{"id":557,"date":"2017-02-01T09:12:30","date_gmt":"2017-02-01T16:12:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/villasentieri.com\/?post_type=recipe&p=557"},"modified":"2026-09-02T10:59:22","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T17:59:22","slug":"cavolfiore-friulana-recipe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/villasentieri.com\/index.php\/2017\/02\/01\/cavolfiore-friulana-recipe\/","title":{"rendered":"Cavolfiore alla Friulana (Cauliflower Friuli-Style)"},"content":{"rendered":"

February 1, 2017<\/span><\/p>\n

I started cooking in the early 1970\u2019s when most cooking authorities were trying to convince us that vegetables needed to be crunchy to be good.\u00a0 No doubt, many vegetables served on American tables were gray, mushy and lifeless but not all vegetables, and certainly not all vegetable dishes, are meant to be toothy, let along crunchy.<\/p>\n

I was having a conversation with friends over dinner in Palm Springs just last week about cooking .\u00a0 They asked me when I started cooking and when I told them, the muscles on their faces froze ever so briefly which made me do a quick calculation.\u00a0 I started cooking before they were born!\u00a0 Which means, basically, I\u2019ve seen a lot of food fads and crazes.\u00a0 I try to avoid them.<\/p>\n

I embrace new ingredients or, as is more often the case with \u201cnew\u201d ingredients, old ingredients that are finally finding their way to our markets and are, therefore, new to us.\u00a0 When I think about the ingredients that are available to me now compared to when I started cooking, the difference is staggering.<\/p>\n

Honestly, though, the core of my cooking hasn\u2019t changed.\u00a0 I still focus on traditional foods.\u00a0 I try to find dishes that have stood the test of time; dishes that have been made for a generation or two, if not a century or two.<\/p>\n

Sometimes, though, food crazes get us to think about how we cook and cause us to make changes for the better.\u00a0 Take crunchy vegetables.\u00a0 I think American vegetable cookery started getting better when \u201ceveryone\u201d was hyping crunchy vegetables.\u00a0 It got us to think about what was on our plates and whether the essence of a particular vegetable dish was best presented with soft vegetables, crunchy vegetables, or something in between.<\/p>\n

Not every vegetable dish is better with crunchy vegetables.\u00a0 That took me a while to learn as a novice cook in the 1970s when I tried to convert every vegetable recipe to one with toothy vegetables.\u00a0 They were not all successful.\u00a0 Not only does\u00a0texture change with more cooking, flavor does too.\u00a0 Sometimes those flavor changes “make” the dish as much as the textural change.<\/p>\n

This recipe is a good example, though it is not one that I was making in the 70\u2019s.\u00a0 The essence of the dish is slow-cooked cauliflower and onions that become sweet as the natural sugars caramelize and the cauliflower softens.<\/p>\n

I learned to make this from my mother-in-law, who is from Friuli.\u00a0 Friuli is northeast of Venice, adjacent to Slovenia.\u00a0 The food definitely\u00a0shows the influence of Eastern and Central Europe but more on that in upcoming posts.

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Cavolfiore alla Friulana (Cauliflower Friuli-Style)<\/h2>\n
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This dish goes really well with roasted meat. It is a little on the sweet side because the sugars in the onion and cauliflower caramelize during the long, slow cooking. I especially like it with roast chicken or roast pork. Experiment with the cooking time to achieve different textures, but never crunchy. The cauliflower should be soft but not mushy. You can keep the florets more intact during the cooking by being gentle. You can also press down on them every now and then causing them to break up. Both styles are equally traditional. As you will see in the pictures, I opted for longer cooking to create more caramelization and the pressing motion to break the florets into small pieces.<\/div>\n
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Prep Time <\/span>20 minutes<\/span><\/span> mins<\/span><\/span><\/div>
Cook Time <\/span>2 hours<\/span><\/span> hrs<\/span><\/span><\/div>
Total Time <\/span>2 hours<\/span><\/span> hrs<\/span> 20 minutes<\/span><\/span> mins<\/span><\/span><\/div><\/div>\n
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Servings: <\/span>8<\/span> people<\/span><\/span><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Ingredients
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