe suggested either fresh hot pepper or cayenne; Alford and Duguid suggest 2 seeded green chilis. Given my husband’s preferences, I went on the mild side here.