Take a decent sized cauliflower and cut off the base so as to give a flat surface for it to stand on.
Put it head down in a deep pan of heavily salted water (imagine the taste of sea-water and go for that). Boil it until the fork goes in nice and easy, but not so much as it is collapsing.
(Now I should say at this point, that when I cooked this recently, instead of doing the whole head whole, I broke out the big florets and cooked it in about six pieces. It worked just as well and was probably easier to get to the right degree of softness when boiling.)
Place the head (or florets) onto a wire rack or draining surface and leave to go cold. At the very least it must stop steaming - say around 25 minutes - but the colder it gets, the better the final dish.
When cold, dress with a good olive oil (they always say that don't they - hey, use the best you have to hand....it'll be okay) and put the well dressed head/florets onto a hot baking tray and give a last sprinkling with ground salt (not too much.....it's already pretty well seasoned from the water). Put into a really hot oven. Go 450 (2220 C) or thereabouts if your oven will do it. Now leave it until it really starts to brown up and caramelise. You'll almost see little bits of burnt black appearing on the tips here and there (in fact you will) and this is good. You want that brown almost burnt look for the flavour. (Don't be silly though - I don't mean like a charred mass on a plate here! Just do it until it looks as good as you dare.)
Now take it out and serve it, maybe with a drizzle of olive oil or whatever, and I promise. What you put in your mouth will be like no cauliflower you have ever eaten before. It'll be sweet and unctuous. You'll eat it hot in slices with aioli and onion houmous, finish it off cold for your supper, it'll be great. And no ordinary cauliflower with the shit boiled out of it will ever do it for you again. Promise.
) but true to the guy's claims it really does work a bit of magic. With the initial salting, I followed my normal 'pasta routine' of salting to the point of tasting like say, the level of a soup I would eat, but then went a bit more. As I say, I finished up with a slightly heavier saltiness than I'd ordinarily go for with vegetable cooking, a bit more tending towards sea-saltiness.
