Warm Cauliflower Salad with Sweet Potato Purée

Warm cauliflower salad with Sweet Potato puree, will bring healthy fresh vegetables to your meal table in a delicious and attractive way. Cauliflower loves to be the hero of the dish and combined with sweet potato, feta cheese, chickpeas, red onion and zesty Middle Eastern spices is a meal in itself. We all need to be eating more veges.

I've eaten this delicious dish when we dined at our friend's house, we both subscribe to the AWW magazine which it was published in, and I've since made it for Mr. HRK and me, and collected a few tips and tricks about it along the way. I'll talk about those in my Cooking notes below the recipe.

This recipe is from "The Good Farm Cookbook", written by Scott Gooding and Matilda Brown, and published by Murdoch Books. It was also featured in the Australian Women's Weekly. Scott Gooding is a cook and food advocate and Matilda, daughter of Australian Actress Rachel Ward and Actor Bryan Brown, is a former writer and actress, and an advocate with Scott for regenerative agriculture. They describe their recipes as food with heart and soul. I'm all for that. I'm looking forward to trying some more of their food.

Ingredients:

Serves 8 as a side

1-1.2 kg sweet potatoes, peeled and roughly chopped

1 head cauliflower, stalk and leaves removed, cut into small florets

3 large red onions, peeled and segmented

4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 tablespoon ground cumin, plus 1 teaspoon extra 

1 tablespoon za'atar

1 tablespoon butter

400g tin chickpeas, drained and rinsed

1/4 bunch mint leaves, to serve

1 bunch parsley leaves, to serve

150g feta cheese, to serve

DRESSING

1/2 cup (130g) plain Greek yoghurt

juice of 1 lemon

1/4 cup (15g) chopped dill

1/2 teaspoon sumac

Method:

Preheat your oven to 190 deg. C (170 deg. C fan-forced). 

Bring the sweet potatoes to the boil in a large saucepan of salted water. Cook them for about 30 minutes, until they are just softened, but not falling apart, then drain them and place them in the bowl of your food processor or blender.

Add the following to your roasting tin:

Cauliflower, red onion, 3 tablespoons of the olive oil, cumin and za'atar and lightly toss. Lightly season and roast in the oven until the cauliflower is nicely browned. This should take about 30-35 minutes. Remove the contents from your baking pan and set aside.

Dressing:

Combine all of the dressing ingredients in a bowl and season to your taste. 

Blitz the Sweet Potato:

To the Sweet Potato in the food processor, add the remaining olive oil (1 tablespoon), softened butter, and extra teaspoon of cumin, and blitz to a smooth purée. Season to your taste, only if needed, then spread the puree over a large serving plate.

Assembly of your salad:

In a large mixing bowl, gently combine the roasted cauliflower and red onion, with the drained chickpeas, and the yoghurt dressing. Arrange this mixture on top of the Sweet Potato Purée and sprinkle the fresh herbs and feta on top.

Season with a grinding of black pepper and serve.

Combining the delicious yoghurt dressing with the vegetables

Cooking notes:

• To save time, the Sweet Potato element of this dish can be prepared the day before. Just reheat it gently, before spreading over your serving dish. I suggest you do this if you know you will be challenged by time on the day of making your meal, as there are a few steps to the preparation of this dish.
• Za'atar can be a tricky spice to find, however most Indian supermarkets or gourmet delis should stock it. If you can't find it, you can use sumac instead. However I encourage you to find za'atar if you can for the wonderful Middle Eastern flavours and oomph it brings to this dish.
• Make your own za'atar if you feel inspired, there are plenty of recipes available online. It is a unique blend of earthy, herbal, savoury, salty and tangy flavours, perfect for a cauliflower dish. When I finish my za'atar container I'll be making some more. 
• Lots of fresh herbs are a must for flavour and the presentation of this dish. On it's own, the dish doesn't have a lot of colour, but that is easily remedied. I love the mint combined with the parsley in this dish. Everyone can eat with their eyes, before eating the real thing.
• This salad is a wonderful vegetable side dish to serve for a dinner party, however it also reheats well as leftovers. We ate it over a few days to accompany everything else I cooked. The flavours of the sweet potato even improved over that time.
• This will be a perfect dish for a meat-free Monday evening meal. Yikes, it's Monday tomorrow already. Hope your all have a great week.

Warm wishes,

Pauline