If you want to get me flowers for Valentine’s Day, I like irises and hydrangeas. Bonus points if they’re purple.
Active time:10 mins
Total time:Total time: 10 mins, plus 4 days to pickle
Servings:8 to 10
If you know me at all, you probably already know there’s one “flower” that I don’t want to have anything to do with, whether it’s a gift or not.
Cauliflower.
In this season of professions of love, I offer mine in a way that may seem incongruous to the sentiment. See, there is one thing I really love about cauliflower: I love how much I hate cauliflower. Even if it’s purple.
Scale and get a printer-friendly version of the pickled cauliflower recipe here.
I’m a pretty mild-mannered guy, but I embrace my long-held disdain for this brash brassica. If you told me I could live to 100 by eating cauliflower every day, I’d ask why I would want to live to 100 if I had to eat cauliflower every day.
Depending on whom and when you ask, and how much weight you give such proclamations, cauliflower has overtaken kale as the most trendy (read: overwrought) item at the farmers market. But I think it cheated. It’s always trying to be something it’s not.
I rolled my eyes the first time I saw cauliflower “steak” on a menu. When I saw cauliflower “rice” in the store, I felt betrayed on behalf of my favored carb. I saw a pizza with a cauliflower “crust” and considered starting a movement to ban quotation marks from all foodstuff. Then there was the day I saw cauliflower “tots” in the grocery freezer. I can’t talk about that day yet. It’s just too soon.
Credit where it’s due, though: Cauliflower clearly knows no one wants to eat it on its own terms. Pretty smart. I guess it’s not an accident that it looks like brains.
Even the name is a lie. It’s not a flower, and it smells nothing like any flower you would actually give someone you cared about. You know how you can tell someone nearby is having cauliflower? Take a sniff. There’s no hiding it. If someone was eating cauliflower near a gas leak, people would die before anyone realized they were in danger.
But I’d be safe, because I would’ve seen the cauliflower and been out the door.
A lot of vegetables have the unfortunate side effect of causing gas. You can “heart” cauliflower all you want, but that story ends with you doing something that merely rhymes with heart.
As a matter of full disclosure: I actually kind of like pickled cauliflower. Why do I find that acceptable when the myriad other options are so, so terrible? Because it has been soaked in acid. That’s literally what it takes to make it edible.
Whoops. Excuse me. See? I think I just hearted cauliflower.
Ingredients
- 1 small head cauliflower (about 1 1/2 pounds)
- 1 1/2 cups water, or more as needed
- 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
- 1 tablespoon kosher salt
- 1 cup white wine vinegar
- 1 tablespoon ground turmeric
- 12 green cardamom pods
- 2 tablespoons coriander seed
- 2 Fresno chile peppers, stemmed, seeded and cut into long strips or rings (may substitute jalapeño, preferably red)
Step 1
Break the cauliflower apart, and cut away and discard any stems. Cut the larger florets into small ones, about 3/4 inch; you should end up with about 4 loosely packed cups (about 12 ounces).
Step 2
In a small saucepan over medium heat, combine the water with sugar and salt, stirring just until both dissolve. Remove from the heat and stir in the vinegar and turmeric.
Step 3
Divide the cardamom and coriander equally between two 1-pint jars. Fill each jar about halfway with the florets, then divide the chiles between the jars and fill with the remaining florets.
Step 4
Stir the turmeric brine and pour it into the jars, filling them to submerge the florets. You should have enough brine, but if you don’t, you can top the jars off with more water to cover. Let the brine cool to room temperature, screw on the lids, and refrigerate the jars for at least 4 days before serving.
Correction: The recipe did not originally note the size to the jars. The florets should fit in two 1-pint jars.
Nutrition Information
Ingredients are too variable for a meaningful analysis.
Recipe from staff writer Jim Webster.
Tested by Jim Webster; email questions to voraciously@washpost.com.
Did you make this recipe? Take a photo and tag us on Instagram with #eatvoraciously.
Browse our Recipe Finder for more than 9,200 Post-tested recipes at washingtonpost.com/recipes.
More cauliflower recipes from Voraciously:
Request for Reader Submission