Roasted Cauliflower with Pine Nuts & Tahini Dressing

I was having a few friends over for dinner tonight and my friend Josephine was bringing over a traditional Swedish dinner of herring and caviar to start followed by Salmon and Potato Salad as a main course.

Knowing that I wouldn’t be able to eat the potato salad I decided to create myself a side dish in the same kind of vein and settled on a Roasted Cauliflower with toasted pine nuts and a Tahini Yoghurt Dressing .

To start with I chopped the cauliflower into small florets and then laid them out on a baking tray, coating them in oil and salt and pepper.  I put them into the oven at 180C for 30 mins until they were slightly browned and crispy at the edges.

Meanwhile I made the Tahini Yoghurt Sauce.  I mixed the Tahini (which is the equivalent of a nut-butter but made with sesame seeds), Lemon Juice and Olive Oil together in a bowl and seasoned well with pepper.  Then I added the clove of garlic and stirred the yogurt through, making sure there were no lumps.  Then I thinned the whole dressing out with a tbsp of water so it was easier to drizzle.

I toasted the pine nuts in a frying pan until they had browned slightly and then everything was ready to put together.  I stirred the Tahini Yoghurt dressing through the cauliflower, seasoned with pepper and topped the whole thing with the pine nuts and it was ready to go.

The cauliflower tasted amazing – much nicer than a potato salad.  I loved the richness of the tahini sauce along with the roasted smoky flavour of the cauliflower and the crunch of the pine nuts.  It’s almost as good as a cauliflower cheese (but not quite) and a similar consistency.  It tasted like proper stodgy comfort food.  This might have been because I dressed it as the cauliflower was still warm as dinner was ready and I couldn’t wait! If I’d waited until the cauliflower had cooled before adding the dressing, it may have not gone so gloopy and looked a bit more refined (hence me not being able to get any pretty pictures of it – they all look a bit amateur!)  Alternatively you could serve it without the dressing and use it as a dipping sauce instead.

The herring was delicious, and went so well with the caviar and sour cream mix that she’d made and the cauliflower dish went very well next to the poached salmon!  I also served my Kale, Roasted Broccoli & Toasted Almond Salad with Lemon Dressing which was a huge hit.  A very light dinner all round but so full of flavour!