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Cooking with Michael Solomonov: Fried Cauliflower
>>MIKE: Hi, I’m Mike Solomonov from the Restaurant from Zahav restaurant in Philly
and we are going to make fried cauliflower with herb Lebneh. Lebneh is actually an Arabic
yogurt. It’s strained so it’s a little bit thicker it’s similar to a Greek yogurt.
You can always substitute Greek yogurt if you do not have Lebneh. We are going to take
a little bit of lemon juice, some raw garlic that’s been peeled, and we’re going to
take a rasp zester. This is actually like a wood-sanding tool that has become very popular
with Chefs these days because you can get really, really finite pieces of whatever it
is that you’re straining. We don’t want this to be overly garlicky, but it definitely
needs it to balance out the acidity and to really wake up the fried cauliflower. So we’re
going to do a little it of garlic, a little bit of salt, parsley, chives, dill, and a
little bit of mint. Just a little bit of our Lebneh. You don’t want to take all of it
because when you do it sort of deflates. So we need just a little bit in there to help
puree the herbs. And we don’t want to add water or anything like that or else it will
dilute the sauce. So a little bit of Lebneh you’re going to blend it up with the herbs.
[BLENDER]
I’m just going to take some of this out. So I’m just going to mix it up. You can
see it’s staying nice and creamy, the sauce is turning nice and bright and green. And
then we’re going to set this aside and fry up some cauliflower.
So we’ve got raw cauliflower that’s cut into little florets. We’re just going to
simply take it, throw it into a fryer with canola oil at about 350 degrees. We’re going
to cook it until it gets nice and dark and brown. It almost has this French Fry quality
to it and almost gets a little sweet. While that’s frying we’re gong to take our Lebneh
sauce and just spoon it on. Its nice beautiful golden brown, the interior gets steamed so
its tender but definitely the integrity of the vegetable is preserved you know its not
mushy or anything like that. We’re going to drain it and while its still warmed, we
want to hit it pretty generously with Kosher salt. This is a pretty important process you
definitely want to do this while it’s hot. With simple dishes like this, they’re great
but you really have to make sure everything is cooked and handled perfectly. We’re going
to take some of our black salt and we’re going to just put a little bit of that on
there for a little bit more texture. And then we just have some chives here for garnish.
This is fried cauliflower with Labne from Zahav Restaurant.