As a side dish, I love roasted cauliflower, but as the main event, I’m more likely to make a curry out of it. When I came across a recipe for cauliflower and red lentil curry – two superfoods – I knew we’d soon have a warm dinner for a cold night.

The recipe called for Madras curry powder (which evidently survives the city’s name change to Chennai), and I knew that – like a lot of home cooks – the curry powder I had on hand had been around for a long time. Fortunately, a quick scan of ingredients and a check of the cupboard revealed that I had everything on hand to toast and grind a fresh batch on the spot.

Well, with a couple of caveats. I didn’t have any ground ginger but figured that wouldn’t be a problem because I would just add fresh ginger to the dish. Likewise for turmeric, which by the way is on the superfoods list and warrants taking the time for a special mention.

Turmeric is a relative of ginger, and it looks like this:

Usually you can only find it in its bright orange-colored powdered form, and at first, I thought about getting some for the curry powder because that is what give Madras curry its distinctive color. But I decided besides being a pain in the ass to go to the store, it had to be better to use the root in its original state and I could just add it to the dish like the ginger.

Turmeric’s active ingredient is called curcumin, and there seem to be lots of suggestive results about its health effects. For our no-meat-and-no-alcohol diet, two stand out in particular: curcumin has been shown to reduce the carcinogenic compounds that form when meat is fried or barbecued and it seems to delay liver damage associated with the development of cirrhosis. If that isn’t enough, curcumin is also linked to reducing the risk of skin cancer and perhaps Alzeimer’s. I’m pretty sure we’re going to find new ways of introducing turmeric into our meals well past the end of this long month.

So back to making curry powder. I toasted up some coriander, cumin, mustard and fennel seeds until they began to pop and then added a long list of other spices and ground them all up in my mortar and pestle.

From there it was a simple matter to saute the onion, garlic, ginger and turmeric, stir in coconut milk and water, add the cauliflower and lentils, simmer until done and top off with cilantro and cherry tomatoes: