Wikipedia tells me I need to thank the British for the cauliflower, one of my top three favorite vegetables, because apparently they introduced us to it in 1822. Without their good work, I wouldn’t have known the joys of my Ma’s turmeric-cumin, peas-potatoes-cauliflower dish, a staple of many Delhi-winter meals. I wouldn’t have known my grandmother’s cauliflower and prawn awesomeness during every visit to Calcutta. Or the stuffed-to-the-edge cauliflower paranthas, served slathered with ghee in the many dhabas en route from Delhi to Chandigarh, my home for nearly two years.
I wouldn’t have then acquired the cauliflower-loving palate that I have that’s made me seek recipes here. Not for me cheesy cauliflower soups. Nor the deathly-dull and unimaginative boil, steam, or eating raw options.
I’ll roast them, please, until the browned-crisped edges sing. Or I will pan fry them, maybe with cubed sweet potatoes or boiled or canned chickpeas, and add walnuts, and raisins in the last five minutes, and let them all get to know each other well.
And then finally, I wouldn’t have known to seek them at my local nursery with my husband, and at his encouragement, bring a few, tiny plantlings home, and then erupted with joy on seeing the first but unmistakable sign of my “own” cauliflower. So, here’s to tiny container gardens, to the fabulous good-food people who have nourished me, and to whichever white guy brought them to India’s shores back in 1822, incidentally the birth year of Harriet Tubman and Louis Pasteur and also when the last public whipping was held in Edinburgh, and pressed them into the hands of a brown guy.