Move over, kale: there’s a new food fad out there and, believe it or not, it’s even more boring than you. Yes, kale, it’s time to relinquish the healthy-eating crown to your awkward and anaemic cousin, cauliflower.
Cauliflower is the new game in town when it comes to health-food trends, popping up in place of everything from pizza crust to chicken wings. The popular food blog Recipe Girl touts the cauliflower crust as “the greatest invention ever.” Just leave it to the gluten/dairy/flavour-free set to turn something as deliciously indulgent as pizza into salad on a crumbled cauliflower plate. And the idea of battering then saucing a cauliflower floret and serving it up as a chicken wing can only have come from the most sinister of vegetarian tricksters.
Even our fast food isn’t safe from cauliflower’s influence, with Kraft introducing cauliflower macaroni in their classic mac-and-cheese meal in a box. When even Kraft Dinner is compromised, it leaves one wondering: is nothing sacred?
Somehow I get the feeling that this is just some ruse being perpetrated by The Cauliflower Producers of North America (if such an evil entity were to exist) and passed off as the next big trend to the hordes of faddish foodies, hungry for an alternative. What other explanation can there be for the sudden popularity of the world’s most boring vegetable? When did cauliflower become something more than a pale, flavourless imitation of broccoli?
Pretty soon we’ll be seeing bottles of cauliflower tonic stocked on shelves aside the kombucha. There will be cauliflower essence in our shampoo and cauliflower oil in our salad dressing. That is, until something else comes along that’s even more devoid of taste.
What is tasty, though, and a heck of a lot more colourful, is squash. Now that fall is here in full swing, the blogosphere is simply brimming with recipes that make use of the many varieties of gourd, pumpkin included. Stuff it, roast it, make it into soup: the options for squash are seemingly endless.
As a kid, I would look on my mother’s cinnamon- and butter-laden acorn squash with disgust, but I have since come to my senses. How could one not be enamoured with the sun-coloured flesh and the snackable seeds of the noble squash? It boasts a flavour that’s magic in a risotto and irreplaceable in a pie.
And, yeah, it’s healthy, but, unlike cauliflower, it also happens to be delicious. Even the name “squash” feels good in your mouth.