Pale, watery and smells faintly of farts.

Everyone knows cauliflower right? Pale, watery, smells faintly of farts. Not if you roast it. Then it's nutty, sweet, juicy and about as far away from the price you pay for the cheese sauce as you can get. And it loves a bit of cumin and lemon juice. Had this tonight with stir fried mushrooms, sprout-tops and mixed grains. If you fancy it, you will need:

For the roast cauliflower:
One large or two small heads of cauliflower, leaves trimmed and broken into large florets
A generous teaspoon of (preferably freshly) ground cumin
A really generous dressing of olive oil
Salt, pepper and the juice of half a lemon

For the stir fry:
Half a cup of brown rice or mixed grains, cooked until tender and then rinsed (I used a mixture of rice, spelt & quinoa because I'm in some sort of world's-most-middle-class competition and I won't beaten. And it tastes really nice)
300g of mushrooms, cleaned and coarsely chopped
one head of sprout tops, leaves separated and stalks finely sliced
one inch of fresh ginger, one shallot, one red chilli, two cloves of garlic, all finely chopped
Two eggs
Soy sauce
Fish sauce
Sesame Oil
Juice of half a lemon
Olive oil for frying

In a roasting tray toss the cauliflower, cumin & olive oil until the florets are well coated. Season with the salt & pepper and put into a 175C fan oven for ten minutes.

In a large frying pan, shallow saucepan or wok fry the mushrooms, ginger, shallot, chilli and garlic in the oil, on a medium heat, until all the water from the mushrooms has evaporated.

Go back to the cauliflower, squeeze over the lemon juice, generally throw around the roasting pan a bit and return to the oven. Brown bits should be starting to appear.

Back to the wok: Add the sprout tops and increase the heat. Once the sprout tops have wilted add the grains and increase the heat to "really really noisy". Keep stirring. Once you can smell the grains crack the eggs on top of the frying grains and leave for a bit to start to set. Once they've started to set, break up and stir through the grain mixture. You should be stirring bits of cooked egg through, not stirring raw egg into your grains.

Check the cauliflower. If it's starting to go from "brown-bits" to "black bits" you should remove and keep warm. If not, leave it in there. It'll only get better.

Finally at the wok: Add a dash each of soy sauce, fish sauce and sesame oil and the lemon juice. Stir through, let it reduce a bit and then check the seasoning. Adjust to taste with soy sauce for salt and a bit more lemon juice if you need.

Finally, get the cauliflower from the oven and serve on the stir-fried grains. I promise you won't miss the meat.