A cabbage with a college education

A recipe for Burmese cauliflower, mint and noodles salad

A year before the persecution of the Rohingya people became known, I went a-travelling round Burma. (Before you dip your quill into your inkwell, courageous opponents of the Myanmar military regime separate themselves from its supporters by calling their country by its old colonial name.) It was an eye-opening introduction to a remarkable country.

Once upon a time, its people took Keeping-Up-With-the-Joneses to a degree Hyacinth Bucket (or Bouquet, as she pronounced it) of the BBC sit-com ‘Keeping Up Appearances’ would have accorded the highest respect.

Between 1044 and 1287, Bagan was the capital of the Bagan Empire. Its rulers and subjects built more than 1000 stupas, 10,000 small temples and 3000 monasteries. On the plains of Bagan alone, an area 104 kilometres square, 3822 surviving temples and pagodas vie with each other in degrees of grandeur. Some of the stupahs are as small as an outside loo, some as large as a tool shed, all built so close together you sometimes have to squeeze between them. 

A woman passed by, propelling a bicycle. Why so many? She shrugged. “One villager builds a temple on his piece of land to his nat (deity). His neighbour feels his god of worship would like one too, and builds one bigger and better.” Hyacinth Bucket would know the feeling.

When you see the size of the cauliflowers piled mountainously high in every local market, you might think the people face the same challenge over vegetables. Burma is a country of abundant produce, the great proportion of it grown on man-made floating islands dotting the 113-square kilometres of Inle Lake lying in the centre of the country. There, with an acrobatic agility, fishermen set down nets that would have Instagramming ‘stylists’ hankering to convert them into sculptural lampshades.

The cauliflowers are not the clichéd size of a baby’s head. They are the size of a beach ball. They seemed so incongruous, familiar brassicas of Northern Europe’s cool daytime temperatures but here displayed alongside mounds of bak choi and aubergines and vegetables associated with Indian and Chinese dishes.

It was the English who introduced the cauliflower to a hotter part of the world - to India in 1822. Pliny had been familiar with the cauliflower aeons before, referring to it in the 1st century AD as a pleasant-tasting cabbage he called a ‘cyma’. In the 12th and 13th centuries, Arab botanists pointed to Cyprus as the origin of the plant - another hot country. In the 16th century, the French rulers of that island began to trade the seeds into western Europe and on into France from Genoa.

Even with such a distinguished lineage, cauliflowers have long suffered the burden of a poor reputation mostly the result of being dreadfully overcooked, a condition not well disguised by coating it thickly in cheesy bechamel sauce.

Then suddenly, about a handful of years ago, British hipsters decided roasted cauliflower steaks would replace kale as the fashion-forward dish of the day. (Whoever decided kale was fashionable? And why? I’ve nothing against it. Softened with a little fried Italian sausage, white beans, chili and garlic, maybe some shell pasta, in a good stock, it’s delicious. But fashionable?) Marks & Sparks - or Marks & Spencers, to clarify for overseas visitors to the UK’s high street chain - was rightly chastised for selling ready-to-cook slices for the price of two whole cauliflowers. The equally popular cauliflower ‘rice’ is surely one of the most absurd and insulting inventions to come out of test kitchens looking to maximise profits.

In Burma’s Shan state, people don’t smother their cauliflowers in cheese and wallpaper-paste white sauces. They steam their florets and turn them while warm in a dressing of finely chopped fresh mint, toasted sesame seeds, chillies, fried garlic and a trickle of a thin tahini-like sauce. It makes a fine one-dish meal or side-salad to grilled skewers of marinated chicken. 

6 cloves garlic, peeled, finely chopped
1 head cauliflower, broken or cut into small florets
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 green chili, finely sliced
1 generous handful fresh mint, roughly chopped
1 scrubbed lime, zested and juiced
1 tablespoon dried shrimp powder (optional)
2 teaspoons Nam Pla fish sauce (optional) or salt to taste
fine rice noodles, boiled, drained (they come packed in per person portions)
1 tablespoon sesame oil
the white of 2 fat scallions sliced paper-thin on the diagonal
1 tablespoon toasted sesame seeds
2 tablespoons tahini paste, thinned to single cream consistency in a little warm water

Fry the garlic until gold and set aside.

Boil the cauliflower in well-salted water only until al dente and still retaining a bite. Drain thoroughly.

Toss the cauliflower with all the remaining ingredients bar the noodles until well combined. Season to taste and fold into the pre-boiled and drained fine rice noodles that have been turned in a shot of sesame oil.

Sprinkle over the sliced scallions and sesame seeds then trickle over the tahini paste.

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