This cumin roasted cauliflower & tahini soup is velvety creamy with caramelised onions and hints of hummus.
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In what is surely an ironic coincidence, this years Qingming Festival coincided with the Easter weekend.
Qingming? That’ll be the annual Tomb Sweeping Festival which happens on either the 4th or 5th of April every year.
Having no ancestral graves to sweep, but wanting to take advantage of the holiday on Monday, we had plans to cycle down Fuxing Lu, catch the ferry over to Pudong and explore the Dark Side for a couple of hours.
But obviously with it being a Bank Holiday and all, it would be too much to expect the sun to make an appearance and instead we had torrential downpours every single day for four days and the most impressive thunder and lightening shows just about every evening.
Elsewhere in the Middle Kingdom this weekend, with the chocolate and treats embargo still in place, there was no Easter Egg hunting to be done.
After being accused again last week of enabling the ‘problem’ there was nothing in the fridge chocolate wise apart from a couple of bars of Lindt dark chocolate bought specifically for cooking purposes. Not for eating.
You can only imagine my surprise {not…..} when I opened the fridge on Sunday and something shiny caught my eye. Yes, it was the torn packaging.
The huge bowl of grapes, the sweet raspberries, juicy blackberries and lush strawberries? Totally ignored.
Willpower, where for art thou?
I on the other hand, have no control around tahini. So in all honesty, I shouldn’t be throwing stones….
It’s still warm soup weather here. All the high hopes of warm spring days and my promises of salads coming your way have been dashed by the rain and drop in temperatures back to the low 10s.
This rain had better stop before the rainy season starts or else there’ll be trouble. Already the prediction is for a hotter summer than 2013 – and that one was the hottest on record. Ever. Eeeeekkk.
So back to my glasshouse.
Toasty cumin.
Roasted Cauliflower.
Sweet roasted garlic cloves.
Caramelised onions.
Tahini.
Lemon.
All together in a bowl. Think warm humus soup with a drizzle of olive oil and a sprinkle of pan roasted cumin seeds.
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Cumin roasted cauliflower & tahini soup
A velvety smooth soup with hints of humus.
Prep Time 15 minutes
Cook Time 30 minutes
Total Time 45 minutes
Ingredients
For the oven
-
0.5
kg
cauliflower cut into small florets {1 small head of cauliflower} -
2
tsp
olive oil -
2
tsp
cumin seeds -
6
garlic cloves
skin on - few good grinds of salt & pepper
For the saucepan
-
1
tbsp
olive oil -
1
large onion
roughly chopped -
500
ml
vegetable or chicken stock -
1/4
cup
tahini - juice from 2 lemons
Garnish
-
1
tbsp
olive oil -
1
tsp
cumin seeds - zest from 2 lemons
Instructions
-
Preheat the oven to 180C. In a bowl, toss together all the ingredients ‘for the oven’, spread out onto a tray lined with baking paper and roast for around 25mins until the cauliflower is started to look toasted.
-
Meanwhile, heat the olive oil over a medium heat and sweat the onions until they almost caramelise – approx 15 mins. Keep stirring so they don’t stick on the bottom.
-
Add the contents of the roasting tray {Note 1} along with the stock and bring to a gentle simmer. Cook for a further 10-15 minutes until the cauliflower is really soft, but not mushy.
-
Remove from the heat and let it cool before adding the tahini and then puree with a stick blender or in a food processor until very smooth.
-
Add the lemon juice slowly and taste as you go along – you may want more tahini, or less lemon.{Note 2}
-
Garnish Heat olive oil and cumin seeds over a gentle heat until the seeds start to smell toasted and they are sizzling. Drizzle over the soup bowls and add lemon zest for garnish.
Recipe Notes
{Note 1} You can squeeze the garlic cloves out of the skin into the saucepan or process skin and all – up to you.
{Note 2} The tahini will thicken the soup up as it cools down so if you want more of a pronounced tahini flavour you may have to add extra water or stock.
There are a couple of paths I’ll take next time with this one:
- Roast onion wedges with the cauliflower florets for a sweeter end result
- Add chilli – in fact roast a whole chilli with the cauliflower
How was your long weekend break? Did you sweep any cobwebs away?
