Things I ate today: Cauliflower Cake

The thing: A piece of YotamOttolenghi’s Cauliflower Cake, cooked by me for dinner last night. Today’s lunch is composed, therefore of leftovers.

Appearance: Resembling nothing so much as a fat savoury muffin or scone (I did bake most of the batter as it appears in the pic above, in a cake tin, but I had too much so the rest went into ramekins), this cauliflower cake looks delicious: solid, slightly crispy on the outside and generally extremely munchable.

Taste: Yotam assured me in his cookbook, Plenty More,that the cake would be even better the next day and I’ve got to say ol’ Yotes did not tell a lie. I love me a bit of cold stodge – cold roast potatoes, for example, are so very much my jam – and this cake really delivers on that front. I have nothing against potato (what kind of madman would?) but I feel a bit virtuous eating something like that really tastes like a potato cake but contains cauliflower instead. My only criticism, and it’s a minor one, is that it might tend towards the bland if you ate too much of it. I address this problem by alternating with bites of my beetroot salad but a blob of chutney would also go down a treat. This may strike some as wrong but I’d also love to slice it up very finely and throw it in a toasted sandwich with some swiss cheese. Mmmmm double stodge. Also Andy insists next time I have to bake it in a loaf tin so he can call it cauliflower log because he's super weird so, uh, that might happen.

The verdict: A future staple. This cake took kind of a long time to make last night, in part because it was the first time I’d made it so I had to keep referring back to the recipe. But even assuming I couldn’t reduce that preparation/baking time it’s a worthy addition to my recipe roster because it makes heaps and tastes a treat the next day. Ask me how I feel at the end of the week but if I had a slice of this puppy in my lunchbox every day I’d be a happy chappy.

Note: For anyone who cares the version of Yotam's recipe linked to above is actually slightly different to the version in his cookbook. Essentially there's just more of it: the book version uses 75ml of olive oil, 7 eggs, 150g parmesan cheese, 120g flour, 1.5 tsp baking powder and either one small cauliflower or (in my case) about three-quarters of a medium-sized one. The rest remains the same. But really you should just buy the book, cheapskate.