Cauliflower Chili

This is the Food Network's photo.

I hate cauliflower.  When I got last month's Food Network Magazine, they had a great photo on the cover of a spicy vegetarian chili (here's the recipe).  I love chili.  You can make one pot of chili and have food for a week.  There's chili "burritos" with veggies and a low carb tortilla.  There's chili mac (totally unhealthy, but yum).  I sometimes make a chili and cornbread dish.  You can make frito pies (also unhealthy, but yum).  Top some veggie dogs or make a dipping sauce for pigs in a blanket.  There's no end to what you can do with chili.

I know cauliflower are good for me.  It's in the species Brassica oleracea which cabbage, brussels sprouts, kale, broccoli, and collard greens are also cultivers of.  How many times do we hear we need to eat more of those? Kale and broccoli are practically superstars.  It's high in fiber and it has Sulforaphane and Indole-3-carbinol which may protect against cancer.  So, I decided that covered in tons of spices, cauliflower was worth a try.  It's probably important to note that cooking, especially boiling like one would do in chili, may destroy many of the phytochemicals.

I admit, I didn't follow the recipe exactly.  I used a food processor to "shred" my cauliflower.  It wasn't as delicious as the food network photo looks.  Here's my frito chili pie.

I tried to eat it plain, but the texture was a little gritty and weird.  Maybe it would work better if you grated the cauliflower.  The chunks would likely be bigger.  My family and I ate the whole batch, but it's not something I'm in a hurry to make again.

One cup of your average chili has 287 calories, 14.1 g of fat, 30.5 grams of total carbs (11.3g of fiber and 3.0 grams of sugar) and 14.6 grams of protein.  Amy's makes a decent canned vegetarian chili with 190 calories, 6 grams of fat, 29 grams of carbs (7.9 fiber and 6.0 sugar) and 7.1 grams of protein per cup.  This chili has 182 calories, 5.7 grams of fat, 26.3 grams of carbs (9.1 grams of fiber and 5.3 grams of sugar) and 7.5 grams of protein.

So, the chili is slightly better for you than your average chili.  It gets good reviews on the Food Network site and to be fair, it tasted fine.  It just had a weird texture.  I normally make my vegetarian chili with morningstar farms "meat" or rice.  I think I'll take the extra calories and stick with that.  Morningstar Farms "meat" doesn't add much.  It's pretty healthy number wise, but I use it sparingly because I don't like to use Frankenfoods much, and I consider fake meat to be a kind of Frankenfood.  On the other hand, there are clearly Fritos on my plate, and there's no excuse for that.  Nobody's perfect.

Mocking Macaroni: It's not a Laughing Matter

The real thing, it's not healthy.

My favorite meal of all time is probably macaroni and cheese.  I like mine best crispy on top, creamy in the middle and made from scratch.  I love it so much that even the Kraft blue box will do. I've been known to consume an entire box in one sitting.  I used to get those Easy Mac bowls and I would eat 2-3 of them before I felt like it was enough macaroni and cheese.

The USDA would probably consider macaroni and cheese a healthy food.  The box proclaims it to be a good source of calcium.  They even make whole grain mac and cheese.  If it's whole grain, it must be healthy, right?

Let's look at the facts:


Nutrition Facts for Kraft

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Amount Per Serving (makes 4) of Kraft Whole Grain Mac and Cheese (prepared as directed)

Calories:  390

Total fat: 17 g

Protein: 8 g

Total carbohydrate:  49 g

• Dietary Fiber: 5 g
• Sugar: 6 g

Amount Per Serving (makes 4) of Kraft Deluxe Blue Box Mac and Cheese (prepared as directed)

Calories:  320

Total fat: 10 g

Protein: 12 g

Total carbohydrate:  45 g

• Dietary Fiber: 1 g
• Sugar: 3 g

Both of these "healthy" meals are almost your entire carbohydrate intake for the day (or over it if you're doing Atkins style induction).  One cup of macaroni as my entire daily ration doesn't sound great.  When I eat a whole box, I'm getting 180 grams of carbohydrate.  I can hear my pancreas cursing me for torturing it.

To give my poor pancreas a break, I decided to try mockaroni and cheese.  I admit, it doesn't look as tasty as the real stuff, but it's partially because I was too hungry to photograph it well.  It is a good way to cut those carbs down and still get a similar flavor and mouth feel as real macaroni and cheese.

It doesn't look like macaroni and cheese, but it tastes reminiscent of it.

Mockaroni and Cheese
(Serves Four)

• 1 head of cauliflower, steamed and chopped
• 4 ounces cottage cheese
• 2 tablespoons heavy cream
• 4 ounces cheddar cheese, shredded
• 1 ounce of mozzarella cheese, shredded
• Salt and pepper to taste

Optional:

• Some people like to add things like onion, cayenne, oregano, tomatoes and whatever else to their mac and cheese.  You can add those, but I prefer mine plain.
• You can really use whatever cheeses you want
• You can use frozen, chopped cauliflower instead of fresh if you want to
• I've seen some recipes that use cream cheese instead of cottage cheese.

1. Combine all of these ingredients, except a handful of cheddar, into an oven safe bowl. Make sure they are mixed well.  
2. Sprinkle the handful of cheddar on top.  
3. Place the bowl into an oven that's been preheated to 350 degrees and cook it for about 30 minutes, until it's your level of brown.  The top will get crispy just like traditional mac and cheese.

This is what it looks like before baking.  It tastes better than it looks.

It really makes a convincing substitute.  None of these substitutes have the gluteny goodness of real pasta, but I don't really miss it in this dish.  The mouth feel of the cauliflower is very similar to the mouth feel of pasta.  With mac and cheese, the pasta is just a sauce delivery system anyway.

I served mine here with a feta and tomato salad and some roasted kale.

Nutrition Facts for Mockaroni

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Amount Per Serving (makes 4)

Calories:  166

Total fat: 10 g

Protein: 12 g

Total carbohydrate:  9 g

• Dietary Fiber: 3.6 g
• Sugar: 0.2 g

You see a lot of the values we like (fat and protein) stayed the same.  That's because they came  from the cheese.  We didn't cut that.  However, the values we hate (carbs and calories) came way down.  Calories are more than halved and carbohydrates decreased by 80%.  Eight-percent makes a big difference to your pancreas. It's still yummy too.