Restaurant: Ford’s Filling Station, Los Angeles
ABOUT BEN FORD:Chef Ben Ford officially earned his cooking stripes at some of the country’s most established restaurants and alongside several of America’s most treasured culinary icons. His acclaimed restaurant concept, Ford’s Filling Station, is based on the fundamentals of teaching, cooking and foraging, and was awarded the prestigious Cochon555 prize. Despite all the accolades and achievements, it’s the large-scale home entertaining he grew up with that’s fueling his current passion. His cookbook, Taming the Feast: Ben Ford’s Field Guide to Adventurous Cooking, focuses not only on bringing people together to eat good, sustainable organic food, but gathering lots and lots of people together to eat sumptuous feasts.
“The one thing I might love more than cooking over a fire is cooking directly on a fire.” – Chef Ben Ford
Chef Ben Ford’s Roasted Cauliflower
Chef Ben Ford shares his Roasted Cauliflower recipe. Enjoy a tender, rich with herbs, toasty roasted cauliflower with your friends and/or family.
Ingredients:
4-5 pounds cauliflower (about 2 large), core removed
½ cup extra-virgin olive oil
6 cloves of garlic, peeled whole clove
¼ cup capers
½ cup olives, lightly crushed and pitted
½ tablespoon fresh chopped thyme
2 tablespoon fresh rough chopped rosemary
1 lemon, large diced
1 teaspoon kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
Directions:
- Create marinade for the cauliflower by combining the olive oil, garlic, capers, and olives in a saucepan, and heating it over low heat.
- Cook slowly for 20 minutes, stirring intermittently until everything has softened and broken down and is cooked.
- Mix in olives and capers herbs and set aside.
- Loosen with a little extra olive oil if it’s too stiff. You want it easily fall off the spoon.
- Blanch cauliflower in highly salted boiling water for 3 minutes.
- Remove and let excess water drain.
- Marinate cauliflower as they cool.
- Marinate for 1 hour.
- Preheat a charcoal or gas grill or preheat the oven to 400°F. If you have a kettle grill, roast the cauliflower directly on the embers down in the bellows of the kettle grill.
- To do so, cut 6 pieces of heavy aluminum foil the same size to create two packages 3 layers deep.
- Mound the Place a cauliflower in the center of each packet.
- Drizzle with any remaining marinate and season each with ½ teaspoon of salt and 8 or 10 turns of pepper.
- Close the packets tightly and put them in oven or directly on the embers of a fire and cook them for about 30-35 minutes, until the cauliflower are tender, rotating them occasionally so they cook on all sides. (To test them, you have to take them off the fire or out of the oven, open the pack, and pierce one of the heads of cauliflower.
- If a butter knife enters easily the cauliflower is finished cooking.
