It was good

I was actually kind of surprised. As I was mixing up the sauce, I kept saying to myself, "This might be really gross on cauliflower. Be prepared for it to be gross." (That's one of my food issues. If I'm expecting something to be good, and it's not, I have a stronger reaction to it than I do if I'm suspicious of it and it's not good. I don't quite get the Food Defcon 5 or whatever if I'm mentally prepared for it to taste bad or weird, but if I'm not, I'm running gagging to the trash can to spit it out. I know that's weird but that's just how I am.)

But it wasn't. It was very good and now I'm happy I made extra because now for another night all I have to do is steam the cauliflower (I prefer to cook it new each time, rather than cooking it all at once and reheating it) and heat up the sauce.

I used a version (with some modifications) of the Calvin Lee recipe I was talking about before. I don't have the book myself - it's called something like Chinese Cooking for American Kitchens (copyright date: 1958 - it's one from the early days of my parents' marriage; it seems one of the things they and their friends did for fun was to cook different kinds of international meals for each other)

Anyway. Here's what I did:

2 tablespoons molasses (that's about half the sugar the recipe recommended, and also, it called for sugar. I thought molasses would be better and I think I was right.)

1/4 teaspoon garlic powder. (Could also use a chopped up clove, or a crushed whole clove of garlic)

1 teaspoon coconut aminos (Guys, have you heard of these? They taste a lot like soy sauce and give color like soy sauce but they have less than half the sodium of even the low-sodium kind (NB: shop around by brands, they vary) AND they have no soy. Someone who was soy-allergic put me on to these....I get mine at a natural-foods store but I suspect some bigger more diverse groceries might carry them, or you can mail order them. The brand I have is Coconut Wonder but I'm pretty sure the Bragg people also make them.)

1/4 cup water

1/4 cup cider vinegar (you can also use wine, or rice wine....I thought probably the stronger-flavored cider would work well here)

I also added maybe a couple tablespoons white wine I had leftover in a bottle in the fridge, and a little dash of pineapple juice from the can of pineapple I opened to have as my fruit with dinner. The recipe originally called for 1/2 cup of water, so between these additions and the fact that molasses is liquid and sugar is not, the consistency was right.

So, after mixing all those things, I heated them to just boiling.

Then I added:

2 teaspoons cornstarch (corn flour, for those on the other side of the Pond) dissolved in 3 T water

And I cooked it on low a bit longer, until it thickened.

I just dipped the cooked cauliflower in it (as I said, I wasn't convinced it would be good, so I wanted to leave the possibility of switching to using a vinaigrette or something if the sweet and sour was gross).