Serious Eats: Recipes

Dinner Tonight: Spaghetti with Sautéed Cauliflower, Raisins, and Pine Nuts

Posted by Blake Royer, December 13, 2007

I'm on a bit of a pine nut and golden raisin kick—this is the second time this week (here's the first). The combination of sweet and tangy with fancy nuttiness is irresistible. So when I was flipping through Tyler Florence's Tyler's Ultimate and saw this, a Sicilian-style spaghetti turned on its head, everything was decided: A quickly steamed-then-browned head of cauliflower is brightened with parsley and lemon juice (those seem to be pasta-brightening standbys), made airy by crisp panko (Japanese breadcrumbs), and richened with a little anchovy that reflects that nuttiness from the pine nuts. Although if anchovies scare you, they could be skipped. And the raisins are just there for fun.

I'm willing to call this one of my favorite pasta dishes yet. It's not the simplest to prepare the first time through—there are a few critical things to time—but I thought it would be. So I found myself running around the kitchen trying to attend to toasting breadcrumbs, the cheese shredder, and pasta dangerously close to mushy. I also underestimated how long the cauliflower would take to cook. But the second time through, I think this would be a breeze.

And there will be a second time. And a third, and a fourth.

Printed from http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2007/12/dinner-tonight-spaghetti-with-sauteed-caulifl.html