Karaage cauliflower (with plenty of garlic)
This is a new favourite. It doesn't take too long, and it's crispy, kinda rich, and implausibly moreish for what was once thought of as a deeply dull vegetable.
For years, the British have cooked cauliflower like it was the one vegetable they'd singled out as an example to the others. All flavour and structure boiled away, it was presented like a warning, lest anything else should get ideas above its station - say, providing vitamins, or tasting of something beyond anemically coloured water.
Lately, we've at least realised it doesn't have to be that way. You can have fun with cauliflower, and one of the fun things you can do is to fry it crispy with just so much garlic.
Karaage is familiar to many as “Japanese fried chicken”, but it absolutely doesn't have to be poultry, or even meat. I think the crux of it is a simple marinade before frying, and a light flour coating rather than dunking in batter. It's a great appetiser or bar snack, and the idea to do it with cauliflower is shamelessly pinched from one of Cambridge's street food vendors, the excellent Guerilla Kitchen.
Eat it there if you catch it on their rotation, but if not, well, you have to try this one.
Ingredients:
Cauliflower, 1 large - about 700g
Plain flour, 60g
Potato flour, 60g
Ginger, about a 2cm slice
Garlic, 4-6 cloves*
Soy sauce (light), 2tbsp
Shaoxing (or sherry), 1tbsp
Cider vinegar, 1tsp
Sesame oil, 1tsp
Sugar, 1tsp
Salt, about 1/2tsp
White pepper, 1/2tsp
Sichuan pepper, 1/2tsp
*Obviously about 8
This will do as a starter/side for 3-4 or a decent main for 2. Use cornflour or rice flour if you can't get potato flour, but do try to get potato - it makes it extra crunchy.
Some recipes use a rice flour & cornflour blend, and no plain wheat flour.
Instructions:
Break the cauliflower into medium florets, and blanch them in boiling water until just tender to a knife point. This takes about 2 minutes, maybe 3 if the pieces are large. Drain the cauliflower and immediately plunge it into cold water to prevent further cooking. Let it cool, then drain thoroughly.
In a blender or using a pestle and mortar, blend the garlic, ginger, Sichuan pepper sugar, and liquid ingredients. That's the marinade.
Combine the flours, salt an white pepper in a bowl. That’s the dredge.
Mix the drained cauliflower thoroughly into the marinade, and leave it for an hour if you can. It’s not a disaster if you can only give it a few minutes. Stir periodically to ensure a good coating. This isn’t not a lot of liquid volume, so it's a cling-and-coat affair rather than a big gooey immersion.
Cauliflower karaage
To cook, get a deep fat fryer (or giant pot of oil on the stove, if you're rocking less anxiety than me) up to around 180c
You'll need to fry the cauliflower in batches, probably 3 or 4. Although obviously this depends on the size of your cauliflower and frying setup, etc etc.
For each batch, dredge the cauliflower through the flour mix until it’s got a good coating, and gently lower it into the hot oil.
Fry each batch of the cauliflower for 2-3 minutes, being sure not to overcrowd the fryer. We're looking for a dark-ish colour but nothing crazy brown, and plenty of crisp.
Remove each batch to drain - they should keep warm ok on their own. I've used a wire rack, and I've used kitchen paper - neither seems particularly better than the other.
Rather than dredging, you can mix the flour into the marinade and do this as a super thick batter, but I’m not sure it saves you much hassle or gains you much texture. It does get more of the garlic into your mouth. Just saying.
These make a fantastic appetiser, and we've actually built a meal around them, just putting them with rice and some fried lettuce with salt and pepper. A wedge of lemon doesn't hurt on the side, or maybe a tart dip, something with tamarind, perhaps? Frankly, my preference for these succulent, feisty little brassicas is “just give me a giant bucket of the fuckers, and a cold beer”.
The garlic and ginger go wonderfully with that slight astringency of the cauliflower, and that shaoxing/soy thing in the marinade gives the batter a really distinctive flavour, bringing out the rich savoury. I just inhale these.