Toil and Trouble Soup (Roasted Potato Cauliflower Soup)

Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble...Hello my little pretties...It's time to get ready for All Hallows Eve. We've waited all year and the time is finally upon us, so fire up your cauldrons and get ready to fill up the kiddies with this mysteriously delicious Toil and Trouble Soup. Don't let the name scare you. You won't be stuck stirring your cauldron all day, it comes together as easily as a wave of your wand. Gorgeous roasted violet cauliflower and two kinds of purple potatoes are blended with sauteed onions, white carrots, garlic and fennel to make a satisfying and beautifully festive Halloween Meal. It's sure to keep the kids warm as they venture out for a night of trick-or-treating. Serve it all by itself or with BLT sandwiches.  I topped my soup with crispy homemade potato chips, sour cream and chives, but feel free add cheddar cheese and bacon bits, just like a loaded Baked Potato Soup.  Enjoy!
                             🎃🎃🎃 6 days until Halloween  🎃🎃🎃

Toil and Trouble Soup (Roasted Potato Cauliflower Soup)

Adapted recipe from wifemamafoodie.com
Serves 4-6

2 purple sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1" pieces
5-6 purple potatoes, peeled and cut into 1" pieces
1 small head of purple cauliflower, cut up
olive oil
3 very small purple potatoes for frying, sliced thin
1/2 bulb fennel, chopped
1 large onion, chopped
4-5 cloves garlic, chopped
1 small *white carrot, diced (1/2 cup)
4 cups chicken stock(substitute with vegetable stock)
salt and pepper to taste
1 tsp Penzeys® Parisien Herbs (substitute 1/2 tsp dried chives & 1/4 tsp thyme)
chives (garnish)
fried purple potatoes (garnish)
swirl of sour cream

NOTE*Do not use Orange or purple carrots for this soup. Remember the color wheel in Art class...Orange + Purple = Brown. Trust me on this...my first attempt I used purple carrots...BTW they are orange on the inside...and the soup turned a disturbing shade of brown.  No beautiful violet soup...only earthy ugly brown.

Preheat oven to 450 degrees
Prepare potatoes and cauliflower and toss with enough olive oil to evenly coat vegetables. Spread out on a parchment lined cookie sheet and roast for 30-35 minutes or until vegetables are cooked.

While vegetables are cooking quickly fry some sliced purple potatoes into crunchy chips for garnish. Drain on a paper towel and salt. (I sprinkled these with a gorgeous purple sea salt I picked up at Aldi® last year, but don't sweat it if you don't have purple salt, regular Kosher salt works too.)

In a large dutch oven, add 1 T olive oil, onions, white carrots and fennel and saute until vegetables are tender, ~10 minutes. Add chicken stock and simmer for a few minutes. Add roasted vegetables to the pot and heat for about 2-3 minutes to soften some of the roasted vegetables that might have browned in the oven. Add 1 tsp Parisien Herbes or substitute with 1/2 dried chives and 1/4 tsp thyme.

In batches, transfer soup to a blender and puree until smooth. Salt and pepper to taste.  Ladle into bowls and swirl in some sour cream, top with purple chips and chives and Enjoy!

More Halloween recipes to try:

Vampire Slayer Soup

Eye of Newt Stew

Spider Caviar

Roasted Zombie Brain (Roasted Buffalo Cauliflower)

I have a huge crush on purple cauliflower. I mean take a look at this gorgeousness! Cauliflower is an easy vegetable to transform into Halloween food, because it already looks like a brain. We see them every Halloween in recipes and used as specimen jar decorations. Here's one of my old Halloween blogs using cauliflower here. But purple cauliflower kicks it up a notch. The violet hue, definitely makes it look other-worldly, transforming it from a run of the mill brain into zombie brain territory real quick. So what do I make with this violaceous cruciferous vegetable?  A sinister version of Buffalo Cauliflower that I like to call Roasted Zombie Brain! Enjoy!
  

                                         🎃🎃🎃 103 days until Halloween🎃🎃🎃

Roasted Zombie Brain (Roasted Buffalo Cauliflower)

 Serves 2-4

1 head purple cauliflower
3/4 cup flour
1 cup milk
2 t garlic powder
2 t paprika
1 cup Franks® Red Hot Sauce
1 t salt
1/2 t pepper
2 T apple cider vinegar

Buffalo Butter Sauce
1/2 cup Franks® Red Hot Sauce
1/4 cup butter, melted
blue cheese crumbles  (topping)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Trim leaves from cauliflower, reserving a few of the inner purple leaves for garnish. Cut stem so that the cauliflower sits flat in the dutch oven.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, milk, garlic powder, paprika, hot sauce, salt, pepper and apple cider vinegar until smooth. Dip cauliflower in batter, ensuring that it is generously covered, turn over and pour some of the batter into the bottom of the cauliflower. 

Spray large dutch oven with cooking spray. Place cauliflower in dutch oven, cover and roast for about 45 minutes or until a knife slides in easily. My cauliflower was on the small side and only took about 30 minutes to cook through so begin checking at the 30 minute mark and add time as needed. Remove cauliflower from oven and remove the lid. Turn oven to broil and return the cauliflower to the oven to brown the top under the broiler for about 2-4 minutes. Transfer roasted cauliflower to a serving dish, but be careful, it will be very hot.

In a small bowl, melt butter in the microwave and mix with 1/2 cup hot sauce. Drizzle on top of the roasted cauliflower and sprinkle with blue cheese crumbles. Serve immediately, cutting into 2 to 4 wedges depending on the size of the cauliflower. 

More Halloween recipes to try:

Fiendish Fingers

Sixpence Meat Pies

Bloody Eyeball Bruschetta

Spicy Roasted Cauliflower

I had this idea to make a Halloween inspired dish from cauliflower because lets face it, it looks like brains. Perfect Halloween material right? I figured there's a great side dish or salad in the making. The problem is, cauliflower pretty much tastes like water. Not much flavor going on. It's like chunky H2O. Unless you smother it in a cheese sauce or salad dressing it's pretty bland. This recipe however is the farthest thing from bland-ville.

The cauliflower is roasted and basted in a sweet, spicy, and garlicky sauce that's so delicious that even my husband loved it and he is NOT a fan of cauliflower...he had two servings.  

Slicing the cauliflower into flat patties does a few things. One it makes them look like cross-sections of cerebrums. Which is way cool and creepy for a Halloween inspired side dish. Two, it helps infuse the sauce better because the florets are smaller bites of cauliflower. And three, it makes for quick, easy, and even roasting. 

This recipe was so yummy and the pictures turned out so beautiful that the plating doesn't look much like a Halloween dish. But like all my Halloween recipes, they can be made any time of the year, not just for Halloween, just change up the plating to de-Halloween-ify it.

This would be a perfect side dish with my Midnight Sushi with Wasabi Skulls and a cool Fangtini. Enjoy!

Roasted Brains (Spicy Roasted Cauliflower)

Serves 4

1 head of Cauliflower, florets cut into thin flats of cauliflower

1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 T toasted sesame oil
3 T soy sauce
3-4 T sriracha (to taste)
1 clove garlic, finely minced (I used Dorot garlic cubes)
juice of one lime
2 T honey
green onions (garnish)
black sesame seeds(garnish)

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

In a small bowl, mix vegetable and sesame oils, soy sauce, sriracha, garlic, and lime juice and give a quick stir. Note: The honey is not added at this point to prevent the sauce from burning during roasting. The honey will be added to the leftover sauce after basting the cauliflower. 

On a parchment lined cookie sheet, place cauliflower florets in a single layer. Baste one side of cauliflower flats with spicy sauce (with no honey added). Set leftover sauce aside.


Roast 450 degrees for 20-25 minutes. 

Add the honey to the leftover sauce and mix well. Add additional sriracha if desired. Or if you didn't have much remaining, make a new batch of sauce, this time adding all the ingredients at one time. 

Remove cauliflower from the oven and baste generously with the spicy sauce with honey. Transfer to a bowl or platter garnish with green onions and black sesame seeds and Enjoy!

Other Halloween recipes to try: 
Love at First Bite Linguini               Black Magic Spellcakes               Midnight Sushi

Potato and Cauliflower Gratin

It had been about three weeks since I'd last talked to my mom. Daily life, weekends brimming with things to do, obligations, homework and all around exhaustion taking hold at the end of each day prevented us from talking as frequently as we would've liked. So last Saturday was the day we scheduled to be able to talk and catch up. Yes, we actually had to calendar the phone call.
My husband and the boys were at an early morning Cub Scout event and I was out running errands when she called. I was expecting her call even though I was at the grocery store. It was early and there weren't too many folks there at that time of the morning. But despite my opinion that people who talk on cell phones in public are rude, I was one of those rude people.  It couldn't be helped or rather at least I didn't care all that much if I was being rude. I wanted to talk to my mom. We talked and talked as I shopped the aisles. The epitome of rudeness, I know. Yeah, I even checked out with my phone stuck to my ear, completely ignoring the checker! Yikes.
We talked and laughed as I made my way home. (Hands free of course!)  We talked about my boys, talked about the food, what we got on sale, and the new recipes we'd tried recently. What was good. What wasn't. She told me about this recipe, from Cuisine at Home that she adapted by adding cauliflower along with the potatoes to this Potato Gratin to make this amazingly delicious Potato and Cauliflower Gratin! The original recipe calls for Swiss cheese, which I didn't have at home, but she told me that she just uses any cheese she has on hand. So I used a blend of Asiago, Havarti and White Cheddar, since I had a little bit of each and it was incredible! Can't go wrong with Asiago and Havarti cheeses!
I made these creamy, cheesy, yummy potatoes that night and it was just what I needed to soothe my weary soul, comfort food and a long phone call with my mom. The perfect day! Thanks Mom, I love you.

Potato and Cauliflower Gratin (adapted recipe from Cuisine at Home)
Makes 8 cups

6 cups potatoes, cut into even chunks
2 cups cauliflower, cut into even pieces
1 1/2 c. heavy cream
1 1/2 c milk
1/2 cup onion, diced
1 T garlic, minced
salt, pepper and nutmeg to taste
1 cup Swiss cheese (I used Asiago, Havarti and White Cheddar)

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
Bring potatoes, milk, cream, onion, garlic, and seasonings to a boil in a large saucepan. reduce heat to medium-low and simmer for 10 minutes. Layer half the potatoes and cauliflower in a greased, 4 quart casserole dish and top with half the cheese. Repeat layering: pour milk and cream mixture on top. Bake, uncovered, for 25 minutes, or until potatoes are cooked through. Let stand 10-20 minutes before serving.