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The best way to cook broccoli
by Rosa Jackson

Rosa Jackson grew up in a Canadian prairie city known for its giant mall. When her family moved to Paris for two years while she was growing up, she discovered patisseries and never looked back. Her early efforts at making croissants and eclairs were total flops but that didn't stop her. At 26 she left her job as a food writer at a daily Canadian newspaper and moved to Paris. After ten years in Paris, where she wrote about restaurants for a number of guidebooks and magazines and founded the company Edible Paris, she now spends most of her time in Nice where she teaches Provençal cooking in her home. She spends a few days every month in Paris keeping up with restaurants, conducting food tours, and sampling the finest patisseries and chocolates. With a charming French husband and food-loving young son, she considers her life just about perfect - www.petitsfarcis.com

I have my friend Caterina to thank for this ridiculously simple and ridiculously delicious way to tackle a vegetable that many people find uninspiring.

I should make it clear that I am not one of those people. I grew to love broccoli when a member of the cruciferous family appeared week after week in my vegetable basket. In the Paris area, not much else grows during the winter and I had no choice but to embrace it. This wasn't hard when the broccoli, cauliflower or Italian romanesco came from Joël Thiébault, an inspired vegetable gardener who supplies the best restaurants in Paris.

I have to admit, though, that most often the broccoli went into soup. In winter, I could eat soup every day and possibly the most soothing of them all is broccoli and cheese, which might involve cantal, comté, cheddar (which I can find at Monoprix) or roquefort. I start by sweating an onion in butter or olive oil, then add the peeled and sliced broccoli stems, a sliced potato and vegetable stock. When the vegetables are tender, I throw in the cut-up broccoli florets and cook for a few more minutes to preserve their emerald-green color. Once they are soft, I purée the soup with the cheese and perhaps a little crème fraîche.

My sister will never forget this soup, not just for its perfect balance of flavors but because, in my first (and only) attempt at using her KitchenAid blender, I sprayed it dramatically all over myself and her kitchen. I think she will forever be finding dried broccoli bits in places like her radio and her toaster. (Lesson: never over-fill a blender.)

I love going to the market with Caterina, whose family comes from Calabria and Piedmont, because she is like a walking encyclopedia of northern and southern Italian cooking. As we walked past a small farmer's stand where the blueish-green broccoli looked particularly enticing, I mentioned that although Sam loves its flower-like stalks, Philippe is not thrilled to eat it as often as we do. "Ah, but how do you prepare it?" she asked, before giving me a Calabrian recipe.

Well, I can't really call it a recipe because it's so easy. Just slice a couple of garlic cloves very thinly and sauté them in a tablespoon of olive oil until they start to turn pale golden. Add a pinch of peperoncino; I use my own Espelette chilli powder, which I made by drying and grinding fresh Espelette peppers with their seeds last autumn. Then toss in about 1 lb of broccoli florets with a few sprinklings of salt and just a little water, no more than 1/4 cup. Cover tightly with a lid. In a few minutes, the broccoli with be vivid green and tender but not mushy. Let any excess water evaporate over high heat. Serve on its own or toss with pasta and parmesan.

In this picture, the broccoli I used is the small variety known as broccoletti; in springtime, it has an almost buttery taste. Even Philippe can't resist it.

© Rosa Jackson - www.petitsfarcis.com
Published 02 March 2009