Grilled Planked Cauliflower That Isn't Boring

Sometimes I think of my refrigerator as a chilled composting machine. I buy bushels of baby arugula and wild dandelion greens, age them until they are no longer edible, and then compost them in the bins outside. Maybe I'm just doing my part to subsidize small farmers.

Grilling veggies is a great way to get out of the salad rut. It punches up the flavor and texture to help them fight for the main stage of dinner. That's a tough slot in my household of carnivores, and I would be completely lying if I said my kids thought this was better than steak. Still, it was eaten. That's pretty awesome.

Cauliflower, the vegetable's answer to beige walls, boring neck ties, and the cubicle, is an excellent candidate for grilling. It needs help. It needs fire and flavor and some grill marks to break up the off-white color. With this easy recipe, you can make cauliflower exciting in only about 10 minutes. That's more than I can say about some people. I shall not name names but you know who you are.*

This is all you have to do. I'm not even going to format this as a recipe. Plank the cauliflower carefully by slicing thick, even slices. The more stem the better to help hold your little tree together. It tends to break apart, which is fine as you can see some smaller pieces below, just more work on the grill. Drizzle it with sesame oil and lightly coat both sides. Again, gently so as to keep them in their planks. Sprinkle sea salt.

Preheat grill on high for five minutes, then turn down to medium high. Grill planks for three minutes then flip with a spatula. Turn down to low and close the lid. Let them soften a little on this side, about five minutes or so. Turn off grill with the lid down and let rest in the warm grill for another 2 minutes.

Serve with fresh cracked pepper.

*I had a really long tangent written here that I thought was funny, but then decided no one would get it so I erased it. And since only two of you are reading this right now, keeping the star and explaining what I did is a little like talking to myself. Publicly. Blogs are a little like socially accepted Schizophrenia. My hair is a mess and my shirt is dirty while I write this too. And just so we are clear, this isn't the really long tangent I'd written originally and deleted. I simply have a bad habit of writing really long tangents that no one wants to read, especially when I'm explaining really long tangents. Help. I can't stop. Someone? Cauliflower?

Turkey Posts Round-up: Tips, recipes and links to all you need for the cooking on Thanksgiving

Here are posts I've done on turkey over the years and other great post by friends of mine. These are in addition to posts from this month, to help you search for answers and ideas in one place. We are up to our necks in turkey necks at Smokin' Pete's BBQ, so if you have an emergency turkey question, Butterball's got a Turkey Hot Line. Here are links to the following articles.

How to Brine a Turkey
About salt and how brines work
Feeding a Crowd: Math equations for food quantities
Tips on Smoking Turkey with BBQ Pitmaster and BBQ Crawl Host Diva Q
Recipe: Smoked Turkey with Sage Rub and Maple Butter Glaze
Recipe for cooking a turkey on the Char-broil oil-less fryer
Tea Smoked Chicken (for smaller feasts)
Links to other sites I like about turkey
A great post by Live Fire about Thanksgiving Dinner
A Big Easy Turkey recipe by Grillin' Fools
Turkey Breast recipe with Pomegranate Glaze by The Heritage Cook
Fabulous Grilled Carrots with Jack Daniel's Glaze by The South in my Mouth
Chef Christo's post about How to Carve a Turkey
Recipe: Chutney Lentils
Cowgirl Jeanie's Wild Rice Stuffing Recipe
Recipe: Huckleberry Pie
Recipe: To die-for Grilled Flourless & Cayenne Cake by A Bachelor and his Grill

And finally a post to remind ourselves, what it's all about.

Thanksgiving Week, Day 2: I Am Thankful For Neighbors (and their homemade chutney!)

I have some wonderful neighbors in our little hood. We have an interesting street. It's kind of the intersection of many parts of Fremont. Part arty/funky, part 20's somethings/apartment dwellers, part families with young kids, and part...downright sketchy.

It's the sketchy part that has brought the neighbors together. Banding against the crime literally happening in front of us, we've developed a pretty vigilant neighborhood watch without getting vigilante.

We've fought the crime around us by getting to know our law officers, speaking with city council members, and by banding together at barbecues.

Yep, I even fight crime with barbecue.

At the heart and soul of this group are two folks named Sally and Robert. They are our block watch captains, and two of the nicest people you could meet. While they keep us together by the e-mail loop, they create a sense of neighborhood just by walking their dog and saying hi.

A few weeks back, Sally and Robert brought me over a jar of Robert's homemade chutney. Just 'cause. I've been meaning to post it as a recipe with lentils that I made with it, but thought I'd share the recipe today.

As we bustle around getting ready for Thanksgiving day, hopefully we'll all have the opportunity to stop and say hello to our neighbors, at the grocery store or on the street. I know these two have taught me that you can stop crime, and build incredible connections just by being neighborly.

Here is Robert's chutney recipe. He adapted it from a Mango Chutney recipe from their South Florida days, and believes the recipe is originally from the Beach County Extension Home Economics office in West Palm Beach.

MANGO CHUTNEY NO. 1


2 cups vinegar

5-1/2 cups sugar (Robert substituted brown sugar for half of this amount)

10 cups green mango slices (Robert substituted about 12 cups of green tomatoes figuring they're more watery than mangoes)

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup chopped green ginger root (Robert used regular ginger root)

1 clove garlic chopped fine (Robert added the equivalent of an extra 2 or more cloves)

3 cups seedless raisins

1 large onion sliced

1/4 cup fresh orange peel

2/3 cup blanched chopped almonds if desired (we did
4 red chili peppers w/ seeds removed -- Robert did *not* use chili peppers in his batch

This chutney is good by itself, but I used about half of a jar with lentils and it made a delicious and seasonal side dish.

Chutney Lentils
8oz fresh chutney (above)
1 cup lentils, rinsed
2 12 cups water
1 tsp. kosher salt

Put lentils and chutney in water and boil for 3 minutes. Turn down to simmer for about 45 minutes, or until lentils are soft.

(I added this after I first posted).

Incidentally, both Sally and Robert are journalists and free lance writers.

Robert writes for InvestigateWest (invw.org). His long bio is here: http://invw.org/team. You can follow him on Twitter: http://twitter.com/robertmcclure.

He is a "veteran journalist exploring new frontiers in investigative reporting, particularly on the environment. Board member, Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ)."

Sally is a freelance writer for numerous publications. Her AOL Green Police column is here: http://www.walletpop.com/blog/bloggers/sally-deneen, and she's on Twitter at twitter.com/sdeneen.

She also volunteers for a nonprofit news site started by laid-off staffers of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: http://www.seattlepostglobe.org/

Check out their work and say howdy to your neighbor. With the web, we're all neighbors now!