Hey there fellow CrossFitters!
This is Monica, I don?t know a lot of you, because I only come to the six a.m. class, and unfortunately, only of few of you are also nuts enough to get up that early to ?get your WOD on?.
I LOVE to cook, and have been eating Paleo to some extent or another for about a year. I?ve recently gotten a lot stricter and am seeing a difference in my performance (PRing on all my lifts) and starting to s-l-o-w-l-y lean out. I am pretty sure I have the metabolism of a sloth, as the result of a lifetime of yo-yo dieting.
When I noticed the CrossFit Bartlett Nutrition page had a ?Recipes Coming Soon? message on it for more than a ?minute?, I thought I might be able share my love of cooking AND my growing collection of Paleo recipes with my gym friends. I asked Justin if he?d like some help, he said YES! So—let?s call this ?installment one? in the CrossFit Bartlett Virtual Cookbook. I don?t cook fancy stuff, and like most of you, my life is crazy-busy; so my recipes tend to be very simple and easy. Eating fresh food DOES take a teensy bit more prep time, but the benefits and the TASTE make it worthwhile. I?ll share my timesaving food prep tips and some of the tools and tricks of cooking Paleo along the way. I hope you try out some of my recipes and let us know how they turn out.
Today?s recipe is Cocoa-Toasted Cauliflower, but you?ll see from the pictures that I added carrots and radishes in with the cauliflower. Here?s why: on Friday I found the following in my fridge?s veggie drawer: one head of slightly wilted cauliflower, ? of a bag of radishes and ? of a bag of carrots, both just ever so slightly soft and wrinkly. The veggies were not truly ?bad? but they were also not very salad-worthy.
You know, I really HATE throwing food away. It totally goes against my strict Catholic, ?poor children are starving in China?, childhood indoctrination. So I decided to try a Cocoa-Toasted Cauliflower, Carrot and Radish Medley. And no, it doesn?t taste like chocolate. The result is actually a wonderfully flavorful, slightly nutty, side dish. I know you are thinking — radishes? Cooked radishes? Really? Ummmm, maybe not. Believe me, roasted radish tastes NOTHING like fresh, they are sweet and very mild and quite good. As a bonus, the leftovers from this dish are delicious when made into a kind of salad by tossing with a balsamic vinaigrette type dressing and served at room temperature.
Cocoa-Toasted Cauliflower
Ingredients:
1 head of fresh cauliflower (plus other fresh vegetables as desired)
1 tablespoon coconut oil, melted
salt to taste
? teaspoon garlic powder to taste
1 teaspoon paprika
; 1 teaspoon unsweetened cocoa
Directions:
1. Preheat the oven to 400F and line a baking pan or sheet with aluminum foil or baking parchment paper.
2. Break cauliflower into florets and place in bowl. (Cut carrots into bite size chunks and cut radishes in half, trimming away roots and stems or bad spots on both) Toss with melted coconut oil. I put the veggies in a big bowl, and pour the oil over them and literally ?toss? them together by flipping the bowl back and forth to make the veggies ?jump? in the bowl (no spoon to wash)
3. Mix garlic powder, paprika and cocoa in a small bowl, then sprinkle over cauliflower and toss until evenly coated. (Note: at this point, this looks kind of weird, sort of like you mixed your veggies with mud, that?s ok)
4. Sprinkle with salt.
5. Bake until the veggies are quite tender, the outsides should be a little ?crisp? and the insides should be soft, similar to an oven-baked French fry. This should take 25-30 minutes. ?Enjoy!
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