Lava Monster Casserole + Cauli Chips

As you may have read in the Pumpkin Bolognese recipe, my darling dearest has been having some digestive issues. The biggest help for that sort of thing is one or more of: Cauliflower, broccoli, or avocado. And semi-genius me came up with the brilliant PLN to concoct a dish with all three at once.

The end result worked, but it would have tasted better with Aldi's bacon-style ham cubes.

Lava Monster Casserole

Implements

• Large casserole dish
• Knives to suit
• A handy, oven-like heat source
• Blending wand or Avocado Slicer

Ingredients

• 2 heads of cauliflower
• 2 cans if coconut cream
• 2 ripe avocados[1] (you can use more)
• 2 heads of broccoli
• A generous amount of bacon bits or ham bits
• Herbs and spices to taste
• Shredded mozzarella
• Butter and soft cheese to taste

Method

• Break your cauliflower into small florets and place them in your casserole dish
  
• Add your bacon bits (we didn't think of this. Whoops)
• Pour two tins of coconut cream over the top to cover most of your florets (If you can't quite manage this, give your casserole dish a little shake to spread everything around. Or stir it up if you like)
  
• Add your herbs and spices (as well as the obligatory salt and pepper)
  
• If you have enough avocado to cover this lot with slices, slice your avocados up and do that. Be as artful as you like. We only had two useful avocados, so we decided to mash them up
  
• Now this is a little concoction we call "white guac" because it contains none of the spices that make proper guacamole a thing. Per avocado, add half a block of chopped Philly to your mixing bowl, and blend until smooth enough. There you go. White Guac.
  
  
• Preheat your oven to 180C or 360F
• If you've gone for the moosh, spread it all over your cauliflower mix. covering as much area as possible
  
• Add your shredded mozzarella. Ours had gone funny in storage, so we had to break it up into little chunks all over the casserole
  
  (And you can add more salt and pepper or spices if you want)
• Insert casserole into the oven and bake until the top is golden brown.
  
• While that's cooking, get all your florets off your broccoli
  
  
• Melt your butter and soft cheese together into a nice sauce
• Pour over your broccoli

You'll notice that, when you cut the casserole crust, the sauce bubbles up like lava. And the crust looks a little bit like a Horta. Hence, Lava Monster Casserole. One dish holds eight serves, and the broccoli does wonders to help absorb all that yummy sauce.

The kids didn't like our bacon-less version. I thought the whole thing was more on the level of comfort food. Rather bland and plain. Bacon will change that next time.

Bonus Recipe Time!

Because we had all these cauliflower cores and broccoli cores, and I despise waste. I hit on the idea of making chips out of them. Technically speaking, they're cauliflower and broccoli chips... but I thought "Cauli Chips" sounded better.

These are ideal for solving the 'salty/crunchy' cravings.

Cauli Chips

Implements

• Deep Fryer
• Food processor with slim slice options
• Big sharp knife

Ingredients

• Cauliflower and/or broccoli stalks
• Salt
• Coconut oil in the deep fryer

Method

• Remove extra leaves from your stalks, and cut to fit in your processor
  
• Slice those stalks into smithereens
  
• Deep fry in small batches until golden brown or crispy
  
• Turn out onto a paper towel and add salt
  

These were very popular with the kids. A nice little more-ish treat to help fill any empty corners. And a good way to get your little ones to appreciate some vegetables.

Also, apologies for the lack of thumbnails towards the end of this photo journal. The current system requires me to manually alter the URL to get thumbnails and doing that for every single photo is harmful to my wrists. I had to quit while I still had a chance of finishing this. Forgive me?

[1] We made the mistake of attempting to use green avocados. Attempting to get them into a useful state involved knives, cursing, spoons to remove both seed and seed skin, more cursing, an attempt to soften them in the microwave, and yet more cursing. Hubby rescued us and our pitiful efforts with two other avocados he had purchased earlier.