Cocoa cauliflower, the Weald, Janis Joplin and a gorgeous roasted vegetable side dish

Abundance: Sunday 15 June 2025

My nose has been busy. When it hasn’t been in the blossom of the rose planted by the greenhouse, it has been poking into the first pages of Adam Nicholson’s very promising book Bird School. I love Adam’s writing - always the right amount of colour, nothing extraneous, all lean and muscled but not too much.

I’m only a chapter in, but my neighbours are likely already wondering what I’m doing as a result. Apparently, Adam tells me, birds are programmed at their core to see a pair of eyes as belonging to a predator; hence numerous butterflies have a pair of ‘eyes’ on the upper side of their wings, to avoid becoming breakfast. And so today, the product not of millennia of evolution but a gentle nudge from Adam’s book, I am staring at the bird feeder hoping that by clapping one hand over an eye that the coal tit or the blackbird might stay a little longer before heading to the trees. Let’s just say they aren’t eating out of my hand yet.

I’m making a point of reading for even 5 minutes at the end of the day as a micro-dosed antidote to too many hours at the screen.

The freelancer’s lot is an interesting one. If you are lucky, once in a while life gets too full of work that it keeps you from idling. I’m not a good idler these days - perhaps I used my quota in my younger years - but sitting here for too many hours takes away the chance for too many unexpecteds to happen. The world has had to come to me this last week, and come to me it has.

Adam’s book has taken me to the woods of the Weald and from the cusp of summer into winter. So much so, I’d like to save Bird School for when the fire gets set and the beer stays out of the fridge, but I’m not sure it’ll let me. So on cooler evenings I’ll read it. On warmer evenings, I dive back into Molly Wizenberg’s A Homemade Life¹.

I have rarely been one for reading more than one book at a time - I’m already the slowest, most distractible reader - but, as Leonard Cohen almost said, for these I would make an exception.

I mentioned Molly’s book a little while ago - it’s a series of short instalments, of family, food, life and more besides, and - very differently - she pulls you into another world, as real as the one you are in.

Each story includes a recipe, one of which talks of cauliflower with cocoa and paprika. There are no instructions. The combination immediately made sense even though I couldn’t imagine how it might taste. Sweet, bitter and smoky is a threesome I like very much. There may not be a recipe for it in Molly’s book, but the idea hooked my attention.

Needing a break, I told my wife what I was about to try, met, not unreasonably with a ‘Why do you have to make ridiculous stuff so often?’

Ridiculous as it maybe, it is right on the money. And having eaten it, my wife now agrees. And I hope you will too.

Cocoa and smoked paprika cauliflower

This is pretty good using straight paprika, but to my mind the smoke here just sits more closely with the cocoa. You can break the cauli into florets if you prefer, but I quite like how it looks somewhere between a brain and a cartoon tree.

Makes enough for 4 as a side

1 cauliflower
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp cocoa powder
1 tsp smoked paprika
½ tsp sea salt
good grinding of black pepper

Set the oven to 190℃ fan, 170°C, Gas 5.

Cut a the cauliflower into 2cm thick steaks, place on a sheet of baking paper on a baking tray, and brush with oil. Season well.

Using a fine sieve, dust the steaks with cocoa and smoked paprika. Drizzle with a touch of oil.

Roast for 10-15 minutes and test with the point of a knife - on the firm side of soft is the bullseye - and allow another few minutes if needed. They should like lightly tarmacked yet not quite burnt.

1. Join Molly, Felicity Cloake and me in Italy for a week long writing retreat - it’ll be very special.