Couscous! The food so nice, they named it twice. Except this isn’t couscous. It’s cauliflower in a funny little disguise. From first glances this looks like a lovely grain salad with some chopped herbs, a bit of seasonal fruit and a sunny yellow curry dressing. But up close it’s a jumble of the teeniest cauliflower florets you could ever imagine mixed up with all of those great things. Neat, huh? I actually love eating cauliflower this way, it’s nice and crisp and kind of tricks me into eating more crucifers, the health all star of the veg world. Typically I roast it, but this dish is just too much fun
September is always a patchwork of undeniably summery days and cool, crisp fall previews around here. My schedule has been kind of wonky and irregular and we’ve been trying to soak up every last bit of enjoyable outdoor time. All of it has been having some unfortunate effects on my food habits. Skipping meals, nibbling on white bread here and there, indulging in sweet things, more coffee than I can usually handle, wine! and on and on. I’m not beating myself up for it at all. I’ve definitely been enjoying it but! I feel like some predictability is in order for my day to day lately.
So! Getting back down to it. I’ve adequately prepared myself in the food department. Lots of veggies, big bowls of grains, batches of soup and even bigger helpings of this non-grain-but-sort-of-grain-like salad in the fridge.
Cauliflower “Couscous” Salad
Ingredients
Vinaigrette
- 1 tablespoon curry powder
- ¼ cup white wine vinegar
- 1 ½ tablespoons agave nectar
- sea salt and ground black pepper, to taste
- ⅓ cup olive oil
Salad
- 1 small head cauliflower, leaves and core trimmed away
- 2 green onions, white and green parts sliced thin
- 3 sprigs of parsley, leaves chopped fine
- 1 sprig of mint, leaves chopped fine
- 1 small apple, small dice
- 1 cup grapes, halved
- 1 ½ tablespoons poppy seeds
- 1 teaspoon garam masala
- sea salt and ground black pepper, to taste
Notes
- I just break the florets up by hand and rough chop them, but if you trim most of the stem off, you could probably just blitz them in the food processor and get the same effect.
- Garam masala is in the salad ingredients because it is traditionally used as a finishing spice.
Instructions
- Make the vinaigrette: place the curry powder, white wine vinegar, agave nectar salt and pepper in a blender. Blend that up for two seconds just to dissolve the salt. Add the olive oil all at once. Turn the blender on again to combine everything into one homogenous mixture. Set aside.
- Make the cauliflower couscous: break the cauliflower into florets. Trim off as much of the stem as you can. Break up the florets as small as you can and chop roughly to make pieces as uniformly sized as possible. Place into a large bowl. Alternatively, you could use the food processor method described above.
- Add the vinaigrette, green onions, parsley, mint, apple, grapes, poppy seeds and garam masala to the cauliflower. Toss to combine. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve and enjoy!
We just made this for dinner and it was so delicious! This was our third try with cauliflower couscous and we’ve loved it each time! I really liked the grapes and garam masala here, what a delicious flavor fusion. Thank you so much for the recipe <3
Ella
youtube.com/sparklesandsuch26
P.S. I have a recipe on my youtube channel (above) for no bake & almost vegan peanut butter energy bars that I think you would really enjoy. Just thought I'd let you know! They're really delicious and super easy :) Have a great day!
Made this salad for dinner- it was very tasty! Thanks for the recipe! Didn’t have a few of the ingredients on hand so just worked with what I had, turned out great!
I made it yesterday and I love it! It’s so yummy. However, I didn’t like the taste of grapes in the salad (everybody has their own taste ;) ) but so far this is my favourite recepie and I don’t longer miss cooked curry because of your salad ^^ thank you <3
Just made this tonight and it is oh-so-delicious! The spices, herbs and fruit make for a great combination. Thank you!!
looks truly amazing!
Made this tonight! SO good.. I replaced with Red Wine vinegar because I was out of white. Yummy! Will post to my website soon, with a link to yours!
I love your recipes BTW, totally in the style of mine! Would you like to be on my blogroll, Because i’d love to have you there! Let me know!
The combination is exotic and not overpowering one another. Genius combination!
Please tell me what garam masala is and where can I find it in the grocery store?
It’s an Indian spice blend! You can buy it in the spice aisle or in the spice section of some bulk food stores. Or you can make your own too! This recipe seems promising: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/easy-garam-masala/detail.aspx