michelle picker cooks

Aptly named, the ‘velvet’ in the title lured me to try this Sylvana Franco recipe.

Place a saucepan over medium heat adding 3 cups of milk, 2 roughly chopped cloves of garlic, the white part of a bunch of spring onions and a teaspoon each of cumin seed and ground turmeric. Wash and cut a whole cauliflower into florets and add these to the pan with some salt. Bring to the boil then reduce the heat and partially cover allowing it to simmer for 20 minutes until the cauliflower is tender. Meanwhile, cut some good bread into small pieces and toss them in a bowl with 2 tablespoons each of olive oil and grated pecorino  and a good grinding of black pepper. Spread onto a non-stick oven tray and bake in a hot oven until golden brown and crunchy. Next, cut some bacon or pancetta into strips and fry these until crisp and brown then drain them on some  paper towel. Finely slice the remaining spring onion tops. When the cauliflower is quite tender, puree or sieve the soup until velvety smooth. Serve topped with the croutons, bacon and spring onions.