It’s yet another purple dish! As purple food week continues, today we had pasta for lunch, topped with a cream sauce of purple cauliflower and walnuts. Beyond being colorful on its own, the cauliflower lent the sauce a light purple tint.
I should note that I usually skip a few steps when making cream sauce — I fry my vegetables in the butter that will later be used to make the sauce thicken. Purists would probably fry the vegetables separately.
For 3-4 servings:
1 large purple onion
5-6 garlic cloves
2 T butter
1 T flour
1 cup milk
10 g dried portobello mushrooms (or a few fresh)
180 g purple cauliflower
70 g walnuts, lightly toasted
1 T chopped fresh parsley
1/8 t nutmeg
salt and pepper
Dice the onion and garlic, and fry in the butter in a thick-bottomed pan. When they become translucent, turn down the heat and add the flour. Slowly add the milk, stirring so that it does not clump. At this point, the mixture will still be pretty thin; it needs to cook.
Put the pot back on the flame, and add the dried mushrooms (if you’re using fresh, they can be added later). Stir the milk constantly. As it begins to thicken, add the cauliflower (chopped into chunks), the walnuts (also chopped), the mushrooms if you haven’t yet, and the spices. Let the cauliflower cook for a minute or two, turn off the flame and add the parsley.
Serve over pasta.
