Buffalo Cauliflower

Our new pet, Roomba, is noisily but dutifully roaming the house right now. Talk about a quality-of-life improvement. I am constantly in awe of how much cat hair this little robot picks up, even after we’ve cleaned. If robots end up taking over the world, I’ll be ok with it as long as its Roomba.

Sadly, our other pets – the ones producing said cat hair – have not taken to Roomba. It’s not exactly an antagonistic relationship, but it’s not the riding-on-Roomba one I was hoping for. Alf will not be playing DJ Roomba anytime soon, unfortunately.

In other random musings… how did I not know that Ace of Base released more than a single – mind-blowing, but single (or so I thought) – album? I think we all remember our very first compact disc, and mine, my friends, was Ace of Base, The Sign. With the recent release of The Sign – Remastered, I was looking through the entire (huge!) Ace of Base collection on Rdio. Wow. It all sucks besides The Sign, by the way, but I still dig that album.

Ok, food now, yes? As many of you probably know – mostly because Eric loves talking about it – I gave up vegetarianism a few years ago in a weak, influenced-by-alcohol moment after twelve years of strict non-meat eating. Eric loves this story because his beloved Jim’s chicken finger sub broke me. So it’s pretty clear by now that the sweet sweet vinegary hot flavors of Frank’s Red Hot and blue cheese have some sort of ungodly force over me. But Frank’s Red Hot combined with shit tons of roasted garlic? It’s crack, I tell you. Crack.

And that’s how we eat our veggies around here, folks. Crack-laced veggies.

Buffalo Cauliflower

inspired by Lottie + Doof

1 whole cauliflower
1 whole head of garlic, roasted
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 cup Frank’s Red Hot
2-3 tablespoons blue cheese, crumbled
2-3 tablespoons peanuts, roasted and chopped

Preheat the oven to 400. Trim the cauliflower of any leaves and cut in half. Place on a parchment-lined baking sheet and coat it with oil. You can throw the head of garlic on the same baking pan. Roast the garlic until it is soft inside the papery skins (approximately 20 minutes, depending on the size of the cloves). When the garlic is soft, remove from the oven and set aside to cool. Continue to roast the cauliflower until crispy brown on the outside, approximately 40 minutes.

Once cooled, remove the soft garlic cloves from the skins and mash into a paste using a mortar and pestle. Add a touch of olive oil to keep it from sticking. Add the Frank’s Red Hot and combine until smooth.

To serve, crumble the blue cheese over the roasted cauliflower. Smother with the Frank’s sauce and top with peanuts.