Buffalo KaliFlower

Buffalo KaliFlower

One of my favorite treats to eat used to be buffalo chicken strips. Tender strips of chicken fried crisp then tossed liberally in a hot pepper sauce til they were drippy. I loved to have blue cheese dressing and crispy celery to cool my mouth after firey bites of goodness.

I am a veggie now so what's a girl to do.  As an alternative I like the battered cauliflower that I could get from my local veggie restaurant, but they were not the full experience. Soooo, I decided I better do something about it!

I saw a recipe on line for buffalo cauliflower and I was like yes! I did a bit of research and liked what I saw the recipes were creating a batter, dipping then baking the cauliflower and adding the pepper sauce and voila. I combined the best of what I saw with my own acumen and came up with what you see here.

Here's the roadmap:

So you are going to season your flour and then create a batter, dip and bake the cauliflower and add a pepper sauce bake again and injoy!

Here is what you will need:

2 T. extra virgin olive oil

cookie sheet

Evenly coat the bottom of a cookie sheet with the olive oil and set aside

Preheat your oven to 450 degrees

The Star:

1 medium cauliflower, bout 1.5lbs, cut into about 1” pieces (about 4 cups)

Batter:

¾ cup flour

1 T. cornmeal

1 T. sesame seeds

3 t. smoked paprika

3 t. garlic powder

2 t. salt

1 t. pepper

1 t. onion powder

½ t. sage

½ t. oregano

½ t. steak seasoning

1 T. worcestershire sauce

1 cup milk

½ cup water

Mix the dry spices into the flour. Slowly stir in the milk and the worcestershire sauce and add this a bit at a time to get your batter the consistency of a thick pancake mix.

If you like you may have a taste of the batter to test for seasoning. It should taste just a bit salty.  When the consistncy and flavor of the batter is right dip the pieces of cauliflower into the batter and place on the prepared cookie sheet.

Bake in the preheated 450 oven for 12 minutes on the middle rack.

Remove from the oven and take a spatula and carefully turn over all the pieces being careful with any that may be a bit stuck, so as to keep whole if possible. Let them cool for about 10 minutes on the cookie sheet.

In the meantime prepare the hot pepper drench and keep it movin, you're almost there.

hot pepper drench:

4 T. red hot pepper sauce

3 T. butter

3 T. sesame (I love sesame seeds and they add great texture and eye appeal, but they are optional)

melt in a small skillet or sauce pan

using a large spoon drench all the cauliflower pieces and return to the 450 oven for 5 minutes

Serve with:

celery sticks

carrot Chips

cucumber chips

zucchini chips

blue cheese crumbles

blue cheese dip