DITCH THE DOUGH - Cauliflower Steaks

Most of us love bread.  Breads are the foundation that holds some of our favorite foods together.  They act as a blanket for hot dogs and submarine sandwiches.  They are also the base of one of our favorite food groups, the pizza!

But breads are not exactly the healthiest option in the world.  I used to always think that sandwiches were healthy, depending on what you put on the bread.  Of course a bacon sandwich isn't exactly good for you, but that's because of the bacon, right?  Peanut butter sandwiches aren't too good for us either because peanut butter is filled with peanuts, butter and sugar.  So maybe a nice tomato sandwich, with a light dressing and some lettuce!  Yay!

Perhaps if we get the vegetarian pizza, that will be a much healthier alternative to the usual with pepperoni, bacon, meat and more meat.  But the breads are just as much a part of the problem as whatever you decide to put on it.

Mini Eggplant Pizzas!

Back when I was not exactly in the best shape of my life, I would sometimes think I was doing myself a favor by living on sandwiches for a week.  To my surprise, after about two days, my clothes were tighter.  "It has to be what I'm putting on the bread", I kept telling to myself.  Bread has fiber.  We are always told that fiber is good for us.  But it wasn’t so much what was on the bread but the bread itself.

So I say, ditch the dough every once in a while.  And I am not talking about going full insane mode and swapping bread slices or buns for chicken like one of those KFC Chicken Chicken Chicken burgers.  Try replacing the bread with something healthy and full of flavor.

Cheesy Broiled Tomatoes with Basil!

Try using tomato slices as the base for mini pizzas instead of any kind of dough.  Use eggplant.  Heck, slice a red pepper into slices, top them with awesomeness, bake or broil for a bit and there you go!  Bread, if nothing else, is a mostly flavorless base for whatever you decide to put on or between it.  Think I’m wrong?  Explain dipping sauces to me that you can buy with your pizza order.  How many people who used to never eat the crusts will now eat them if they have a sauce to dip into?  Exactly!  Chalk another excellent point up to Chef Nairby!

Broiled Zucchini with Mozzarella & Dill!

What other options are there to use as a base besides bread?  Tomato slices, eggplant slices, zucchini slices, red, green, orange and yellow peppers, and, as you will see as you continue scrolling down, cauliflower steaks!  Just try it!

Ingredients for Broiled Cauliflower Steaks

Broiled Cauliflower Steaks!

CAULIFLOWER STEAKS

There really is no right or wrong way to make these as it is all up to whatever you choose to use as toppings.  Here is what I used for this particular go-around.

INGREDIENTS

1 Head of cauliflower, cut into about 1 inch thick steaks

Grated marble cheese

Goat Cheese

Grape/Cherry tomatoes, sliced in half

1-2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

Fresh chopped dill

Red pepper, chopped

Onion, chopped

Olive oil

INSTRUCTIONS

1.  Brush cauliflower steaks with olive oil and place in a shallow baking pan sprayed with non-stick cooking spray.

2.  Top steaks with your choice of toppings, and however much you want, like a pizza!

3.  Broil in the oven for 7-10 minutes or until your eyes tell you they are ready!

Easy!  Enjoy!

Chef Nairby

GREATNESS BY ACCIDENT

Sometimes cooking something new doesn't go as planned.  Especially when you use your experiences from previous recipes and try coming up with your own creation.

A recipe that you followed and turned out excellent will inspire you to use similar methods to try making something different.  If it worked then, if should work now, right?  Not always.  And sometimes when things don't go as we thought it would, our natural reaction a lot of the time is to throw in the towel.

But just because your original idea didn't work, it doesn't mean that you were not on to something.

Sure, there are times when you substituted an ingredient for something similar and it turned out to be a disaster.  In the early stages of when I started taking my cooking a lot more seriously, I had made a homemade pasta sauce from a recipe I found and it turned out great.  It turned out so great that the following week I decided to make it again.  Unfortunately, none of the supermarkets near me had fresh basil, which the recipe called for.  So I turned to dried basil that you get in your typical spice aisle.  BIG mistake!  The sauce was ruined.

But there are also times when a dish is still salvageable.  You just need to change the game plan.

Previously made Pesto Pasta.  Perfection.

Last year, I had an idea to make a pesto dish using broccoli and cauliflower instead of pasta.  A pesto pasta recipe I made a few months prior turned out great and I figured replacing the pasta with broccoli and cauliflower would be simple enough.

I went back to the pasta recipe to remind myself of the ingredients I needed to make the pesto sauce and the basic instructions to make it.  The sauce called for cashews soaked for a few hours, some basil, garlic, lemon juice, grated Parmesan and extra virgin olive oil.

I bought the ingredients and started with soaking the cashews first.  I used more cashews than the pasta recipe called for, thinking I was going to make a large batch of pesto broccoli and cauliflower and therefore needed lots of sauce.

Once the cashews had soaked for a few hours to soften them up, It was time to put them in my food processor and periodically add everything else.  Unfortunately, the mixture was not creating any kind of smooth consistency.  It was becoming more like a ball of dough than anything else.  Adding a little extra olive oil wasn't helping.  I had made the mistake of using too many cashews, and if I wanted to get the mixture smooth, it would have meant adding a lot more olive oil which I didn't want to do.

When my attempt at a Pesto sauce for a Broccoli & Cauliflower dish didn't work, I came up
with Plan B: Operation Salvage.

I stopped the food processor and looked for a minute at what I had.  It looked more like a stuffing you would have with turkey than any kind of sauce.  I decided to give it a taste and it tasted excellent!

I decided that I needed to change my game plan as I had stumbled on to something.  I still had the broccoli and cauliflower, but I also had some grape tomatoes, half a brick of mozzarella and an extra red pepper leftover from the previous days' creation.

I roasted the red pepper, cut the grape tomatoes in half and grated the mozzarella.  I kept some grated mozzarella to the side and put everything else into a large bowl with the cauliflower, broccoli and cashew mixture.  Mixed it all up, put it in a baking tray, topped with the remaining mozzarella and some pepper.  Baked at about 400 degrees for 15 minutes and out came my Cheesy Baked Cauliflower and Broccoli with Pesto Stuffing!

Greatness by accident!

CHEESY BAKED CAULIFLOWER & BROCCOLI with PESTO STUFFING

INGREDIENTS

4 cups of raw natural cashews.

1/4 cup fresh chopped basil.

3-4 cloves of garlic, chopped.

1 Tbsp fresh lemon juice.

2 Tbsp grated parmesan.

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil.

4 cups broccoli florets.

4 cups cauliflower florets.

1 pint grape/cherry tomatoes (about 20 of them), sliced in half.

1 red bell pepper, roasted and chopped.

4 cups grated mozzarella.  Put aside 1 cup for topping.

1 tsp ground black pepper.

INSTRUCTIONS

1.  Soak cashews in water for about 3 hours.

2.  Preheat oven to 400 degrees after the cashews are done soaking.

3.  Mix cashews, basil, chopped garlic, lemon juice and parmesan in a food proccessor while slowly adding the olive oil during the mixing process.  Continue mixing until it has a stuffing texture throughout.  Process will take close to 10 minutes depending on how powerful your proccessor is.

4.  Put stuffing mixture in a large mixing bowl and add the broccoli, cauliflower, tomatoes, roasted red pepper, only THREE cups of the mozzarella and the ground pepper.  Mix and combine in the bowl.

5.  Put the entire mixture into a baking pan line with non-stick cooking spray.  Top with the remaining mozzarella.  Bake for 15 minutes.  Serve.

Chef Nairby