Miso Roasted Cauliflower Bowl: Vegan MoFo

A few weeks back I was surprised to find out how dependent I am on our wifi.  We got up one morning and found that our modem was not working.  The blue light just wasn't there.  I was quite grateful for the internet on my phone.  It meant I could check on recipes on my blog for ideas for dinner.  I really like searching back through my blog to find notes on what I did previously.  So this Miso Roasted Cauliflower Bowl, like so many recipes on my blog, is a reworking of old ideas.

Perhaps it was the lack of internet that meant I had time to focus on roasting the large head of cauliflower that had sat around for days of good intentions.  Or perhaps it was just that I was procrastinating.  Mere hours after finding the wifi had died, I took it to the computer shop, only to find there was no resuscitation.  I walked out of the shop with a new modem.  But when I got home it sat in the bag until I had time to deal with it that evening.

To be fair, by the time I came home with the modem, I didn't have time to focus on it.  Though it meant I couldn't do banking or look up phone numbers or download documents or blog and all the other things I no longer can do without being online.  And in retrospect I am glad I didn't try and hook up the modem.  I took quite a while in the quiet of the evening to look at what needed to be done, totally fail and end up on a chat line finding out how to do it.  The following night I got onto another chat to hook up our Google Chrome Cast so we can watch shows off the internet on our telly.  The printer wifi connection is still waiting the attention it needs. 

Fortunately the miso roasted cauliflower was far more satisfying to roast (other than burning my arm on the roasting dish while on the phone).  It came out of the oven and was sooooo good I just wanted to sit and eat it rather than rushing off to take Sylvia to swimming lessons.  It was inspired by this miso roasted pumpkin.

The pumpkin sauce in the bowl was a bit of a serendipitous creation.  I had some leftover pumpkin and lentil soup.  I mixed it in my high powered blender with some raw cashews, a spoonful of leftover gravy and a spoonful of Asian marinade.  It was rather good, though it needed a little more seasoning.  I later blended it with some cashew cream for a vegetable tart.  It was the sort of day when I didn't have time for anything but easy recipes so I could focus on making sure I could get my meal on the internet.  As a self-professed luddite, now that I can share this recipe online I think: thank goodness for wifi.

More pretty bowl food on Green Gourmet Giraffe:
Asian rice bowl (gf, v)
Avocado black bean bowl (gf, v)
Carrot almond sauce bowl (gf, v)
Creamy red pepper dressing bowl (gf, v)
Watermelon poke salad bowl with pickled radishes (gf, v)

Miso roasted cauliflower
An original Green Gourmet Giraffe recipe

1 large head of cauliflower

Miso sauce:
3 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp white miso
1 tbsp ponzu sauce
2 tsp maple syrup
1/4 tsp sesame oil
1/4 tsp chilli paste

Cut cauliflower into about 1/2 cm slices.  Mix miso sauce ingredients.  Toss cauliflower slices with miso sauce in 2 large roasting dishes to give them room to crisp on the edges. Roast at 220 C for about 1 hour.  Check every 20 minutes to check if it cooks earlier.

Serving suggestion: Serve with brown rice, brown lentils, chopped red capsicum, rocket and pumpkin sauce.

NOTES: I roasted my cauliflower for 1 hour 20 minutes but it was a bit charred in the top shelf but perfect on the middle shelf so I think 1 hour would be enough.  If you don't have ponzu, you could substitute 1 tsp each of mirin, soy sauce and lemon juice/vinegar.

On the stereo:
Cafe de Paris - 50 French Classics - Les Annees CafConc - Various Artists

This post is part of the Vegan Month of Food (Vegan MoFo) in September 2018.  Go to my Vegan MoFo list for more of my 2018 Vegan MoFo posts.