Saturday, October 24, 2020

Asiago Mashed Cauliflower: A Birthday Side Dish Fit for a Steak

 


My birthday was this month, and due to the awfulness of Covid-19 I stayed home and celebrated alone.  It was a pretty big bummer, especially for such a milestone year.  But in an effort to not be so down about it, I decided to make myself a nice dinner.  Step one was looking up "best side dishes with steak recipes."

This is the first of the two new recipes I picked: asiago mashed cauliflower.  Super simple--made even easier by cutting out the "use a food processor" step, since I don't have one--and absolutely tasty in the end.  The leftovers were good both warm and cold, by the way. 

Ingredients:

  • One head of raw cauliflower
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 4 oz. cream cheese (I actually used 1/3 reduced fat Philadelphia Neufchâtel cheese.)
  • 1/2 cup asiago cheese, shredded
  • 2 Tbsp. butter
  • 1/4 tsp black pepper (or more if to your taste)
  • 1/2 tsp salt (or more if to your taste) 
  • Optional parsley, or whatever 

[The original recipe called for parsley, but I didn't have any.  And while I didn't miss that in the final product, I did throw in a few dashes of Penzey's Roasted Garlic.  It was a great addition, but I wouldn't recommend regular or raw garlic, as that might overpower the cheesy-ness.] 

Directions:

  1. Clean and rinse cauliflower
  2. Chop into smaller pieces, cutting out any really thick stalk bits (I probably had 6 to 8 big-ish chunks.  Nothing smaller than 1.5 inches for sure)
  3. Place cauliflower and salt in large pan/pot and add water until  it covers the veggies
  4. Bring to a boil and cook until very tender--12 to 15 minutes
  5. Drain and then cool slightly
  6. Add cream cheese, asiago, butter, pepper, salt, and whatever other optional herbs/spices you want to add
  7. Mash and stir everything all together.  I used a big whisk and that worked great!  

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