Recipes Fregola with Minted Cauliflower Be the first to rate & review! This terrific vegetarian entrée features fregola. Mourad Lahlou likes making the dish with seasonal heirloom tomatoes baked in salt; roasted grape tomatoes are a fine substitute. Slideshow: More Amazing Vegetarian Dishes By Mourad Lahlou Mourad Lahlou F&W Star Chef » See All F&W Chef Superstars Marrakesh-born chef Mourad Lahlou is known for his deftly reinvented Moroccan dishes at Aziza in San Francisco. Here, he tells F&W about his amazing take on Moroccan bastilla, what he's learned from reading Harold McGee and the virtues of steaming vegetables instead of blanching them. What’s your most requested recipe, the one dish you’re most known for? My bastilla. The way we’re making it right now is unique. In Morocco, a classic bastilla is pretty much a potpie: a meat stew topped with sweetened and spiced ground almonds, all covered in flaky warka dough (a lot like phyllo). In Morocco I’ve always found it one-dimensional and too sweet, when there should be a balance of sweet and savory. At Aziza we confit duck legs: First we cure them overnight in a version of ras el hanout that we call our Aziza curry, then slow-cook the cured legs in duck fat. We mix the tender confited meat with caramelized onions and raisins, and then wrap them in phyllo, with toasted almonds ground up with cinnamon and orange blossom water. It comes to the plate in a warm, tidy phyllo package, with all the aromas locked inside, so it looks like a present on the plate. We serve it with a tart verjus crème fraîche to cut the richness of the duck, and a seasonal accompaniment like roasted turnips, tiny, slightly bitter ones to also add more complexity. Every bite has a little surprise: It’s savory, moist, tender, it has crunch, it has everything that you would want in a dish. What’s your favorite cookbook of all time? Since I never went to culinary school or worked under any chefs before running my own restaurant, I’ve learned the most from Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking. It helped me understand what was going on when I cook—what happens to the fibers and molecules when I boil leaves or poach an egg. He lives in San Francisco and we’ve since become close friends. Right now we’re working on finding a way to prevent meat reductions from becoming too sticky. Without him I would not have been able to understand food as well as I do. What’s one technique everyone should know? Steaming. People are so obsessed with blanching; they love that crunch. But steaming is a powerful way to create pristine flavors. When you take a piece of fish and steam it over water, or water with aromatics like spices or citrus peel, you actually taste the ingredients. Unlike, say, a curry, which is so heavily spiced you can’t taste the individual ingredients. There’s nothing wrong with a curry, but when you want to appreciate the clean flavors of a vegetable or a single piece of fish, you need to treat it with respect, and steaming is one of the most respectful ways to cook something. Particularly if you’re paying $7 or $8 a pound for vegetables straight from the farmers’ market, why would you want to put them in a pot with tons of garlic and spices and caramelize them and reduce them down? You don’t need a fancy steamer. Just get a $5 bamboo steamer from an Asian market and set it over a frying pan of water. You’ll never dry a food out, either, like you can in an oven. Salt the food and the steam water; I try to prepare the steaming water for the dish, because a lot of the flavor drips back into the liquid as you steam. So I’ll put kaffir lime leaves in there, sometimes Meyer lemon leaves or zest, bonito flakes, fresh ginger, jasmine tea; the steam carries the flavor. Just don’t let the water touch the food, and remember you only want to heat the food through, you don’t want to make it soft or mushy. Can you share one great entertaining tip? If you’re throwing a party, you should be having more fun than anybody else. If you’re not—if you’re slaving away in the kitchen while everybody else is enjoying the music and these great conversations and food—then you’re not throwing a party, you’re throwing work. If you want to cook something elaborate, do it ahead of time. Make the meal over a week, and choose dishes that taste better with time, like braised things. Instead of roast chicken, which you have to make the day of and can dry out quickly if you’re not watching closely, make a chicken tagine. It will stay tender and juicy and improve after a few days in your refrigerator. Right before serving it, brown it for 20 minutes in the oven—nothing could be easier. Or instead of a fresh salad, which requires a vinaigrette be made and tossed just your guests arrive, braise some greens a few days ahead of time—they’ll taste better reheated. In Morocco we don’t make anything last minute, like fresh salads or roast chicken. Everything is made way ahead of time, so when people eat, that’s it— everyone sits down and eats. It’s much more fun. Food & Wine's Editorial Guidelines Updated on June 17, 2016 Print Rate It Share Share Tweet Pin Email Photo: © Kamran Siddiqi Active Time: 30 mins Total Time: 1 hr Yield: 4 Ingredients 1/2 head of cauliflower 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons heavy cream 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons water 4 tablespoons unsalted butter Salt 1/2 pint grape tomatoes 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil 1 1/2 cups fregola 1/2 cup vegetable broth 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper 1/4 cup mint leaves, torn Directions Preheat the oven to 350°. Grate half of the cauliflower on the large holes of a box grater, stopping when you reach the stems; you should have about 1 cup of grated cauliflower that resembles coarsely grated parmesan. Finely chop the stems and the remaining cauliflower; you should have about 2 cups. In a saucepan, add the chopped cauliflower, cream, water and 2 tablespoons of the butter; season with salt. Cover and cook over moderate heat until the cauliflower is tender and the liquid is nearly evaporated, 8 minutes. Scrape the mixture into a food processor and puree until very smooth. Wipe out the saucepan and return the puree to it; keep warm. In a small baking dish, toss the tomatoes with the olive oil. Roast for about 10 minutes, just until the skins begin to burst. Meanwhile, bring a large saucepan of salted water to a boil. Add the fregola and cook until al dente. Drain the fregola and return it to the pot. Add the vegetable broth, the crushed red pepper and the remaining 2 tablespoons of butter and cook over low heat, stirring until the sauce is creamy. Stir in the grated cauliflower and cook until just tender, about 5 minutes. Stir in the mint. Spoon the cauliflower puree onto plates. Top with the fregola and roasted tomatoes and serve immediately. Suggested Pairing Clean, lemony Soave. Rate it Print