The wildest vegetable makes the most coarse autumn pasta

Oh, Romaneco broccoli, how I love you. You are delicious and scary and bizarre, like an extraterrestrial vegetable. I know that you are misunderstood, but it is only for people who are put off by your bizarre appearance and who will not take luck. However, I understand you completely and you appreciate you start. Now jump in this boiling pot of water.

And you, dear reader? Are you the guy who is surprised by a vegetable with bizarre, sharp and conical spheres that comes out? Be courageous, and believe me, there is a great reward pending. Cavolo Broccolo Romanesco, as he is officially known in Italian, is surprisingly sweet and sweet when he is cooked, more like his near cousin, cauliflower but with a denser texture that resists different cooking methods.

The cold of the fall market broccoli romanesco before and in the center, here in New York and in its native Rome. Originally from Lazio, this vegetable has a noble past, dating days of Julius Caesar. As an occasional Roman resident, I came to love Romanesco broccoli, which arrives to brighten up my mood when the Tratoria tables move inside with cold weather. With Puntarella and fresh oranges, it is one of the few things that make the rainy season of Rome bearable.

Tips for cooking romanesco broccoli

Broccoli Romanesco is both economical and versatile. The heads are misleading – a start separating the florets and it never seems to end, which allows you to experiment with each purchase. The most basic and sublime – enjoying it is steamed or boiled with a pinch of fresh lemon and a generous touch of olive oil. The firm and compact nature of the florets makes a natural addition to a fritto misto greenery (mixed fried vegetables), and if you want to put yourself in fantasy, try the romanesco broccoli with brown butter and crisp shallots.

Associate it with pasta

Like other forms of broccoli and cabbage, the noble Romanesco goes perfectly with pasta. I like to use the smallest flagships for this purpose and use a diminutive pasta form like ditals (small tubes) or the mezze rigatoni. My simple method for pasta with romanesco broccoli can be adapted to include other ingredients, but in its most basic format, garlic, olive oil and a little pepperoncino are really everything you need.

Blanche the florets in a lot of boiling and salty water until they become tender and shock them in an ice bath to stop cooking. Sauté the garlic in slices and a little red pepper pepper crushed in olive oil. You can add a small tomato paste to the pan for an additional layer of flavor. Add the Romaneco broccoli flagships and sauté briefly, making sure that the florets are coated with olive oil, then throw everything with the pasta al dente and a splash of the cooking water of the pasta. Grate a lot of Pecorino Romano out of the heat.

It is not often that something so strange becomes something so delicious.

How this recipe was updated (by Daniel Gritzer)

When this recipe was initially published, there was no complete recipe, just in writing that you can read in the above paragraphs. By updating this recipe with a new art, I decided to take the description of Gina and steps as indicated in her head note and develop a recipe based on that with more detailed measurements and instructions, which you will find below.

In doing so, I made a few small adjustments that I wanted to emphasize, because they are my contributions to the recipe and not being part of the original vision of Gina (although I doubt that she is against one or the other).

The first thing to know is that Romannesco and related vegetables, like cauliflower, can have a very soft flavor when cooked in this way and used as pasta sauce. Sometimes almost Also benign; This risk with this recipe and similar recipes is that you end up with a dish that lacks flavor. Thus, in addition to the tomato paste that Gina calls as an optional flavor, I suggest adding a few more anchovy nets, also optional. I highly recommend them to everyone who cooks, because I think the Anchovies transform the dish and help finish it, although you can omit them if you wish.

In addition to that, I chose dried pasta made from Farro for the photos here. I don’t often like whole wheat pasta, but I find that their more rustic texture and deeper flavor work particularly well with vegetables in the Brassica family. You don’t need to use whole wheat pasta here, but I think it’s good, and a welcome moment when a healthier choice is also tastier (in my opinion).

Finally, I found by testing that the use of a complete book of dried pasta is too much for the quantity of sauce that only one Romanesco’s head creates; Much better is to cook a half-spit of pasta; The portions are always good despite this, because the Romanesco adds weight to the dish. (You can double the recipe, but you would then need a much larger pot to accommodate all the pasta and the cooked sauce.)

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