Keel over Kale, Cauliflower is in town

Take a bow and move aside please, Kale. Cauliflower is the new Must-have vegetable accessory. There’s nothing you can’t do with cauliflower – make it into rice or pizza or chug it down raw. You can smash it, mash it, pulverise it, roast it. You can spiral it, grind it, bind it and blowtorch it. Take that kale! You could do some of those things but you could never pull off rice or pizza.

It’s strange to think that the humble cauli, the veg that used to be like an embarrassing cousin at the wedding, is this year’s new It food.

But why? And how? Who decided you could rub it with spices and roast whole in the oven and call it Cauliflower Roast? Who exactly is the cauliflower Insta-influencer who told us cauliflower’s time has come. Who is the marketing genius who pared it first with pomegranate? And most importantly, with demand skyrocketing, where are the cauliflowers grown? Did farmers have to rip out kale plants to put in cauliflower? The logistics are fascinating.

Now that cauliflower has been elevated to the big league, I want to know how did we ever survive without having cauli in every meal? That was madness.

I’m not anti-cauliflower (although those those teensy tiny florets sure are mess mavens). If you smother it in salt and oil it tastes pretty good (which is the only way we got through the kale years). As far as fake rice goes it tastes pretty good and is nearly as cheap. It’s good to see it is finally getting the recognition it deserves but I’m worried for it. Kale lasted about 3 – 5 years and cauliflower is destined to do the same. Once you’ve had it as rice pizza, mac and cheese, whole roasted or raw with a vegan dip where can you go? And what will be next?

Zucchini has some form thanks to zucchini noodles, it probably has a little too much Latin flair. I’m thinking celeriac, which has a face like a dropped pie, or else turnip. They both have the advantage of looking and sounding bad, a prerequisite for the next hit vegetable. Until we can 3D print the next new veg, Kalieflower, perhaps?

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Birchler muesli

I love breakfast menus. They are full of worthy foodstuffs, which no doubt does wonders for the alimentary canal, with names that come out of a German colonic school textbook.

Birchler muesli, spelt bread and bio-fermented kurd yoghurt. Trendy Sydney eateries (which if you ask any Sydney eatery is them) love this bioynamic cardboard and print it on their menus. Perhaps they love putting foreign words down on bio-ethical paper to make them sound a bit like if we close our eyes and astral travel for around 36 hours we could be in Berlin, which is a city on my bucket list.

But back to breakfast. I have seen these worth words on paper but am yet to see anyone actually order them. Have you? Have you even heard the following words uttered: “I’ll have a freshly churned Birchler Muesli wth new goat curd and fermented whey with a side of choko slaw with sliced first origin goji’s” I rest my case.

It’s Sunday for chrissaks. People are tired. They’re hungover, they are generally pissed off, especially if they have driven some distance to breakfast. You’re going to hear I’ll have a big breakfast with extra bacon. I’ll get a breakfast with the lot and a side of extra hash browns. I’ll have a triple shot of anything that’s going.

Breakfast eateries should quite honestly just give up and get rid of all that stuff on the menu that hasn’t been ordered since 1963. If people are that concerned they can order a salad for lunch or just eat at home. Which is what I suspect people who eat Birchler are doing, dressed in a sackcloth.