Charred, golden cauliflower roasted with parmesan, piled onto Caesar sauce and topped with crispy parmesan and prosciutto makes a very luxurious salad the whole family will love. And the best part? It takes just 30 minutes to make.

Cauliflower for me is the ultimate blank canvas. It’s a vegetable that loves to carry bold, strong flavours and I’m taking advantage of that with this salad.

This is one of my favourite ways to prepare vegetables – roast them until charred and golden, then pile them on top of some kind of flavour-packed sauce base (miso roasted sweet potatoes, crispy dukkah potatoes or whole roasted cauliflower with tomato pesto are more examples of this). It means every spoonful is loaded with all the lovely flavours, and creates a gorgeous mix of textures.

Here, I’m pairing parmesan-loaded roasted cauliflower with creamy Caesar sauce, crispy prosciutto and parmesan crisps. It’s a bit like a Caesar salad but with cauliflower.

Why you’ll love the salad

• Absolutely PACKED with flavour – this is the cauliflower recipe for someone who thinks they don’t like cauliflower.
• Quick and easy – it comes together in just 30 minutes, with minimal hands-on time.
• Great hot or cold, and perfect for meal prep.

Ingredients

I always love the thrill of a SUPER flavour-packed recipe that uses very minimal ingredients, and this is definitely one of those!

• Cauliflower. This has to be one of my favourite vegetables. It’s incredibly versatile and can take on bold flavours, which is what we’re doing here. Cauliflower’s vary in size so for context I’m using a large cauliflower here.
• Parmesan. This is almost as key as the cauliflower in this recipe. We’ll use it in three ways – on the cauliflower, in the Caesar sauce and as crunchy parmesan crisps for texture on top. Use freshly grated parmesan if you can – pre-grated doesn’t tend to melt as well. You could use another strong cheese like cheddar, pecorino or manchego instead.
• Prosciutto. This soft, silky, paper-thin cured ham transforms into the ultimate flavour enhancer when you pop it into the oven to crisp up for about 10 minutes. If you’re vegetarian, leave it out and use more crispy parmesan (and perhaps add a dollop of basil pesto or wild garlic pesto). You could also use streaky bacon.
• Caesar sauce. We’ll use aioli as the base (I love using my super easy egg-free aioli), and then parmesan, miso paste, Dijon mustard and a little fish sauce. This stuff is CRAZY good and I always have the sauce on hand in the fridge. Use more mustard if you can’t find miso paste.

How to make it

Slice your cauliflower into bite-sized florets. Cauliflower can be messy to chop (all those little crumbly bits flying everywhere!) so I often find the easiest, mess-free way to do it is to pull the florets apart by hand. You can literally tear them from the stem!

Toss them with olive oil and salt, then roast for 10 minutes. After that, scatter-grated parmesan all over, then pop it back in the oven for another 10 minutes until charred and lovely.

Pile more grated parmesan and the prosciutto onto another oven tray, and pop in the oven for 8 minutes with the cauliflower to crisp up, then mix the Caesar base sauce.

Spoon your Caesar sauce onto the base of a serving plate, then pile the roasted cauliflower on top. Finish by scattering the crispy parmesan and prosciutto on top, along with the fresh basil leaves.

Got a question?

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