Miso Roasted Cauliflower

I started working miso into my everyday cooking a couple months into culinary school at the Natural Gourmet Institute. The school's early chef instructors were heavily influenced by Macrobiotic cooking and eating traditions, which has Japanese roots, so miso paste made a frequent appearance in our class recipes. As I became more familiar (and ultimately fell in love with) the umami packed ingredient, I began testing my own recipes with it and this little cauliflower diddy was born. Since then it's become such a hit that it's firmly planted itself in both my own and my personal cheffing clients' dinner and meal prep rotations.

I always recommend doubling this recipe if you're hoping to have leftovers or are using it for meal prep. It's not rare for Quentin and I to eat it all in a single sitting. All of this is to say that this has been a big hit in the Fresh Erica household.

Time for a fun personal fact: When I was 10 years old, my dad took a new job and my family moved from our cozy NYC suburb to Tokyo, Japan. We lived there until I was 14 and it was, unsurprisingly, one of the most amazing and influential experiences of my life. And I fell in love with Japanese food in a deep, unwavering way while there.

Given that I spent my formative years there, Japanese flavors are some of my favorite to incorporate into my cooking. But before my time in culinary school, miso paste wasn't a staple ingredient in my pantry, having mostly only experienced it unknowingly in the dishes I ate growing up, or when we got back to the US, in the miso soup served at our local sushi haunt. Now, I've found many uses for it beyond soup and this cauliflower recipe, so I keep it stocked at all times. I also love working with it in my personal cheffing clients' homes. If you're new to the world of miso paste like I was, I love this explainer from the wonderful Nami.