Garlic Mashed Potatoes and Cauliflower (Dairy Free)

This is a great way to hide the dreaded vegetables from picky kids.  They won’t know it’s there if you don’t tell them it is.  My Gr-son, Gabe isn’t all that fond of potatoes either but liked these and cleaned up his plate without any fuss.

Six – Eight Servings

• 6-8 good sized Idaho or Red potatoes (or 3 to 4 small Yukon Gold, or New Red Potatoes per person)
• 1 medium to large head of cauliflower
• 1 tsp salt
• ½ cup almond milk
• 1 stick of margarine cut into cubes
• 4 – 6 or more good sized cloves of garlic
• 1 tsp dried parsley*
• salt and pepper to taste

Peel or scrub the potatoes—most of the nutrients and a lot of fiber are in those potato peelings so if your diners will eat them unpeeled, don’t peel them. Cut them up into 2 inch chunks. Put them in a large pan with water and the teaspoon of salt.

Wash and dissect the cauliflower into medium sized flowerets. Throw the tough stem and leaves into the stock pot or freeze them for when you have a stock pot on the stove. Waste not want not. ;^) If you have a steamer insert that fits on the pan you used for the potatoes, put your cauliflower in there and let it cook while your taters cook. If not, put it in a microwave safe bowl, sprinkle it with a generous amount of water and nuke it in the microwave oven until it is very tender.

While the taters and cauliflower are cooking, firmly crush your garlic with the back of a knife and peel it.  If you want you can chop it up a bit. This might seem like way too much garlic but it takes a lot of garlic to adequately flavor the bland potatoes and cauliflower.  Put the garlic, the almond milk and half of the stick of magarine cut into small chunks in a large (so you don’t have a big mess to clean up) microwave safe bowl. Do this step before you cook the cauliflower in the microwave oven because you want this mixture to sit for awhile infusing garlicky goodness into the milk and margarine. The garlic also cooks and gets soft while it is steeping.

Nuke it in the microwave oven for two to five minutes (however long it takes to melt the butter and bring the milk to a boil) on high. For those of you who don’t use a microwave oven (I’m looking at YOU, Kerryn Jean) you can bring the almond milk mixture to a boil in a sauce pan on the stove set to medium.. Watch it carefully so it doesn’t scorch.

When the potatoes and cauliflower are tender enough to fall apart when a fork is stuck in them, you can proceed in one of two or even three ways. Your choice.

1. Add everything to your food processor beginning with the cauliflower and adding the milk mixture slowly, being sure to get all the garlic in the bowl. Process it until the mash is the consistency you like.
2. My food processor is old and small so it won’t hold all of this stuff so I process the cauliflower and half the milk mixture together and mash my taters with my hand mixer gradually adding the cauliflower and almond milk mixture along with the reserved almond milk.
3. You can do all of this step in a large bowl with your hand mixture starting with the cauliflower and half the almond milk mixture and adding the potatoes gradually along with any almond milk that is needed to get the consistency you prefer. If you need more almond milk to get there, by all means add it.

Turn it out into a bowl and stir in the parsley, salt and pepper and the rest of the margarine.  Let the margarine melt as it will, forming little pools of “butteriness.” These are good with gravy. If you are serving gravy then omit the margarine added in the final step and the parsley.

Now I’m hungry… I think I’ll have a baked potato.