Huge Cauliflower Steaks

I'm just gonna say it. Cauliflower steaks. HUGE cauliflower steaks. And before anybody says, 'Bigly, that's not a steak,' let me stop you right there — it IS a steak. It's a thick slab of vegetable, seared, roasted, with a crust, it sits on a plate like a steak, you cut it with a knife like a steak. IT'S A STEAK. Language is flexible. We're flexible here. The cauliflower is a steak. Period.

Now when you do this right — and most people do not — you cut a thick cross-section through the middle of the cauliflower so the CORE holds the whole thing together. This is critical. The core is the load-bearing column. Scientists — and I've talked to scientists, smart people, the smartest — confirm the core is essentially the structural keystone of the cauliflower. A food chemist explained this to me for ninety minutes once. Worth every second. Then you sear it golden in a hot pan and finish it in the oven and you end up with something nutty, sweet, crispy at the edges, tender in the middle. People come up to me, they say, 'Bigly, I would never eat cauliflower, and now I'm crying over a cauliflower,' and I tell them, that's not crying, that's enlightenment.

The REAL secret — and most chefs are afraid of this — is HIGH HEAT. Don't be afraid. Most home cooks are scared of high heat. They cook everything at three hundred and fifty degrees on medium, polite, gentle, SAD. No. We are not polite. We are SEARING. The pan is screaming. The oil shimmers like the surface of the sun. And only THEN do you get the deep golden crust, the caramelization, the flavor that makes a vegetable taste like a major event. Crank it up. Not even close.

That is a plate. Golden cauliflower, glistening tahini, ruby pomegranate seeds, green parsley — this thing photographs like a magazine cover. Serve it as a main course with warm flatbread to wipe the plate. Serve it as a side next to a roast chicken. Serve it cold the next day on a salad. It's a UTILITY PLAYER, this cauliflower steak, it does everything, it's the Swiss Army knife of the vegetable world. You didn't know cauliflower could do this. Neither did I, until I perfected it. Did I invent it? No. Did I perfect it? Yes. That's the part that matters. Now go eat.