Cauliflower with Blood Orange, Creamy Carrot-Kale-Lima Bean Soup, Seitan with Salsa (Almost No Added Fat)

I had a head of cauliflower to use and have enjoyed how tasty the cauliflower is in just a minute of pressure cooking. I thought I'd make a simple sauce by including tomato and bouillon cube, and add the spark of seasonal blood orange, which I found in the store yesterday. I also made a creamy carrot vegetable soup.  Here is what I did:


Ingredients

• 1 head cauliflower cut into florets (approx. 5 cups)
• 2/3 of a medium sweet (or other kind) onion cut into thick half moons approx. 1/4" x 1 1/4" (approx. 1 1/2 cups)
• Medium tomato cut into 1/4" cubes (approx. a cup)
• Blood orange (or other orange) peeled and segmented then sliced into 3/8" pieces
• 1 vegan bouillon cube
• 1/2 cup water
• 1/4 t freshly ground black pepper
• 1/4 t oregano
• 1/2 t salt
• 1 1/2 T garlic powder (or 2 cloves garlic finely minced)
• 3/4 cup onion (of any kind) cut into 1/4" cubes
• 1 cup peas
• 1/8 t turmeric

Process

1. I put all of the ingredients except the garlic powder, cubed onion, peas, and turmeric, into my Instant Pot pressure cooker and cooked on high pressure for just 1 minute.
2. When I was ready to serve, I slowly let out remaining pressure slowly and opened the pot and stirred. It tasted fine but a bit bland, so I added the garlic powder, cubed onion, peas, and turmeric, and turned the pot on in saute mode to heat the peas (they were frozen), then served.

I also made the creamy carrot-ginger soup that I make not so irregularly (I list this dinner as almost being without added fat because of the few cashews in the soup), but added two kale leaves (stems and all), 2 teaspoons of lemon juice, and a half cup of frozen lima beans, while omitting onion (I wanted to whip up a sample for my client who doesn't eat onion). Just for our portion, I mixed in some onion at the end. I served some tasty seitan with salsa on the side.

Results

My wife summed it up best when she said that dinner was good but I've made better cauliflower dishes. The cauliflower was a bit too bland and soft. It was good but could have used more flavor. The soup was also good but not as good as usual. No complaints, though - it was a filling, healthful, and reasonably tasty dinner.

Ideas for the future

I really need to try cooking cauliflower for a minute but under low and not high pressure. If I make a dish like this one again, I should cut the water back to maybe 1/4 cup as the dish was a little too liquidy.

I feel a bit bad that the blood orange, a bit expensive and not often available, didn't exert much of its presence in the meal. I do like the idea of cooking with blood oranges - a dish like this one would have, in hindsight, been better with the fresh uncooked orange pieces added at the end.