Oh man, this involves a LOT of cauliflower. We were going to a potluck at the home of one of Ben’s professors, and the guest list looked like there would be 16 people there. I was to bring a “cooked vegetable,” so I bought four heads of cauliflower (8 pounds in all) and made Cauliflower with Lemon-Mustard Butter from epicurious.com.

This involved a much longer period spent slicing cauliflower than I expected. Cauliflower doesn’t want to be sliced, it wants to be florets. Slicing means you get some nice cross-sections and a LOT of crumbs. Oh well. I ended up doing four half sheet pans (regular cookie sheet size) and four quarter sheets, rotating them all in and out of the oven. Maybe more, it got a little hairy there at the end, and I was in some sort of Cauli-Trance.

You bake the slices (and crumbs) for about 15 minutes, then baste them with the sauce—a lot of butter, lemon juice and mustard, with some zest for good measure) and bake for another 10 minute. I’m a sucker for roasted cauliflower, so I’m not the best judge because I’m not picky, but Ben kept eating the finished batches off the serving tray, so I’m pretty sure it’s a hit for people who don’t LOVE cauliflower, as well. It’s very tangy and buttery, and the leftovers (only 12 people ended up being at the party) have been tasty straight out of the fridge.

The other day for lunch I used up the tail end of a bag of pasta, cooking it absorption-style, and at the end I threw in a bunch of the leftover cauliflower and heated it through. That was great: The sauce melted and coated the pasta and the textures were a good match. Yum.