First there was this yoghurt tahini sauce, because our son loves yoghurt sauce with rice. Now he was once again a “victim” of my experiments and I needed something to go with it, because naked rice is too boring for me as a meal. So I looked for the rest of the sauce to go with it. Hey, and the result was this tandoori cauliflower with tahini yoghurt sauce.
Cauliflower, with its spicy and almost meaty flavor and texture, can be served as a side dish or, as in our case, as a vegetarian main dish. It tastes hearty and its unique Indian flavors allow you to impressively serve the tandoori cauliflower. Feel free to make the yoghurt sauce ahead of time and use it on salads or other oven-baked vegetables too.
Tandoori cauliflower is actually a typical Indian grilled appetizer, where fresh cauliflower is marinated in a marinade of yoghurt and herbs refined with Indian spices and grilled. Tandoori is a well-known dish served in Indian restaurants. We love tandoori food too, precisely because of that unique taste and roasted aroma from the grill. The best known are probably the tandoori chicken, tandoori naan and paneer tikka, which are prepared in the tandoor (clay oven).
The Tandoori cauliflower with tahini yogurt can be made with either a whole cauliflower or just the cauliflower florets. You can serve it as an appetizer, side dish with Indian food or as a vegan/vegetarian main course. This tandoori cauliflower has long been a family favorite. How many times have I cooked this? Forget. We usually eat it with rice or sometimes in wraps topped with some of that tahini yogurt with cilantro and/or fresh mint.
if you like our Tandoori cauliflower with tahini yogurt, you might also be interested in these dishes:
- Gnocchi with cauliflower and thyme sauce
- Mujadara – Lebanese vegan lentils with rice
- Ayurveda bowl with radish pickles and thahini miso drizzle
- Khichadi – rice and lentil comfort food
- Cauliflower steaks from the oven
- vegan turnip curry
Tandoori cauliflower with coriander tahini yoghurt – vegan
Equipment
Ingredients
Tahini Yoghurt Sauce:
- 400 grams soy yoghurt
- 1 small Bunch of fresh coriander
- 2 tbsp. tahini*
- kosher salt*
- Pepper*
Options:
- well
- rice
Instructions
To make the tandoori spice mix:
- Roughly chop the cinnamon sticks. Crush in a mortar and pestle with the cloves, cardamom, cumin and coriander seeds. Add the paprika powder, turmeric, cayenne pepper and nutmeg to the spice mixture and mix.
Tandoori Cauliflower:
- Clean the cauliflower and cut into bite-sized pieces (florets).
- Peel and finely chop or grate the ginger. Do the same with the garlic.
- Squeeze lemon.
- Mix 2 tablespoons of the tandoori spice mix with the chopped ginger and garlic. Stir in 200 g of the yoghurt and the squeezed lemon juice. Season with salt.
- Roll the cauliflower in the tandoori marinade so that everything is well marinated. Cover and leave to marinate for at least an hour and a half. It gets better overnight.
- Preheat the oven to 180°C and line a baking tray with baking paper.
- Bake the cauliflower in the oven for about 25 minutes. Reduce temperature to 150°C and bake for a further 20 minutes or until tender.
Cilantro Tahini Yogurt:
- Wash the coriander, pluck the leaves from the stalks and chop. Mix the cilantro with the tahini and yogurt. Season with salt and pepper.
- Serve the tandoori cauliflower with the coriander yoghurt.
