Getting brave with Brassicas

21 September 201414 April 2020 ~ Fiona ~ 15 Comments

I have mentioned that I have a love-hate relationship with brassicas, but I think that, at last, I’m growing up. I’ve had to because we grow them – a lot – and I’ve had to think of creative ways of dishing them up. In the last three or so months, we’ve had more broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage than we’ve known what to do with. So, I’ve learned to be a bit more adventurous….sometimes….

Cabbage

I avoid white cabbage – like the plague. White cabbage, presented as a seasonal vegetable in any establishment, will guarantee my never returning. Red cabbage is beautiful – inside and out, and in addition to doing it in a slaw (usually with a French dressing), I also cook it. My mother used to make “Apple Cabbage” – a family favourite. So do I, but with a twist. She would sauté chopped onion, and then add the shredded cabbage and a chopped apple (no water other than that on the cabbage, if you’ve had to rinse it). I do all of this and add a good glug of apple cider vinegar. In addition to enhancing the flavours, the vinegar stops the red cabbage from going blue. Instead, it remains a gorgeous purple.

Cabbage cooked this way is a wonderful accompaniment to a roast and/or any meal, particularly pork or beef; it’s a wonderful blast of colour in any meal. Also, and useful to know when one is cooking for only two, like I often do, prepared this way, the cabbage freezes well, with no deterioration in the flavour, so one can cook an entire cabbage, portion it and store to use at another time.

For some of our friends, I’m delighted to say, this is a very popular part of my repertoire!

Cauliflower

Like cabbage, overcooked cauliflower is good for neither man nor beast and brings back not-so-great memories of institutional food. It’s a smell that’s hard to get out of one’s head. Anyway, having happily discovered roasted cauliflower, I was game to experiment, myself.

A few weeks ago, we had a surfeit of cauliflowers that were beginning to look like many-tentacled creatures from outer space rather than the beautiful white crowns that we are used to. That meant that whole roasted cauliflower was out of the question.

Not to be thwarted, I decided to break up the cauli into florets and to roast them with a bit of olive oil, garlic and chopped bacon. Once roasted, I sprinkled this with grated Parmesan and, wow, was it delicious!

Cheat’s Broccolini

Like the cauliflower, the broccoli was also beginning to bolt, thanks to an unseasonal but welcome warm spell. That meant broccoli soup and/or broccoli and blue were out of the question. Blanched broccoli in a salad is delicious, so I came up with this very simple broccoli(ni) salad:

I tidied up, blanched and refreshed the stalks, and laid them out on a platter. Over that I sprinkled a crushed clove of garlic, the juice of a lemon, salt and pepper and, of course, olive oil. Difficult, hey?

Veg-ing out

17 August 2014 ~ Fiona ~ Leave a comment

I have flirted with vegetarianism on and off for about thirty years, particularly when I lived alone – which I have done, not unhappily, on and off, until I finally settled down with Tom. One of the first, if not the first, recipe book I bought, was the A – Z of Vegetarian Cooking in South Africa. And two of our favourite quiche fillings (leek & onion, and spinach & feta) are based on recipes from this book. I do confess that I work very hard at not thinking about the journey that meat must take to reach my kitchen.

Consequently, entertaining friends who are vegetarian is fun! Well, I think so, anyway. For some, it’s a challenge, so I thought I’d share with you what I did when our neighbours joined us for a long overdue dinner, a few weeks ago.

It was a Friday evening and Fridays are my day in the kitchen, preparing for the market. This particular Friday, I was really in the mode, so it was in for a penny, in for a pound. The broccoli was ready to pick and we had ripe gooseberries, so there were two ready ingredients.

That said, it was cold and miserable and had the makings of becoming even more so, and what is more warming than cottage pie, I thought. So, instead of the beef mince, I used beautiful green lentils, soaked and cooked, that were added to sautéd onions and mushrooms. This was seasoned with chopped garlic, some tomato paste, a twig of fresh rosemary and a good glug of red wine. A lesson I learned, and which I had forgotten, was that it’s really easy to let this mixture dry out – watch it and add water and/or vegetable stock so that it stays nice and moist as the flavours develop. Transferred to an oven proof dish, this was topped with a potato and butternut mash, dotted with knobs of butter and baked in the oven for about 20 minutes to half an hour. The butter is what gives you the crispy, caremelised crust on the cottage pie which was served with a garden salad.

So, we started our dinner with broccoli soup, made with the first picking, and discovered to my delight, that not only does Ant enjoy soup, but particularly loves creamy ones.

For dessert, we had a gooseberry tart with jam I had made earlier in the day.

No meal is complete without wine. We don’t really do the wine-pairing thing. Although we do take the menu into consideration, we choose what we like, and what we think our guests will like. As usual, we chose beautiful wines from our valley: Tanagra‘s Heavenly Chaos (isn’t that a wonderful name for a wine?), a lovely red blend, which is beautifully different every year, and Springfield’s Life from Stone, one of my favourite Sauvignon Blanc wines.

Pat and Ant, it was fun – we’ll do it again!

Waste not, want not – I

10 July 2014 ~ Fiona ~ 7 Comments

Both my parents grew up in the UK in the Second World War: Mum in Oxford, where her mother took in evacuees and then later also billeted soldiers. Dad grew up in Glasgow, and with his sister, Belle, evacuated to a poultry farm . Consequently, we grew up constantly hearing, “waste not, want not”. Little was thrown away.

So, last Friday, I was making quiches. One of the fillings was broccoli and blue cheese. Having cut off the florets, I was left with this beautiful, thick broccoli stem.

Too good to put into the compost bucket, I thought; and it was a cold, cold day.

Soup is always a good lunch during winter, and a vegetable soup relatively quick to make. So, why not turn the stem into broccoli soup?

Here’s what I did: chopped an onion and sautéd it in a little butter, and then added about a table spoon of flour (you want the soup to have a bit of body). Covered the chopped stalk with vegetable stock and allowed it to boil. Simmer until the vegetables are soft; liquidise and then add some cheese (because I had some, I used Camembert) and liquidise again to ensure the cheese is well distributed. Re-heat and serve with sprinkling of freshly grated nutmeg.

Tips:

I use Ina Paarman’s vegetable stock powder – it’s a useful standby, and is neither too salty, nor has too many preservatives
Save some of the broccoli florets – steam them and add them to the soup when you serve it.
Of course, you can also add a swirl of cream or a dollop of Greek yoghurt to serve…