Pasta with roasted cauliflower, preserved lemon and hazelnuts

More with the preserved lemons, because once you've made them, you've got to find things to do with them. I ran across this batch of four recipes online, any one of which looks plausible. I started with this one, which the author describes as the result of cooking with what was in the larder. I adapted it very slightly to what was in mine.

Orecchiette with roasted cauliflower, preserved lemon and hazelnuts

From theguardian.com, a Rosie Birkett recipe

Ingredients

1 small cauliflower, broken into pieces

Crushed red pepper

1½ tablespoons olive oil, divided

1/3 cup golden raisins

¾ cup white wine, divided

2 tablespoons chopped shallot

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 preserved lemon, chopped, seeds discarded

4 anchovies, optional

½ cup water

1 package orecchiette

2 tablespoons whipping cream

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley

¼ cup toasted hazelnuts, chopped

Grated Parmesan cheese

Olive oil for drizzling

Method

Toss cauliflower with 1 tablespoon olive oil, crushed red pepper and a generous pinch of salt. Roast at 350 for a half hour or until it picks up a golden color. Keep warm in oven.

Soak raisins in 5 tablespoons white wine. Set aside.

Cook pasta according to package directions. Meanwhile, heat ½ tablespoon olive oil in a large skillet. Cook shallots and garlic over medium heat until starting to soften. Stir in lemons and anchovies, breaking up anchovies with back of a spoon to dissolve them. Add the remaining white wine and cook until substantially reduced. Add wine-soaked raisins and ½ cup water and cook to reduce again.

When pasta is cooked, toss together with sauce, cream, lemon juice, parsley and nuts. Garnish with Parmesan and drizzle with olive oil.

Rating: Quite nice. Dave said it was a mouth brightener to counteract a day dampener. (We did taxes yesterday, so this was saying quite a bit. Ouchie.) The anchovies were a fairly mild presence, but if you don't care for them at all, by all means leave it out and this will be fine. Further proof that what's-in-the-house meals turn out better if you're careful about what's in the house to play with.