Happy Friday, LilyOnTheLam.Com Readers!
I hope you great weekend plans in store. If you live in the Tampa Bay area, I highly recommend that you go to see "Legends of the Knight" a documentary by Tampa Filmmaker Brett Culp - playing one night only (Saturday, September 28, 2013) at the Tampa Theatre as a benefit for local charity Metropolitan Ministries. Find out more about the film at WeAreBatman.com
Although it was a gorgeous 85 degrees in Tampa Bay today, my stomach's calendar says it is autumn. I have been craving comfort food but I've been trying to avoid a high carbohydrate wonderland. The problem with trying to find alternatives to naughty comfort foods is that the alternatives rarely taste as good as the real thing. For example, I like veggie burgers but I would never confuse one with a big juicy Angus beef burger in a blindfold challenge. Same for tofu that is supposed to take like chicken, baked potato chips, margarine ...
So years ago when I heard of pureeing cauliflower as a substitute for mashed potatoes, I was skeptical. However food optimism runs deep, so I tried the recipe. And was instantly sad. It tasted like waterlogged, pulverized cauliflower. It was definitely not mashed potato-like in any sense of the word.
Awhile back, I stumbled upon the blog "I Breathe ... I'm Hungry - Deliciously Low Carb and Gluten Free Recipes" by Mellissa Sevigny. I made Melissa's low carb flax seed pizza crust recipe as the base of my Hickory Barbecue Chicken and Bacon Pizza and really liked it - even though I would never ever ever mistake flax crust for a thick chewy wheat crust.
While reading through Mellissa's blog, I also found a recipe for "Better than Potatoes" Cheesy Cauliflower Puree. I thought "Mmmm hmmm, I've been down this road before. Sure it's better than potatoes. And I'm prettier than all the supermodels in the world too."
There is a local deli in Tampa that makes Cauliflower Au Gratin - I used to eat it all the time thinking I was having a low carb option until I read the ingredients and found it had potatoes in it! Well hello! Why not just put steak in the tofu scramble then! As you may have noticed, I have been burned by cauliflower in the past! Oh the post traumatic stress of it all!
But since my stomach has been in a "it's autumn, fill my belly with some comfort food!" kick, I decided to try Mellissa's so called Better than Potatoes. Reading the blog, Mellissa had noted that she microwaves the cauliflower to avoid the waterlogged taste of pureed cauliflower. Ah-ha ... maybe she was on to something here.
Now while this dish is low carb, it is not necessarily low cal or low fat. According to Mellissa's calculations, it is 148 calories and 11 g fat for a 1/2 cup serving. One head of cauliflower makes approximately 2 cups (4 servings). It also contains - butter, cream and Kerrygold Dubliner aged cheddar cheese - but frankly not in ridiculous amounts per serving. But if you're lactose intolerant, you should make some swaps.
I microwaved a head of cauliflower per the recipe's directions (click on the link to be transferred to the recipe on Mellissa's blog) and then in my Ninja Blender, blended the cooked florets with butter, cream and chopped up bits of Kerrygold Dubliner aged cheddar cheese (I buy mine by the gigantic brick at Costco - much cheaper than the small overpriced tiny slices they sell everywhere else.) I would recommend using a food processor to puree and whip the cauliflower, but my Ninja blender is pretty strong and was already on the counter. The food processor was tucked away in the pantry closet. What can I say? I'm lazy.
My Ninja blender took a little while to turn the cauliflower, cheese, butter and cream into a heavenly batch of what looked like whipped potatoes. I microwaved the pureed cauliflower after blending to make sure any pulverized bits of Dubliner cheese were melted and then whipped the "faux-tatoes" with a fork. They looked good. They smelled good. But how did they taste?
FANTASTIC! If I were eating whipped potatoes with cheese and this cheesy cauliflower puree in a blind taste test, I would definitely have to take a few bites to figure out which one was cauliflower. I sprinkled some garlic salt and cayenne pepper in the cauliflower puree to give it a little more flavor and punch.
I grilled a hamburger patty with Baby Bello (Baby Portobello) mushrooms and served it with the cheesy cauliflower puree and some sauteed green beans with slivered almonds that were too shy to appear in the picture below.
I was quite happy with my comfort food meal. It is not diet food but it is lower calories and lower carbohydrates than if I had had a hamburger on a bun with cheesy mashed potatoes. It was a tasty alternative. I will definitely be making the cheesy cauliflower puree part of my regular cast of side dishes. They are so tasty I could just have a bowl of them for dinner like Mellissa did in her blog post.
I hope you great weekend plans in store. If you live in the Tampa Bay area, I highly recommend that you go to see "Legends of the Knight" a documentary by Tampa Filmmaker Brett Culp - playing one night only (Saturday, September 28, 2013) at the Tampa Theatre as a benefit for local charity Metropolitan Ministries. Find out more about the film at WeAreBatman.com
Although it was a gorgeous 85 degrees in Tampa Bay today, my stomach's calendar says it is autumn. I have been craving comfort food but I've been trying to avoid a high carbohydrate wonderland. The problem with trying to find alternatives to naughty comfort foods is that the alternatives rarely taste as good as the real thing. For example, I like veggie burgers but I would never confuse one with a big juicy Angus beef burger in a blindfold challenge. Same for tofu that is supposed to take like chicken, baked potato chips, margarine ...
So years ago when I heard of pureeing cauliflower as a substitute for mashed potatoes, I was skeptical. However food optimism runs deep, so I tried the recipe. And was instantly sad. It tasted like waterlogged, pulverized cauliflower. It was definitely not mashed potato-like in any sense of the word.
Awhile back, I stumbled upon the blog "I Breathe ... I'm Hungry - Deliciously Low Carb and Gluten Free Recipes" by Mellissa Sevigny. I made Melissa's low carb flax seed pizza crust recipe as the base of my Hickory Barbecue Chicken and Bacon Pizza and really liked it - even though I would never ever ever mistake flax crust for a thick chewy wheat crust.
While reading through Mellissa's blog, I also found a recipe for "Better than Potatoes" Cheesy Cauliflower Puree. I thought "Mmmm hmmm, I've been down this road before. Sure it's better than potatoes. And I'm prettier than all the supermodels in the world too."
There is a local deli in Tampa that makes Cauliflower Au Gratin - I used to eat it all the time thinking I was having a low carb option until I read the ingredients and found it had potatoes in it! Well hello! Why not just put steak in the tofu scramble then! As you may have noticed, I have been burned by cauliflower in the past! Oh the post traumatic stress of it all!
But since my stomach has been in a "it's autumn, fill my belly with some comfort food!" kick, I decided to try Mellissa's so called Better than Potatoes. Reading the blog, Mellissa had noted that she microwaves the cauliflower to avoid the waterlogged taste of pureed cauliflower. Ah-ha ... maybe she was on to something here.
Now while this dish is low carb, it is not necessarily low cal or low fat. According to Mellissa's calculations, it is 148 calories and 11 g fat for a 1/2 cup serving. One head of cauliflower makes approximately 2 cups (4 servings). It also contains - butter, cream and Kerrygold Dubliner aged cheddar cheese - but frankly not in ridiculous amounts per serving. But if you're lactose intolerant, you should make some swaps.
I microwaved a head of cauliflower per the recipe's directions (click on the link to be transferred to the recipe on Mellissa's blog) and then in my Ninja Blender, blended the cooked florets with butter, cream and chopped up bits of Kerrygold Dubliner aged cheddar cheese (I buy mine by the gigantic brick at Costco - much cheaper than the small overpriced tiny slices they sell everywhere else.) I would recommend using a food processor to puree and whip the cauliflower, but my Ninja blender is pretty strong and was already on the counter. The food processor was tucked away in the pantry closet. What can I say? I'm lazy.
My Ninja blender took a little while to turn the cauliflower, cheese, butter and cream into a heavenly batch of what looked like whipped potatoes. I microwaved the pureed cauliflower after blending to make sure any pulverized bits of Dubliner cheese were melted and then whipped the "faux-tatoes" with a fork. They looked good. They smelled good. But how did they taste?
FANTASTIC! If I were eating whipped potatoes with cheese and this cheesy cauliflower puree in a blind taste test, I would definitely have to take a few bites to figure out which one was cauliflower. I sprinkled some garlic salt and cayenne pepper in the cauliflower puree to give it a little more flavor and punch.
I grilled a hamburger patty with Baby Bello (Baby Portobello) mushrooms and served it with the cheesy cauliflower puree and some sauteed green beans with slivered almonds that were too shy to appear in the picture below.
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| Grilled Hamburger Patty with Sauteed Baby Bello Mushrooms and Cheesy Cauliflower Puree |
If you are eating a lower carb diet and miss mashed potatoes, you definitely need to check out Mellissa's recipe.
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