Chickpea-Crusted Cauliflower

This recipe takes standard cauliflower and transforms it into crunchy, battered, low-fat nuggets that enhance the flavor of any sauce that you have on hand. It's great for those days when you have leftover sauce from another recipe, as these adapt well to a variety of flavors.

Here, we tossed our chickpea-crusted cauliflower pieces with a mix of homemade buffalo and garlic-parmesan sauces. But this would also work well with a Thai or Indian curry sauce, a homemade tomato sauce, or even a spinach pesto or cream sauce.

One of the more unusual ingredients that we keep in our cupboard is chickpea flour. It can be used in place of regular flour in certain recipes. It adds a kick of healthy legume protein and fiber, replacing some of the flour carbs that you wouldn't want on a low-carb diet.

Chickpea flour makes any recipe taste a bit chickpea-ish, so you can't always substitute it for white/wheat flour, but in certain dishes it works well. It's a nutty flavor. Think of the flavor of Indian chickpea fritters if you have trouble imagining it. It's stronger-tasting than ordinary flour and makes for a nice breading.

Ingredients:

• 1 head of cauliflower
• 1 cup of chickpea flour
• 1 egg
• 10 turns of salt grinder
• 10 turns of pepper grinder
• 2 tbsp avocado oil
• 1/2 cup of milk
• Sauce of your choice, e.g. garlic-parmesan sauce or curry

Preheat oven to 400°F, convection setting.

Cut cauliflower into small florets.

Combine chickpea flour, egg, salt, pepper, milk, and 1 tbsp of avocado oil in a plastic bag until blended. Add florets to bag. Squish around with your fingers until the florets are evenly coated.

Grease a baking pan with the remaining 1 tbsp of avocado oil. Pour the coated florets into the pan.

Bake for 15 minutes or until lightly browned. Flip the florets to ensure that they roast evenly. Then bake for another 15 minutes.

Toss with sauce of your choice and serve.