Cauliflower with tahini sauce

For Christmas, I wanted a hearty veggie dish that still looked festive. One of the gifts I'd given my parents was a cookbook by Yotam Ottolenghi, Jerusalem, and I'd challenged them to cook their way through the book.  I figured maybe I could help them out, and start them out with a recipe from the book.  I'd recently had a very similar dish at Sofra, and small middle eastern cafe in Cambridge, and it was delicious, so I had a good idea that tahini sauce and cauliflower were a good match. And, with the pomegranate seeds and fried green onion pieces, it was a seasonally-appropriate color, too!

The base of the dish is roasted cauliflower, and I discovered that not all ovens happily burn the bottom of the pan the way mine does at home. Bummer.  I like the browned bits! Luckily, put it hot enough and you'll get results. I don't think I followed the proper recipe for the sauce, likely because I didn't have all the ingredients I needed, but what I came up with was tasty nonetheless. It's also quite simple, and quick to prepare. Bonus! Here's my version...

Roasted cauliflower in tahini sauce
1 head cauliflower
3-4 dried red peppers
Olive oil
3 sprigs green onions
Seeds from 1/2 pomegranate
Tahini
Lemon juice
salt
pepper
water
Pomegranate molasses

Cut or break the cauliflower into bite-size pieces. Split the red peppers lengthwise, and toss both cauliflower and peppers with olive oil and a decent sprinkling of kosher salt.  Spread into a single layer on a baking sheet, and roast for ~20 minutes at 450F.  You should get some browning, but you don't want blackening.

As that cooks, extract the seeds from the pomegranate. You can either use the thwack-with-a-wooden-spoon-into-a-bowl method, or painstakingly remove the seeds one at a time. The thwacking method might make more of a mess, but it's a heckuva lot more fun.

Chop the green onions into ~1" pieces, and cut lengthwise. Fry those over high heat in some oil, just to take off some of the bite.

For the sauce, put ~1/4C tahini into a mixing bowl.  Add ~2 tablespoons of lemon juice, and a few pinches of salt and some grinds of pepper.  Stir in a tablespoon or two of water, and taste. Add more tahini if it's too lemon-y, more lemon if it's too tahini-y.  Thin with water as needed; you want a runny consistency.

Once the cauliflower is done, lump into a serving platter, and drizzle the sauce all over the top.  Use 2-3 tablespoons of pomegranate molasses and drizzle that over the top.  Sprinkle the green onions and pomegranate seeds over the top, and serve.  Mmm.