023/18 – Cauliflower Shawarma:
Some time ago I saw pictures of a great Cauliflower Shawarma dish by Berber and Q. Recently Tim (@silverbackgrill) cooked it and shared the recipe with me, it’s been on my list for a while now and I finally got round to cooking it. Really glad that I did too!
The Prep:
I trimmed the cauliflower taking the outer leaves off and also some of the stalk, I should have left the stalk as some of the florets came off when I was cooking it. The cauli was cooked in boiling, salted water for 10 minutes. Whilst it was cooking I made the tahini sauce/paste with tahini, lemon juice, garlic and salt. I then made a Shawarma spice mix with butter, cinnamon, sumac, cumin, allspice, nutmeg and caradamom. The shawarma butter/spice mix was rubbed into the cauliflower on all sides.
A full chimney of Oxford Charcoal Sweet Chestnut Lumpwood was poured over the base of the Weber Kettle then left for 10 minutes to settle before I added a chunk of Oak from Smokewood Shack.
The Cook:
The Cauli was placed on the grill, I put the base facing down to start with so I could gauge how hot the fire was! The recipe says to move it around frequently, blacken the cauli and keep adding more of the butter mix through the cook.
I cooked it direct over the heat throughout.
Time to Eat:
With the Cauli sufficiently blackened I took it off the grill
Now, the interesting part! Tahini sauce, pomegranate molasses, rose petals, pine nuts, chopped parsley and pomegranate seeds on top of the cauli followed by a bit of rapeseed oil.
Pretty hard to get the presentation right with so many items but I did my best!
I added the broken florets to the front of the big cauli and dressed them too.
Summary:
Really surprised by this dish. Must be about 150 blog posts in now and I believe this is the first veg dish I have cooked which is a bit embarrassing. The combination of flavours was fantastic, we both really enjoyed it and I felt full up afterwards. The pomegranate molasses stood out, always nice to use that in a dish.
Overall, a cracking dish and one I will be cooking more often. Just need to find more equally good veg dishes and I will cook some more!
| Cook Difficulty: | 1/5 |
| Cook Duration: | Quick: 1/5 |
| Cook Equipment: | Weber Kettle |
| Cook Method: | Direct |
| Charcoal: | Oxford Charcoal Sweet Chestnut |
| Smoking Wood: | Smokewood Shack Oak |
| Cook temperature: | 250c |
| Cook time: | 10 minutes |
| Internal temperature: | N/A |
| Notes: | Work on my presentation next time! |