For as long as I can remember, my mother has made cauliflower curry for my father every day, rain or shine, regardless of where we are, it is always on the menu. My father is diabetic. He has been one for as long as I can remember. He follows a very strict diet- seven small meals distributed throughout the day. My mother is his caretaker. She prepares and serves all seven meals for him throughout the day, every day.
I often saw my mother, seated in a low wooden stool, next to an electric heater or a flimsy kerosene stove. Her head bent and her back rounded, rolling out a perfectly round roti with a thin, ancient, wooden rolling pin and stirring a pot of cauliflower curry on the stove.
We did not travel much, except some winters to the Terai, the southern flatlands of Nepal, to escape the harsh valley winters. However, when we did travel, even for day trips, she often prepared and carried with her, rotiand curry, mostly cauliflower curry, neatly packed in a hot case or a steel tiffin box.
After I left home my parents came to visit me in Baltimore where I was living with an American roommate. We had a tall galley kitchen with two long windows overlooking a parking lot. My roommate had a few pots and pans that she shared with me. By that time, I had also resigned myself to pasta, easy one pot meals, or microwaveable meals.
My mother, the first time she came to visit me in the US, she brought everything with her and when I say everything, I mean the roti making pan that has been in our family for generations, and the wheat flour to make the roti, neatly packed in clear sealed plastic wrappers. And the day they landed; we went to look for cauliflower in the vegetable starved local grocery store “Eddy’s”. Much later when they came to visit me in Jakarta, we made several runs to the Carrefour hypermarket looking for cauliflower. I remember paying up to five dollars for a head of cauliflower.
My mother’s cauliflower curry is soft and yellow, coated with turmeric, charred cumin seeds, and other fragrant spices and often studded with green peas or dressed in freshly chopped coriander. The savory spices and the crunchiness of peas and coriander perfectly balancing the sweetness and the pillowy softness of the cauliflower. A heap of cauliflower curry with steaming, soft, and stretchy roti or a bowl of pearl white rice with a small perfectly poached egg on the side, followed by a cup of piping hot, sugary, milk tea is my ultimate comfort food.
For me cauliflower curry is synonymous with love, consistency, and stability. But for my mother, this dish represents a more complex reality- her daily toil; her life’s work; her creativity; her responsibility; her love; and perhaps her prison.
My mother’s cauliflower curry
Ingredients
1 head of cauliflower cleaned and chopped, be careful to cut from the stems and not the flowers
Salt as per taste
1/2 tsp cumin powder
1/2 tsp turmeric
few curry leaves or bay leaves
4-5 cloves of garlic
1 tsp ginger paste
3 tbsp of oil or ghee
2 tbsp Ghee
1 small cinnamon stick
2 pods green cardamom
2 whole cloves
half cup shelled peas
half cup chopped coriander
Method
Heat oil in a wok or a saucepan. Add curry or bay leaves then add cinnamon, cloves, cardamom and stir until the color changes to slight brown. Then add garlic and ginger and continue to stir. Add cauliflower then cumin powder, turmeric, salt, and red chili powder if desired, mix well. Cover and cook for 7-8 minutes under low flame. Remove the lid, add peas, and cook for a few more minutes, until soft and yellow. Remove from heat and garnish with chopped coriander.
