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Showing posts with the label Broccoli

Super Healthy Winter Salad: Broccolo Romanesco and chickpea salad

Broccolo Romanesco is a beautiful vegetable, but if you cannot find it you can substitute here with a cauliflower. Cut the florets and drop them in salted boiling water, then cook them until soft but not mushy. Cool in cold water and drain, then dress with white wine vinegar or white balsamic (about one tbsp). Drain one can of chick peas (keep the chickpea water - aquafaba, to make  vegan meringues  or  other vegan recipes ) and add to the Broccolo. Add olive oil (about 2 tbsp) and salt to taste. To finish add some olives (ascolane olives are the best, otherwise used other marinated olives). Mix well and serve at room temperature. Photo and Recipe by Alessandra Zecchini  ©

Linguine with broccoli, semi-dried tomatoes and feta.

Cook the linguine al dente, In the meantime clean the broccoli, cut the stalks into small pieces and the florets in fork size pieces. Heat some olive oil in a pan and add two cloves of garlic, peeled (chopped if you like a stronger garlic flavour). Sizzle the add the broccoli stalks. Stir, after one minute add the florets. Stir for a couple of minutes, add salt, cover with a lid and simmer for two minutes, then turn the element off but leave the lid on: the broccoli will cook in their steam. Cut the semi-dried tomatoes into strips and cube the feta. Drain the pasta and place in the pan with the broccoli (you can add a bit of water from the pasta or a bit more olive oil to mix everything well together. Top with the tomatoes and feta. Serve immediately.  Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini  ©

Japanese Vegan Dinner part 3: broccoli and cauliflower with miso dressing

These were the side vegetable dishes of my  Vegan Japanese dinner . For those of you who missed some 'episodes', the antipasto was raw  avocado sashimi , and the main  Fried tofu puffs simmered in vegetable broth . I wanted to have a cooked and warm side vegetable dish, and a raw one. Of course variety, colour and difference in texture were as important as taste. For the warm vegetables I used broccoli and cauliflowers with a very easy miso sauce: Broccoli and cauliflowers with easy miso sauce A few broccoli and cauliflower florets Hot vegetable stock  (I used the broth strained from cooking the  Fried tofu puffs simmered in vegetable stock  - recycling is everything in Japanese Vegetarian Cuisine!) Miso paste Steam the broccoli and cauliflowers for a few minutes (they should be cooked but not mushy, nor too crunchy). In a small ball thin down about a tbsp of miso paste with some hot vegetable broth to make a thin paste...

Brussels, Cauliflower and Broccoli Mix

About myself I could say that I love broccoli, I like cauliflower, and I eat brussels sprouts. Do you like them? I think that I buy them about once a year, I did plant them once but I wasn't very successful: they opened up like little cabbages (maybe it is not cold enough in Auckland) and they attracted lots of bugs. And nobody in the family is exactly 'crazy' about them. My husband saw my shopping bag and said 'Brussels???'. He wasn't looking forward to dinner. The kids didn't even remember the taste, since we eat them so rarely, but they hear horrible tales about them from other kids: nobody is supposed to like them. But I love variety, and if I cook the brussels slowly in veggie stock, and maybe with other vegetables, I think that they can be interesting. I put them in vegetables soups, like minestrone, and they don't seem bitter then. This time, instead, I wanted to cook them with other brassica, so a made a big brussels/cauli/broccoli mix....

Tofu and Brassica Green Curry

Ingredients: 1 tbs green curry paste (see recipe here ) 1 can coconut milk 1 couliflower, cut into florettes half carrot, sliced (I sliced it in the shape of flowers) 1 block tofu, cut into pieces 1 large broccoli, cut into florettes 1-2 chili peppers Thai or regular fresh basil leaves Thai or Vietnamese fresh mint leaves Place the paste in a pot with the coconut milk, the cauliflower, carrot, and the tofu. Cover and simmer for 10 minutes. Add the broccoli, cover and simmer for 5 minutes (I like my broccoli to be still green and a little crunchy). Add the chili peppers and the fresh herbs, cover and simmer for 5 more minutes. Add salt to taste and serve with Thai rice. Serves 4 Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Orecchiette with Broccolini

Photo by Alessandra Zecchini © The broccolini are from my garden :-) First I fried some breadcrumbs with olive oil and garlic, and a little salt. When the breadcrumbs were golden I put them aside and used the same saucepan to cook the broccolini (no rinsing required, just add a little more olive oil and fresh garlic). Fresh broccolini need very little cooking, even less than broccoli, I just sautéed them with olive oil and garlic, and a pinch of salt, then turned the heat off, put the lid on the pot for a few minutes, and the remaining heat did the rest of the cooking. You need a pot with a good lid! In the meantime I cooked the orecchiette in plenty of salted boiling water. I followed the packet instructions for this, as different manufacturers seem to have different timing and orecchiette are usually more 'crunchy' than other types of pasta. Once ready I drained them and placed them in the pot with the broccolini, I stirred and then topped everything with the fried breadcrumb...

Cous Cous with Broccoli Romani

I am the very happy owner of a few brassica plants. I grew them from seeds, bought from the Kings Seeds catalogue, and now that it is spring I am harvesting the last brassica to make space in the veggie garden for other seeds and plants. But does it get tiring eating broccoli and cauli every second day? I need more recipes, and I found that Enza from Io da Grande had a lovely post on cous cous , and that she was using Broccoli Romani. Yes, I had some in the garden just ready! Broccoli Romani from my garde n Enza blanches the broccoli with boiling water, to which she adds salt and olive oil, then drains the broccoli and uses their water to cover the cous cous (the pre-cooked type, of course) while she fries the broccoli with olive oil. Finally she tops the cous cous with the broccoli. I followed her instructions but made a few variations: I only added salt in the boiling water, and then added a little olive oil to the cous cous before covering it with the broccoli broth. I covered t...