how to roast a cauliflower
Since every corner of the internet became hostile to straightforward information, I’ve dreamed of sharing a basic recipe preceded by hundreds of words of bullshit. The only things stopping me were my lack of platform and total disinterest in cooking. But I will let that deter me no longer!
HOW TO ROAST A CAULIFLOWER:
Now, I don’t remember my first cauliflower experience, because I assume it was administered to me in mashed form at the age of zero-ish, before I actually knew what cauliflower was. Even if I did know, I haven’t been a baby in a minute, so the memories of that time period are hazy to the point of near nonexistence. But this must’ve been when I was first exposed to cauliflower, because otherwise I’d definitely be able to give you specifics. I used to think I had hyperthymesia, but only 61 people have hyperthymesia, so that seems unlikely. I do remember a torturous quantity of irrelevant shit, though. And I’d trade it all — every trite, useless factoid — just to recall my first taste of white broccoli. I’d Eternal Sunshine the entire rest of my childhood away just to access two seconds of 1996, where I assume I was like, “Ehh, it’s okay I guess.” And that would be the only thing left in my memory storage chamber. Except I read an article once about how we shouldn’t be using computer terminology in reference to human cognition, because it really isn’t all that applicable. The brain doesn’t store information on a hard drive, it simply reforms into a new version of itself with prior learning experience. Or something like that. I don’t know what article this was, because there are several on the subject. The point is that I wish I could remember trying cauliflower for the first time.
I know that when I was a very young child, around the cauliflower-trying age, I was obsessed with the 1940 animated Disney film Pinocchio. This has been cool of me never, and it only fell in coolness with each passing Disney scandal until last year when it hit terminal velocity because a) Disney vomited out a worthless live action remake, and b) Guillermo del Toro released his own stop-motion animated, antifascist take on the original story where Pinocchio literally calls Mussolini a piece of shit to his face and it instantly became the only Pinocchio you will ever need, no disrespect to Pauly Shore. But I watched that Disney remake out of obligation/morbid curiosity and oh my god, it was so bad. And I use the word watched loosely, because I had to scream and recoil every time THE FUCKING CAT was onscreen. I know I said it’s live action, but Robert Zemeckis for some reason could not be assed to find a real tuxedo cat to play Figaro, and instead delegated AN ABOMINATION to some underpaid CGI artist. The fish looked awful, also. So did Jiminy Cricket, but he’s supposed to. Jiminy Cricket is voiced by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, as though whoever made this movie knew that I’d be the only person on earth watching it. It’s like they had somebody following me around with a legal pad for two decades like, “All right, what does this weird bitch love?” and all they were able to suss out were cats, Pinocchio, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Whose performance was fine, all things considered. I shockingly do not have notes. I have a lot of notes about the cat. Last year there were these inescapable Meow Mix commercials all over Hulu, where a bunch of cats sing the word meow with human voices at an open mic night at some bar in the Uncanny Valley town square, and I hated those cats also, until Figaro 2022 assaulted my eyeballs. I couldn’t have known how bad things were going to get, CGI catwise. Gideon, the nonverbal humanoid cat who helps tempt Pinocchio away from school and towards The Theatre, WISHES he were as bad to look at as Figaro. THE CATS FROM CATS (2019) WISH. So I’m cowering in fear for a hundred minutes, and then the movie ends and James Cricket is like, “Did Pinocchio ever become a real boy? WHO’S TO SAY?” What a fucking cop-out. Is he a real boy or not, Jimothy Gordon-Levitt? It kind of sounds like he’s not! It kind of sounds like you did a bad job! And for what? What was any of that for? Other than driving me to madness, I mean. But also, I am one person. The fucking Walt Disney actual Company would not seriously allocate $150 million just to crack my sanity in half. Would they? Would they? There has to be another reason that film exists.
Okay, enough filibustering. On with the show!
HOW TO ROAST A CAULIFLOWER:
I have a lot of dreams about suffering. I am never, ever allowed to be happy while I’m asleep. And the tragic situations that befall my dream self don’t even get to be avant-garde or anything; they’re always straight out of a mean-spirited sitcom. There was one where I tried to buy candy at Target and my evil doppelgänger followed me around and made fun of me the whole time. There was another where I was running through the woods and I tripped over a “raw frog” (direct quote from the paramedics) and broke both my legs. An Australian guy (I know this because they eventually found it in Melbourne and made me sign it over per the rules of Finders Keepers) stole my car. I got disqualified from all PTO at every job forever and ever amen because my tax return was too high. A college baking professor kicked me out of class for being such a morally reprehensible human being that they later ended up resigning from teaching altogether because it wasn’t worth the trauma, and I had to take Stats III as penance. Someone gave me a bong (it was actually a PlayStation 3, but everyone called it a bong, and Dream Me was like, “Yes, I could definitely smoke weed out of this,”) and I was immediately intercepted by the cops and taken to the nonexistent US Department of Cannabis to register the PSBong (i.e. so clearly not a bong) like I was registering a car at the DMV. My dad had a stroke and I had to rush him to the hospital via the airport, and the airport would not call an ambulance, insisting I rent a car and drive him, and then they charged me $18 for an iced coffee I didn’t order. I was VP Harris’s personal assistant and she demanded I bring her avocado smoothies every hour on the hour. My house has burned down like, 90 different times. One of those times I had to move into an evil barn. Not a haunted barn, an evil barn. There were no ghosts, only potent, demonic vibes. Nobody believed me about the vibes.
The thing about these dreams is that I always think I deserve it. Total randos come up to me and punch me in the face, and I’m just like, “Yeah, warranted.” I don’t know what that says about me. Anyway.
HOW TO ROAST A CAULIFLOWER:
My number of strong opinions on rollercoasters has increased exponentially since that time we all got trapped inside our houses and my only form of entertainment was watching 4K, 60FPS front-seat POV videos of them and tilting my head accordingly, like a simulator. Usually, this ends in motion sickness, because (I think) engineers have really lost sight of the appeal of rollercoasters. I do not have a source, but I am fairly confident that man (gender-neutral) invented the rollercoaster to satisfy a primal urge to go up and down hills really fast. That’s their whole thing. That’s what they’re for. So: why corkscrews? Why loops in general? Why introduce this dimension at all? There are already genres of amusement park ride whose purpose is to go upside down, because that is a completely separate desire. Stop flipping me over when all I’m trying to do is experience the euphoria of the wind in my face!
So whenever the motion sickness kicked in, I’d chill out by watching some recommended video explaining how coasters work, what different sections of track are called, and most importantly, which specific rollercoasters in the world FUCKING SUCK.
My personal favorite shitty rollercoaster is this one in Austria called Volare that really defies description. There is no word in any language to encompass the sheer incomprehensibility of every decision made at every stage of this thing’s development. Green Lantern: First Flight at Magic Mountain is a very close second — at least, I think it would be, if I could actually watch the entire video without throwing up. Also, it sadly ceased operation before I was able to ride it due to sucking so severely and impressively. Not that I actually would’ve ridden it. I think the Euthanasia Coaster would be less painful.
But I was utterly delighted to learn that one of the most universally-loathed rollercoasters among people who actually purport to know what they’re talking about, (and it’s not like I have reason to doubt them) is one that I have experienced, because there are 41 clones of the thing lurking around this very planet — perhaps even at a theme park near you! Officially, they are called Vekoma SLCs, (suspended looping coaster) but every installation has a cool-sounding name like Vampire or The Gauntlet or Thunderhawk or Fly — The Great Nor’easter. Or Mind Eraser, as I know it. Vekoma is the manufacturer; suspended means the track is above you and your legs are just out; looping means it goes upside down. Come take a journey. Notice how everyone on the ride sounds actually afraid for their real, mortal lives!
And then finally there’s this abomination, which inverts fourteen (14) times and hates you personally. Yet, it seems to have garnered… acclaim? People like it? At least some of the ~2 million annual visitors to Alton Towers are voluntarily participating in the Smiler experiment? Explain yourselves, United Kingdom. Send over a representative to vouch for the Smiler. I doubt I can provide adequate financial compensation, but I can prepare them a delicious vegetable. Speaking of which!
HOW TO ROAST A CAULIFLOWER:
At some point I started thinking of spite as a governing body. Like, if I do anything risky, I’m at the mercy of some sort of malevolent cosmic irony determined to make me regret it. And if I so much as think of any bad thing that could happen, I’ve already set it in motion.
Like, I used to really worry about being decapitated by an elevator, because I heard about someone being decapitated by an elevator. In real life. Previously I’d thought elevator decapitation was invented by the movie Final Destination 2, like death-by-pigeon and guys named Rory, but no, it has happened several times in real life. And I was terrified of letting the omniscient Spite governing the universe find out that I was specifically wary of elevator decapitation, because I knew it would take notes. If I got out of an elevator and thought, “I’m so glad I wasn’t decapitated by this elevator today,” the Spite had at least three clear and obvious paths to making me eat my words:
“I’m so glad I wasn’t decapitated by this elevator today” = I was no longer safe from ANY OTHER ELEVATOR IN THE WORLD. And you know how elevators are! They travel in packs of 2-6, sometimes with multiple packs to one building. The case I heard about occurred in a hospital, and every hospital I’ve been to has so many elevators that they have to color code them. If I was immune to Orange Elevator No. 2, then, say, Green Elevator No. 5 was out for blood.
“I’m so glad I wasn’t decapitated by this elevator today” = Orange Elevator No. 2 assumes a sort of Peter Pan crocodile role in my life. It’ll get me next time.
And the most alarming revenge avenue the Spite could take:
“I’m so glad I wasn’t decapitated by this elevator today” = It’s gonna get someone! Some innocent person who did not provoke the Spite is now marked for gruesome death because I was so selfish as to celebrate my miraculous and unlikely survival of the up and down box. The next elevator decapitation is my fault. My Jiminy Cricket equivalent is going to beat the shit out of me for this one. It’s not even played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
People are motivated by spite, I assume. Which is very uncharitable of me, and probably makes the Spite think, WELL. THAT WASN’T TRUE BEFORE, BUT SINCE YOU SEEM TO WANT IT TO BE SO BADLY… The outcomes of this aren’t always bad — protests, you could argue, are motivated by spite. Sometimes people intentionally do shitty things that deserve to be spote. Let’s look at how the elevator decapitation thing might play out between someone fundamentally cruel (Person X) and someone fundamentally kind (Person Y). Except I imagine elevator decapitation is somewhat hard to engineer, and weighs fairly heavily on the conscience, so since we’re discussing a warped form of irony, I call upon the great Alanis herself to provide a scenario.
So X and Y are at a dinner party, and Person Z is abruptly like, “Ew, gross, there’s a black fly in my Chardonnay!” And then they pick it out of the glass and show everyone, then dump the wine onto an azalea bush. Z is a garden variety asshole. In eerily perfect unison, X and Y both say aloud, “I’m so glad there wasn’t a black fly in my Chardonnay.”
X (pure evil): Now that they mention it, I should put a black fly in Y’s Chardonnay, because it would be funny.
Y (pure good): Now that they mention it, I should put a black fly in X’s Chardonnay, because they deserve it.
X and Y are not multifaceted enough to exist in real life, so this isn’t a perfect example. No actual person is definitively an X or a Y, and no actual dinner party has Chardonnay. There’s a whole spectrum between “because it would be funny” and “because they deserve it.” They aren’t even mutually exclusive; Person X accidentally drinking an insect would be the pinnacle of comedy.
I think a lot of people are knowingly motivated by spite, but nobody except me is aware the all-powerful Spite pulling the strings. Like, remember when People ran a cover story called “Betty White Turns 100!” and then three days later, Betty White was denied the opportunity to turn 100? This is because I am not an editor at People. Okay, no it’s not, but I would’ve vetoed that title with prejudice. I would’ve been like, “What the fuck are you trying to pull, Liz? Dory? Don’t you realize how awry this could go?” This is why it drives me up the wall whenever anyone encourages me to try manifesting things I want. I’m not going to miraculously inherit $69 million, TikTok user divinelunar401! I’m just gonna get beheaded for being too lazy to take the stairs.
HOW TO ROAST A CAULIFLOWER:
So are those gay monsters still exploiting human children for profit or not? Well okay, Occam’s razor: yes. I do not think each and every one of these kids signed consent forms granting technicolor Pixar characters interdimensional access to their bedrooms where they sleep, even if all the monsters are doing is stand-up comedy. It’s mutually beneficial I guess — the monsters get to keep powering their monster city, and the humans get to see Mike Wazowski. Still feels icky to me, though! Find another energy source! I guess I’ll just give you my threequel pitch where Mike and Sulley fall in love, adopt a (monster) child, and divest from human scream/laugh energy altogether.
We rejoin Sulley after his reunion with Boo, whose destroyed door Mike has just painstakingly reassembled, and he is feeling (as you’d imagine) some type of way. Fifteen minutes ago, he was perfectly content with his life as a CEO, bachelor, and renowned solver of the energy crisis, but now he has a nagging sense that his objectively great life may not be making him truly happy. I mean, it’s Pixar 101, right? He’s all, I sure do miss Boo! Mike sure did utterly obliterate his hands with splinters just to put her door back together! Anyway!
Like I said, everyone’s hailing him and Mike as heroes, so they obviously get invited to speak at their alma mater at their earliest convenience. But when they arrive, they are not met with cheers and applause, but with MASSIVE STUDENT PROTESTS. Because human children are still being exploited. Mike is like, “Psssht, they don’t know what they’re talking about, I mean, it’s a complex issue, right?” but he’s clearly unnerved, and Sulley is pretty much catatonic. He gets up to give his big speech, and the crowd is hating it. He can’t even get through his introduction because hundreds of people are yelling, “BOO!” at him. And then suddenly he gets it. So he’s like, “Uhh, I have to go,” and flees the stage. He gets on the first bus back to Monstropolis, which Mike has to chase down in a parallel to the end of the second movie. They have their requisite explosive argument, which ends with Mike staying at his girlfriend’s place.
Sulley throws himself into researching alternative energy sources like solar, (canonically, there is a sun) and hanging out with Boo. He makes a hesitant pilgrimage back to the university to meet with every student activist willing to hear him out. Art, the insane purple dude voiced by Charlie Day from the prequel is there, now as a professor, just because I’d like to see him again. Hell, the whole Monsters University gang can cameo.
Mike and his girlfriend break up offscreen. Sulley shows up at the factory, all set to visit Boo one last time and then resign as CEO and lose access to her door, but he’s intercepted by Mike, who’s also been looking into solar. They reconcile and come up with a divestment plan. One timeskip later, the company is no longer using children’s laughter as an energy source, but they’ve kept all the doors so that monsters and humans can visit each other without ulterior motives. Mike and Sulley are now a couple, and they’ve adopted a kid. Yay! This is the kind of guaranteed box office smash hit that Disney could be dropping $150 million on, and they have my full permission to make this movie exactly as described. In fact, I fucking dare them.
HOW TO ROAST A CAULIFLOWER:
Speaking of college, that’s where I had my favorite interaction of my entire life so far. It was during senior year, like two weeks before graduation, and I was waiting for my iced coffee at the school café when this guy sat down next to me and said, unprompted:
“I hate coffee.”
“Oh?” I said.
“I’ve always hated coffee.”
“Okay–”
“But I need caffeine,” he continued, “because my capstone is due at midnight, and I haven’t started it.”
It was like, 3:00 P.M. “You haven’t star–?!”
“I KNOW IT’S BAD,” he said.
I decided to pursue another line of questioning. “So did you order tea, or…?”
“I also hate tea.” His eyes were bloodshot. I wanted to call him an ambulance.
“So what did you order?” I asked, kind of afraid to find out.
He took a deep breath. “Astrawberrysmoothiewithfourshotsofespresso.”
“A STRAWBERRY SMOOTHIE WITH FOUR SHOTS OF ESPRESSO,” I said. What would you have said?
“IT’S DUE AT MIDNIGHT,” he reminded me.
“I GUESS–”
This was when one of the baristas called his name, and he practically teleported to the counter. He’d been behind me in line, but his drink was ready first; I assume because they’d wanted to get the… concoction out of the way as quickly as possible.
I watched him unwrap a straw, punch it through the lid, and drink about a quarter of his horrific death potion in a single sip. Then he turned and made direct eye contact with me, his expression unreadable.
“It’s terrible,” he announced.
I opened my mouth to respond. I don’t know what I was going to say. I kind of wanted to ask him the meaning of life. Or what his capstone was about. Or why he’d opted for a strawberry smoothie instead of blueberry. Or if he could tell me the exact time and date of my death.
But before I could say anything at all, he took his nightmare beverage and sprinted out of the building. I never saw him again.
HOW TO ROAST A CAULIFLOWER:
Remember to fucking purchase a cauliflower. (This is harder than it sounds because they are a migratory vegetable and never show up in the same spot in the produce section twice. It is not uncommon to cart-surf over to what you confidently assumed was the cauliflower zone because it was on Monday and find it full of bell peppers or mangoes or some other complete non-sequitur.)
Preheat oven to 425°F/220°C. (Or 218.3333333333333°C for accuracy. I’ve never used a Celsius oven, but I assume they account for infinite decimal places.)
Line baking sheet with aluminum foil.
Wrestle cauliflower out of its terrible plastic bag after unsuccessfully trying to cut it free with your pitiful unsharpened kitchen scissors that came with the knife block. (They SHOULD be sharpenable because there is a sharpener in that same knife block, and yet…)
Realize you could’ve just used the knife you are about to butcher the cauliflower with and not involved the garbage scissors at all.
Cut away everything green (unless you are working with one of those green cauliflowers, in which case just get rid of the fucking leaves).
Divide the big florets roughly in half, then cram one half back into the terrible plastic bag for tomorrow or whenever.
Remember how fucking long this takes, because the oven is already done preheating.
Frantically chop the remaining florets into bite-sized pieces.
Rinse.
Scatter across foil-lined baking sheet.
Drizzle with olive oil (you may use water if you are a coward). I have a bottle from Saratoga that’s basil-infused. It is the bougiest thing I own, and I am almost out of it. That’s not like a call to action or anything; it’s just a bummer.
Sprinkle with kosher salt.
Roast for 15 minutes.
At some point during these 15 minutes, the heat of the oven will cause the baking sheet to warp with the kind of very loud BANG you’d expect to herald the arrival of the Grim Reaper. Valiantly attempt not to have a panic attack.
Remove from oven and wait for the sheet to unwarp. Continue trying to avoid panic attack.
Turn florets over with a fork to the best of your ability.
Return to oven for another fifteen minutes.
Repeat steps 14 and 15.
Remember too late that the florets will shrink considerably, and now you have a pittance of cauliflower.
Internally berate self for not roasting the entire thing.
Internally debate with self whether to just do this all again with the other half.
Abstain out of laziness.
Serve roasted florets in smallest bowl you own to compensate.
Eat.