Cauliflower is always best served cooked rather than raw, and my favorite has been roasted cauliflower. I normally roast it with some olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic and Parmesan cheese but when visiting a local Middle Eastern restaurant I was inspired by their version of cauliflower served with tahini sauce and sprinkled with ruby red pomegranate seeds and pomegranate molasses. Their cauliflower dish tasted very different from what I was accustomed to, yet so delicious that I got determined to recreate it at home. Jumping a little bit ahead, let me tell you how my roasted cauliflower turned out. In one word – delicious! The nutty, creamy tahini sauce really complemented the toasty, crunchy texture of cauliflower. The sweet and tart taste of pomegranate molasses added a new dimension and brought balance to the dish. The crunch from pomegranate seeds was a great addition as well, it was almost like eating a salad with crunchy croutons in it. It really is hard to mess up this dish, unless you overcook the cauliflower or screw up the tahini sauce. I will definitely be making this dish again, for snacks and as an accompaniment to main dishes.
Roasted cauliflower ingredients
A little bit of asking about what goes in their tahini sauce and some questions about the dish – they were quite reluctant to share their secrets – yielded a general idea and I was well on my way to replicate it.
Another trick is high temperature. I could never get my cauliflower crispy and caramelized enough at 375F, which many recipes recommend. At 425F on the other hand, I always get great results. That’s the temperature that I used in this recipe as well.
