Italian Marsala Roasted Cauliflower with Hazelnut, Raisins and Crispy Capers | Cavolfiore Arrosto al Marsala, Nocciola, Uvetta e Capperi Croccanti
Updated: Oct 24
This is Sicilian agrodolce logic applied to a whole head of cauliflower, with no besciamella, no cheese and no oven dish anywhere in it. The head is cut into thick wedges through the core, roasted hard on a preheated tray until the faces are deep brown, then glazed at the last minute with dry Marsala reduced with vinegar until it coats a spoon.
Four things go on top and each does a job. Raisins plumped in more Marsala carry the sweetness. Nebrodi hazelnuts carry the fat and the crunch. Salted capers fried until they open like small flowers carry the salt. Parsley and lemon zest keep the whole thing from settling into syrup. The Marsala is secco, a dry wine used for cooking, and it is what stops the plate tasting like a dessert.
Yield: 4 side servings. Prep: 20 minutes. Cook: 40 minutes. Rest: 5 minutes. Total: about 1 hour 5 minutes. Difficulty: intermediate. Course: contorno. Region: Sicily, from Palermo across to Trapani and the Nebrodi.
The Story
Cauliflower and raisins is not a modern invention in Sicily, it is the island canon. Pasta con i broccoli arriminati, the Palermo dish in which cauliflower is stewed down with raisins, pine nuts, saffron and anchovy and stirred through bucatini, has been written down since the nineteenth century and eaten far longer. The pairing of a brassica with dried fruit and nuts arrived with the Arab centuries, between the ninth and the eleventh, along with the sugar cane, the citrus and the habit of balancing sweet against sour. What the mainland calls agrodolce is in Sicily simply how things taste.
Marsala is the newer arrival. The English merchant John Woodhouse shipped fortified wine out of the port of Marsala in Trapani in 1773, found a market for it in Britain, and within a generation the town had an industry. The styles that matter in a kitchen are the dry ones, Secco and the unsweetened Vergine, which behave in a pan like a concentrated dry white with a resinous, slightly oxidative edge. The sweet styles belong to zabaione, not here.
The garnishes are a map of the island. The capers come from Pantelleria and Salina, cured under coarse sea salt rather than vinegar and still grown on terraced walls. The hazelnuts come from the Nebrodi mountains behind Messina, where the Nocciola dei Nebrodi has been cultivated for centuries. The raisins are zibibbo grapes dried in the Pantelleria sun.
Ingredients
For the cauliflower
Cauliflower, 1 large head, about 2 1/4 lb (1 kg) trimmed
Extra virgin olive oil, 1/4 cup (60 ml)
Fine sea salt, 1 tsp (6 g)
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
For the Marsala glaze
Dry Marsala, Secco or Vergine, 3/4 cup (180 ml)
White wine vinegar, 2 tbsp (30 ml)
Honey, 1 tsp (7 g)
Bay leaf, 1
Fine sea salt, 1 small pinch
For the raisins
Golden raisins, ideally zibibbo, 1/3 cup (50 g)
Dry Marsala, warmed, 1/3 cup (80 ml)
For the hazelnuts
Whole hazelnuts, skin on, 1/2 cup (70 g)
For the crispy capers
Capers packed in salt, 3 tbsp (30 g)
Extra virgin olive oil for shallow frying, 1/2 cup (120 ml)
For finishing
Flat leaf parsley leaves, small, 12 to 15
Finely grated lemon zest, from 1/2 lemon
Extra virgin olive oil, a few drops per plate
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Preparation
Step 1
Heat the oven with the tray inside. Set the oven to 450°F (230°C) and slide a heavy rimmed baking tray onto the middle shelf while it comes up to temperature. Cauliflower laid on a cold tray sits in its own steam for the first eight minutes and never recovers that colour. On metal already at oven temperature the face starts browning on contact, which is the difference between roasted and merely baked.
Step 2
Cut the head into wedges. Strip the outer leaves, trim the stem flat and stand the head upright. Cut it into six or eight wedges straight down through the core, so every wedge keeps a piece of stem holding its florets together. Never break it into florets: they have no flat face to brown, they roll, and their tips dry out long before the stem is tender. Aim for about 1 1/4 inches (3 cm) thick at the widest point.
Step 3
Plump the raisins. Warm the Marsala for the raisins in a small pan until it steams, take it off the heat and drop the raisins in for at least 20 minutes while everything else happens. They will roughly double and turn glossy, and the Marsala they have not absorbed goes into the glaze later rather than down the sink, since by then it carries fruit sugar as well.
Step 4
Roast the wedges. Toss the wedges in the olive oil with the salt and pepper, then lay them cut face down on the hot tray in one layer, listening for the hiss. Roast 20 minutes without touching them, turn each onto its other flat face and give it 10 to 12 minutes more. They are ready when the faces are properly brown, not golden, and a knife enters the stem with slight resistance left. Cauliflower taken to complete softness collapses under the glaze.
Step 5
Fry the capers. Rinse the salted capers, soak them 10 minutes, then drain and dry them thoroughly on a towel. Heat the frying oil to about 340°F (170°C) and add the capers away from you, since wet ones spit violently. They bubble hard for 40 to 60 seconds and open into small green flowers. Lift them onto paper the moment the bubbling slows, while they are still bright rather than brown.
Step 6
Toast and rub the hazelnuts. Put the hazelnuts on a small tray in the same oven for 8 to 10 minutes, until the skins crack and the kernels smell sweet. Tip them into a clean towel, rub hard, then pick the nuts out and discard the loose skins, which are bitter. Crush them roughly under a knife into uneven pieces, some halved and some almost powder.
Step 7
Reduce the glaze and dress the wedges. Strain the raisin soaking Marsala into a small pan, add the remaining Marsala, the vinegar, the honey, the bay leaf and the pinch of salt, and simmer until a third is left and the liquid just coats a spoon. Remove the bay leaf. Spoon the glaze over the hot wedges on the tray, turning them once so both faces take it, and let them sit 3 minutes so it grips instead of running.
Plating
Serve this warm rather than scalding. A wedge straight from a 450°F (230°C) oven carries too much steam for the glaze to stay glossy, and the minutes it spends taking on the Marsala are the minutes it needs to settle. Room temperature plates are correct here, since warm ones keep driving steam out from underneath.
Lay the wedges slightly overlapping down a long plate or a shallow oval dish, brown faces up and outward. Spoon any glaze left on the tray over them, then scatter the raisins so they fall between the wedges rather than on top. The hazelnuts go next, unevenly, and the capers last of all.
Finish with the parsley, the lemon zest and a few drops of raw olive oil, and grind pepper over the whole dish rather than each piece. It is also excellent cold the next day, in which case hold back a third of the capers and hazelnuts and add them fresh at the table.
Professional Technique
The technical spine of this dish is dry high heat on a preheated surface. Cauliflower is roughly ninety percent water and releases it fast, so browning depends on driving that water off the contact face faster than it accumulates. A tray already at 450°F (230°C) does that in the first thirty seconds; a cold tray spends them heating up while the wedge steams in a film of its own moisture. Cutting through the core exists for the same reason: a wedge presents a flat face and a floret does not.
The second is glazing at the end rather than the beginning. Marsala carries sugar even in its dry styles, and sugar on a wedge in a very hot oven caramelises within minutes and then burns, giving bitterness where you wanted depth. Applied to a wedge already brown and left off the heat, the same reduction clings to the rough roasted surface and sets slightly as it cools.
Frying salted capers is the third, a small piece of controlled dehydration. A caper is a flower bud packed tight with layers of bract; the cure fills it with salt and the soak draws that salt back out with some water. In oil at around 340°F (170°C) the water left inside turns to steam and forces the bud open, and the surfaces crisp as they dry. Cooler and the bud absorbs oil and stays soft; hotter and the outside browns before it has opened.
Texture and Moisture Control
There are four textures here and three of them are fighting moisture. The cauliflower has to be crusted outside while the stem is just tender, which means pulling it while a knife still meets slight resistance. The capers soften the instant they meet the glaze, so they are never tossed through it, and the hazelnuts go the same way more slowly. Both belong on the plate, not on the tray.
Drying the capers before they meet the oil matters more than any other small step here. A caper still wet from its soak drops the oil temperature, spits dangerously and comes out leathery. Spread them on a towel, pat the top and give them a few minutes in the air. The same applies to the cauliflower: toss it in oil and get it onto the tray immediately, because salted cauliflower left in a bowl draws water and arrives wet.
The glaze is the one element that should stay slightly loose. Reduced to a third it coats a spoon hot and tightens as it cools on the vegetable, which is what you want. Taken further it becomes a lacquer that tastes only of concentrated wine and pulls the crust away when you lift a wedge. If it has gone too far, loosen it off the heat with warm Marsala.
Professional Mise en Place
Everything except the roasting and the glazing can be done hours ahead, which makes this an easy contorno to run for a full table.
Equipment and tools
Heavy rimmed baking tray, preheated in the oven, plus a second for the hazelnuts
Small deep pan for frying the capers and a spider or slotted spoon
Small saucepan for the glaze and a pastry brush
Probe thermometer for the frying oil
Wide palette knife for turning wedges without breaking them
Prepared ahead
Cauliflower cut into wedges, 1 day ahead, refrigerated in a covered container
Raisins plumped in Marsala, 2 days ahead, kept in their liquid
Hazelnuts toasted and rubbed, 3 days ahead in a sealed jar, crushed at service
Capers rinsed, soaked and dried, several hours ahead on a tray in the refrigerator
Glaze reduced, 3 days ahead, kept in a sealed jar at room temperature
Service setup
Oven and tray at full heat 30 minutes before the wedges go in
Capers fried last, within 20 minutes of service, held uncovered on paper
Glaze warmed gently and loosened with a spoonful of Marsala if it has set
Raisins drained, hazelnuts crushed, parsley and zest ready on a small tray
Chef Tips
Read the Marsala label before you buy. Secco and Vergine are the dry styles this recipe is built on; Fine, Dolce and anything sold as cooking Marsala with sugar added push the glaze into dessert territory. If the only bottle is Semisecco, cut the honey and add another teaspoon of vinegar.
Buy capers in salt, not in vinegar. Vinegar packed capers arrive soft and acidic, fry badly and add a sharpness the glaze already accounts for. Salted capers from Pantelleria or Salina keep their structure through the soak and the oil, which is the point of frying them.
Keep the small florets that fall off during cutting. Roast them alongside the wedges: they take far more colour and turn into crisp dark fragments, excellent scattered over the finished dish and doing a breadcrumb job without the bread.
Taste the glaze cold, not hot. Warm Marsala reduction reads as balanced when it is actually too sweet, and on the plate it sits at room temperature. Spoon a little onto a cold saucer, wait a minute, then correct with vinegar a teaspoon at a time.
Common Mistakes
Using sweet Marsala. Fine and Dolce carry a great deal of residual sugar and reduce to syrup. The dish stops being a contorno and tastes like dessert sauce on a vegetable. Buy Secco or Vergine.
Breaking the head into florets. Florets have no flat surface to brown, they roll on the tray and their tips scorch while the stems are still hard. Cutting down through the core gives every piece two flat faces and a stem that holds it together.
Roasting on a cold tray. The first eight minutes go into heating the metal while the cauliflower steams, and nothing afterwards recovers that lost browning. The tray goes in empty and comes out only when the wedges go on.
Glazing before roasting. The sugars in Marsala burn at 450°F (230°C) long before the cauliflower is cooked, leaving a bitter black film. The glaze goes on at the end, off the heat, and is allowed to set for a few minutes.
Frying wet capers. They spit violently, they drop the oil temperature below the point where the bud opens, and they come out soft and oily rather than crisp. Rinse, soak, then dry them properly on a towel before they go anywhere near the pan.
Tossing the garnishes through the glaze. Capers and hazelnuts lose their crispness within a minute of contact with a wet glaze, and the raisins are the only garnish that belongs in it. Scatter the other two on the plate at the last moment.
Wine Pairing
Etna Bianco DOC: Carricante grown on volcanic soil gives a bone dry white with very high acidity and a smoky mineral edge, both needed against a glaze built on reduced wine and vinegar. The acidity resets the palate between the sweet raisins and the salted capers, and the smoke picks up the char on the roasted faces.
Offida Pecorino DOCG: A structured mainland white with real weight and a herbal, almost savoury finish. That weight handles the fried capers and the hazelnut fat without thinning, while the acidity stays firm enough for the agrodolce. Pour it when the glaze has come out sweeter than intended.
Greco di Tufo DOCG: Greco carries a nutty, faintly smoky character and a mineral note from the tuff soils of Irpinia, and that nut aroma runs directly alongside the toasted hazelnuts. It has the body and grip to stand up to concentrated Marsala, which lighter whites disappear under.
Faro DOC: The small Nerello based red from the hills above Messina, pale, high in acidity and light in tannin. Serve it at around 57°F (14°C). Its red fruit and dried herb character continues the raisins, and the soft tannin will not turn metallic against the vinegar in the glaze.
Etna Rosso DOC: Also Nerello Mascalese but grown on the volcano, so it arrives leaner, more mineral and more tightly wound than Faro, with fine chalky tannin. Choose it if you pushed the roast dark and want bitterness met with bitterness. Serve it cool, and young rather than oaked.
Storage & Reheating
Glazed cauliflower keeps refrigerated in a shallow airtight container for up to 3 days and is genuinely good cold, which is how a Sicilian household eats the leftovers. Store the fried capers and crushed hazelnuts separately at room temperature in an open jar, never with the wedges, where they turn soft within an hour.
To reheat, spread the wedges on a tray and give them 8 minutes at 400°F (200°C), which drives off refrigerator moisture and brings some crust back. Avoid the microwave: it reduces roasted cauliflower to wet grey pieces and takes the glaze with it. Add fresh capers and hazelnuts after reheating, never before.
The glaze on its own keeps in a sealed jar at room temperature for a week and thickens as it sits, so loosen it with warm Marsala rather than water. Roasted cauliflower does not freeze well, since the cell walls rupture and the pieces thaw soft and watery. Toasted hazelnuts freeze for 3 months and refresh in a dry pan.
Nutrition
Per serving, based on 4 side servings:
Calories: 350 kcal
Total Fat: 22 g
Saturated Fat: 2.5 g
Trans Fat: 0 g
Unsaturated Fat: 18 g
Cholesterol: 0 mg
Sodium: 690 mg
Total Carbohydrates: 28 g
Fiber: 6 g
Total Sugars: 16 g
Added Sugars: 1 g
Protein: 7 g
Lactose: 0 g
Principal micronutrients: vitamin C, vitamin K, folate, potassium, vitamin E, manganese
These figures are estimates. Sodium depends almost entirely on how thoroughly the capers were soaked, and the fat figure assumes the wedges carry only a fraction of the frying oil.
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