OMG! Cauliflower!

Cauliflower peek-a-boo

My winter garden has been the most productive I've ever had and the weather's been perfect for it. I decided to buy more than the usual number of transplants this year to make sure that I had something to harvest. It worked.  I had 6 collard greens, 6 kale plants, 6 broccoli plants, and 6 cauliflower plants all growing through our mild winter.  We only hit below freezing once this year and even though those the kale looked like sullen teenagers the next morning, they all perked up again by the afternoon.

I was keeping an eye on the cauliflower heads especially, and when they got big enough, Dan and I went around tying the leaves up with rubber bands to shield the heads from the sun. Then about a month ago, we had a particularly warm day in January, and I noticed that the heads were already starting to separate like they do before going to flower.  Well, I had no choice but to cut four of them down and then figure out what to do with them.

The heads weren't terrible big, compared to the supermarket. They wouldn't win any prizes in perfection, either. But dang if they didn't look gorgeous in this large colander. Bonus: They tasted quite a bit like cauliflower, too.

(I love the colors in this shot. Some of the white cauliflower did get a little violet from exposure to the sun, but just along the edges.)

So what do you do when you have too much cauliflower to eat right away? You give it away, of course! But I didn't. Screw that.  We're only talking four heads here, not twelve loaves and fishes. Instead I decided to pickle them using a recipe I found in a Christmas present from my sister-in-law. It's curry based, and more importantly, I had all the ingredients on hand. Even though I knew that everything would turn out a yellow, I still went ahead and separated the heads by color.

 

The florets were not as crisp as the textbooks would tell you they should be, but I'm not pioneer woman and do the best I can with my hours. I ended up leaving the heads in the refrigerator a couple days before getting the time to can them. I had enough cauliflower for about three and a half pint jars.  I water-bathed three of them and put one in the refrigerator.

 The picture on the left is my attempt at being artsy. Click on it for the full effect!

 The finished product took on some distinctive coloring despite the curry and tumeric in the brine. Notice, as with all my pickled vegetables, that they are floating towards the top of the jar. I can't ever seem to get them to not float after processing. I pack those suckers as much as I dare for fear of breaking the glass jar with my hand in it, but they always soften a little under the heat and take off. The taste is fine but the look is hardly ideal.

(Another note: Cauliflower is a lot tougher to pack than green beans what with all the weird shapes and such.)

Because of the floating, these jars will never win at a county fair competition, but they still are pretty to me.

And for those of you keeping track at home, I told you I had six cauliflowers growing but only canned four. Well, we roasted one that was barely enough side for the two of us. As for the last contestant. Well, check out his picture on the right:

This green cauliflower, in the category of broccoflower, is a romanesco broccoli. He didn't start to rice like the other ones did with the short warm snap, so he'll get a special place on the dining room table this week.

Because cauliflowers only grow one head a season, it was time to pull the plants once the harvest was over. I composted them before later finding out that you could use the leaves and stems in vegetable broth.  Interesting! A project for next year's cauliflower experiment.