Cauliflower Rice (recipe)

While waiting patiently for my new doctor to show, I sat in the hall outside her locked office reading old magazines filled with recipes for tarts, quiches, cakes, cookies, pasta and pies. Self torture. A recipe for cauliflower rice (or riced cauliflower) caught my eye. I thought of that cauliflower head sitting in my refrigerator rotting for lack of creative motivation and decided this would be a good time to try making this rice substitute.

Evidence of thievery

I also thought it was a good time to rip that page right out of the magazine. YES...Sorry. I'm still a recipe thief. It was an old magazine in a hallway! The magazine was torturing me. Maybe this was a subconscious need to express anger? Frustration? Yeah, I know I don't have any justification for this behavior, but I'm trying. I had been fasting for a blood draw and very hungry. Still no justification...

Unfortunately, the recipe begins at the riced cauliflower ingredient with little directions on how to get it riced. Initially I thought I could just crumble it with my hands, but that wasn't working so well. Cooking never comes easy to me unlike so many. So I did what any modern cook does these days - got online. Two ways to rice one's cauliflower is to grate it or food process it on the grating button. I tend to always opt for the nearest option or the one with less clean-up so I hand grated it. It was a mess with bits of cauliflower bouncing all over the kitchen. I'm still cleaning it up. I think throwing it in a food processor would be the least messy way to go.

Anyway, once it's all grated into fine bits, using paper towels blot off any excess moisture. I guess this is very important because you don't want your cauliflower rice to get soggy which it tends to do.

Here is the basic recipe although I tweaked it for convenience so it barely resembles the magazine's version: Heat a few tablespoons of olive oil in a pot on medium to medium high. Chop up some scallions (yeah, I don't have scallions so I used green onions). Chop up some bits of red pepper (for color). Throw the scallion-onions and pepper bits in the oil and saute for a short time. Put about one teaspoon of salt and some pepper in the bowl of cauliflower, mix, then throw into the pot with the scallion-onions. Cook for about five minutes which is plenty of time to avoid sogginess. Serve.

It was really, really good! I enjoyed the texture. I think one could add all kinds of foods to the recipe for a variety of stir-fry flavors: Thai, Chinese, Mexican, Texas BBQ...

Yum! Breakfast.

In the above photo the Cauliflower Rice accompanies my ground turkey patty. You can see the bigger bits of cauliflower from my attempt to crumble it with my hands, but it all tasted marvelous.