But despite by borderline neurotic nomenclature hangups, cauliflower can serve well as a replacement for meat in many applications. Last week I used it to replace the ground beef in tacos.

A head of cauliflower packed into my food processor. Ideally this probably wouldn't be done in such a large batch but I was testing the limits of my new food processor.

I seared the cauliflower pebbles in batches to get some brown on them.

Onions, habaneros, and garlic in the pan.

Followed by spices, tomatoes, and then finally the cauliflower.

Tasty stuff!

These tacos tasted great and were a nice twist on your normal American style ground beef taco.

The cauliflower added an interesting flavor and texture,

Chop into chunks, then process the head of cauliflower to little pebbles. Sear in batches on extremely high heat and remove from pan. Caramelize some onions, then add garlic and habanero and cook about 2 minutes. Add your taco spices (cumin, coriander, chili powder, chipotle, paprika, oregano, sugar, salt, etc, etc). Add a 28oz can of diced tomato and simmer about 10 minutes. return the cauliflower to the pan and stir to mix. Cook for about 5 minutes and remove from heat. Serve with tortillas, cheese, salsa, guac, and whatever you like on a taco.

I have pistachio butter at work, but if you don't work at an ice cream factory, you could easily make some with pistachios and a food processor.

A silky batter. The idea is that the whipped egg whites counter-balance the dense pistachio butter.

I ended up doing this half on the stovetop, and half in the oven, once I realized there was no way I could flip this thing.

I placed the first one onto my pizza peel right out of the oven and it stuck on there real bad and broke as I was trying to get it off. No worries though, I made plenty of batter.

This is my trying to fix a broken buttercream. More on that later.

The candies on top are actually little candy coated pistachios that taste like pistachio flavored nerds!

Happy Birthday Food in my Beard!

This is the first pastry recipe that I have actually written myself and I'm really proud that it came out! I combined aspects of some of my favorite cake and pancake recipes, and used whipped egg whites to counter-balance the super dense pistachio butter. Yes the technique of half stovetop half oven might be kinda weird, but I made this change after I realized that I would be unable to flip these huge pancakes.

This makes 4 monster pancakes. Enough to have one f-up and still salvage 3 for a nice cake. I made the pancakes in a 10 inch non-stick and put about 3 ladles of batter into each one. basically ¼ of the whole amount of batter.

4 cups of flour
4 cups of milk
3 sticks of butter
6 large eggs
1 ½ cups sugar
3 teaspoons of salt
3 teaspoons of baking powder
2 teaspoons of baking soda
about 1 cup of pistachio butter (make it in your food processor)

Separate 3 of the eggs. set aside the 3 egg whites. Mix the 3 whole eggs and 3 yolks with the sugar and butter and beat well. Next add the milk and pistachio butter and mix well. In a separate bowl, mix the dry ingredients. In a cold bowl, beat the egg whites to stiff peaks. slowly mix the dry ingredients with the wet ingredients until well combined. Finally fold in the whipped egg whites to lighten the mixture. Do this in 3 batches, each time folding gently until you see no more streaks of white.

In a non stick pan with some butter on medium, pour in a quarter of your batter. Give it about 5 minutes on the stovetop, then put it in a 500 degree oven for about 5-10 minutes until the top looks fully cooked. Put it back onto the stovetop and finish cooking before flipping it out onto a cooling rack.

Frost with a nice dark chocolate buttercream. I have no idea what was in mine, I started with one from a very popular food blog and this is the third recipe I have been not happy with from it! The buttercream broke and I tried heating it to save it but it wouldn't come together. Then I started running around my house trying to get any natural emulsifier into the frosting. Finally i pulled it together with a sprinkle of gelatin, some melted chocolate, and an aggressive mixing with a stick blender.

Thank you thank you thank you all for reading! To everyone who has ever commented, reached out to me via email, met me on the street, come to a party, or cooked one of my recipes, you are why I do it! Thank you

I was lucky enough to be invited to one such dinner tonight at Stone Hearth Pizza Co. in Allston, Ma. Stone Hearth happens to be a customer of mine at my day job where I make gelato. I knew some of the most discerning tongues in the city would be tasting my gelato, so I wanted to bring something special. My blogger friend Bianca (who I knew would be at the dinner tonight) has been raving about "ube" ice cream, a frozen treat made with a purple yam common in the Philippines. While I couldn't get my hands on purple yams, when I saw purple sweet potatoes at the Somerville Winter Market I jumped for them.

The purple sweet potatoes were so vibrant!

My stick blender at work is way better than the one I have at home.

Pouring it into the machine.

This was so good! I don't always eat the gelato at work, but I finished this whole serving with no problem!

I packed this up and shipped it off to Stone Hearth for everyone to taste tonight. Thanks to Stone Hearth for having me, can't wait to see everyone!

So make sure to check out Stone Hearth for their awesome pizza, and more importantly the gelato!  Yea, you're not gonna be able to get this flavor, but you can be sure that every flavor is awesome and hand made in small batches, by me!

When making ice cream or gelato with something like sweet potato or pumpkin, it has the tendency to either get icy, or not be flavorful enough. This is because you need lots of potato to get flavor, but potato is full of water, and when you freeze water, you get ice. The secret here is to add some milk powder which turns the water in the potato into milk and makes your gelato super dense and creamy.

1 quart of whole milk
1 cup cream
250 g sugar
60 g nonfat milk powder
200 g cooked sweet potato (about 1 sweet potato, 1 cup of mashed sweet potato)
1/8th teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
a few drops of lemon juice

Bake the potato until very tender. Warm the milk, cream and sugar on the stove. When it is very warm, whisk in the milk powder. Next add the rest of the ingredients and blend with a stick blender. Chill, then freeze in an ice cream maker according to your manufacturers instructions. Best within the first day or two.

A new thing I like to do when blending soups, is to use different levels of cooked onion to add dimension of flavor in the final product. Here you can see some very cooked onions, and some almost raw ones. This picture is about 1 minute before the garlic and rosemary hits the pot.

Roast the potatoes with high heat to get nice crisp browned edges.

5 ingredients. Onion, garlic, rosemary, potato, veggie stock.

The ketchup was so perfect on here. It added a brightness to the earthy soup.

It literally tasted like roasted potatoes with ketchup. Cause that's pretty much all it was.

I ate leftovers of this soup all week!

This soup is:
Potato
Veggie stock
Onion
Garlic
Rosemary
Ketchup for garnish

Cube the potatoes. Fill your baking sheet. Toss with some oil and salt. Roast at 500 until browned on all sides, tossing once in the middle of cooking.
Dice 2 very large onions. Take 2/3rds of the diced onions and caramelize. Add the rest of the onion and cook a few more minutes just to soften and sweat. Add in the diced garlic and rosemary. Cook 1 more minute and add some veggie stock, scraping any fond from the bottom of the pan. Finally add in the potatoes and add more stock until they are just slightly covered with liquid. Give it a simmer for maybe 10 minutes stirring often. Blend smooth with a stick blender, adding more stock as desired to reach your idea consistency. Serve with ketchup!

There is a chinese place next to my job. Like literally next door. It takes me 10 steps to walk there. Lunch costs 5 dollars for anything you want and it comes with crab rangoons. And if i walk to them to order, they do me a favor and walk it back to me when it's ready. It's seriously hard for me to not to cave, but when I have something like this in my lunch box, it makes it ok.

Tuna, cucumber, carrot, coconut milk, fish sauce, sriracha, lime juice, cilantro, scallions. Put it on some mixed greens, top with peanuts and more lime.  Or, ya know, toss it in a sub roll or something.

Not much to this one, some ice, banana, avocado, lime juice, and flax seed in the blender. You could do some yogurt or milk in here if you wanted.

Thats it. I really liked this drink, I made it 3 mornings in a row!

This isn't my first time making an avocado drink. For a boozy fun version, check out this super old post.

Stay tuned all week for more healthy stuff, and much more bananas and avocados.