Cauliflower Steaks with Baked Fennel & Red Pepper Sauce

My vegetarian recipe for the week! This recipe is a combination and tweaking of a couple of recipes i saw on Bon Appetit. I happen to love cauliflower, red peppers and fennel! So this 'salad' of sorts in a combination of a few of my favorite veges. I guess in the end it's not really a summer salad, but it was still delicious on a crisp Melbourne summer eve.

On a side note I'm totally jealous of the skills of an awesome person i recently met named Kai who is taunting me with photos of batches of macarons he is making seemingly with incredible ease! Whilst these delicious treats are something i still haven't quite mastered, his macarons are shop-worthy perfections, and tonight he sent me images of... salted caramel macarons!

It's not fair. I'm going to see if i can coax a guest post out of him so he can share a few of his secrets.

Ingredients (Serves 4)

• 1 head of cauliflower
• 3 baby fennel
• juice and zest of 1 large lemon
• 1 bunch parsley, chopped
• 5 tomatoes
• 1 red pepper
• 100gm feta
• Salt and pepper
• 4 tbsp olive oil
• 3 shallots, chopped
• 2 scallions, chopped

Method

Preheat oven to 180 degrees
Cut the tomatoes and peppers into large pieces and place in a baking pot
Transfer to oven and cook for 30 minutes or until very soft

Puree or pass through a fine sieve and set aside.

Clean out the pot and place back over the stove at medium heat with 1 tbsp olive oil
Cut the fennel bulbs each into 6 wedges and transfer to the pot

Saute until the fennel begins to turn slightly golden
Combine the shallots, lemon, 1 tbsp olive oil, some salt and pepper and half of the parsley in a bowl

Mix through the fennel, cover and transfer to the oven

Bake for 20 minutes or until the shallots are golden.

Transfer to another bowl.
Cut the cauliflower into 4 1/2 inch thick steaks; don't stress if they break up a bit, it happened to me!
Heat 1 tbsp olive oil in a large frying pan over medium heat
Add 2 'steaks' and cook for 2 minutes on each side or until golden

Transfer to oven and cook for a further 15 minutes or until soft throughout
Repeat for the other 2 steaks.
To plate, spoon some of the sauce onto a plate and top with the cauliflower and some of the fennel.
Then top with some of the remaining parsley and scallions and crumble feta over all.