Cauliflower Feta Spaghetti

Ingredients: What to know

First of all, this recipe can be super cheap if you have access to an Aldi. Nothing needs to be premium here so feel free to go as cheap as you can.

• You don’t have to use spaghetti. Really, any pasta shape will work here. I tried with a few different ones and it’s actually easier to make this with a smaller pasta shape like shells or orecchiette, but there’s something about the long spaghetti strands and the somewhat “meaty” roasted cauliflower that I enjoyed. Spaghetti is also usually the cheapest pasta shape you can buy.
• You need one small cauliflower: You’ll use most or all of the florets from a small head, so if you have a fairly sizeable cauli, you will probably have leftovers.
• Smoked paprika and oregano are my dried spices of choice but there is a lot of potential here. Feel free to use an Italian blend or some thyme, dried parsley, etc. I didn’t always use the smoked paprika in my testing and it’s fine without that too. Just raid your herbs and spices and use something.
• I love fresh chives here, but parsley works too.
• The recipe calls for some parmesan style cheese – whether that be parmesan itself, pecorino or a generic Italian hard cheese. An strong cheddar would work too especially if you’re on a budget. Vegetarians will want to watch out for animal rennet that’s common in Italian cheeses like parmesan.

Important: How to get the texture and flavor just right

It’s an easy recipe but it’s not always forgiving – there are a few things you want to pay close attention to for the best result. After testing this recipe 6 times, I made all the mistakes so you don’t have to!

• We add the garlic, smoked paprika, oregano and lemon zest towards the END of the roasting time. This keeps the flavor really bright and stops the garlic burning because realistically the 25-30 minutes the cauliflower needs to roast is too long for garlic and herbs to hold onto their flavor. By timing it right, this dish has huge flavor, more than you’d have expected.
• You want to be generous with the olive oil to keep the cauliflower nice and rich, and help the sauce stay saucy. I was sparse with the oil on the batch photographed, to keep everything looking a little cleaner for the photos, and the cauli wasn’t as decadent as I’d have liked. Don’t be like me – embrace the messy pan and enjoy some oil.
• Once it’s tossed with the pasta, you need to serve it really quickly because it dries out fast. Pasta cooking water is great for giving a velvety smooth creamy texture to your pasta dish, but it soon gets absorbed into the pasta and turns dry (which made for a maddeningly difficult time photographing it). If you feel like this recipe might need to sit for a while, or if the levels of creaminess are really important to you, it’s worth adding a nice pour of heavy (double) cream to the pan when you mix up the cauliflower and feta. This will help its resilience.

Leftovers?

I find leftovers of this dish dry out a little, but a pour of cream or milk in the container when you reheat it will work wonders. I’d also suggest cutting the cauliflower up a little finer for the leftovers so that it heats more evenly.