Tuesday, December 1, 2009

What is this thing?

In our last CSA box, we found this....


(Source: Wikipeia)

Our first question: What is this thing?
We had no idea what it was. It kinda looked like a cauliflower. It kinda looked like broccoli.

My second question: If I have no idea what it is, how do we cook it?

My first task on Mission Identify the Vegetable was to look up the newsletter from the CSA. Thankfully, the newsletter identified the vegetable for us. It's called romanesco broccoli. But it's sometimes called Roman caulifower or broccoflower or coral broccoli. It's a form of cauliflower.

But the mission wasn't quite accomplished. I still had to figure out how I was going to cook this new-to-us vegetable.

So I thought about it a little bit....thought about how I like to eat cauliflower and broccoli. And what do both of those veggies taste good in?? Stir-fry. So I chopped up the romanesco broccoli along with some other veggies and I made chicken stir-fry for dinner. It was delicious.

You're probably wondering what does it taste like?
Only Dave and I know and we'll never tell!

Just kidding! When it was raw, I thought it tasted a lot like broccoli. But when it was cooked, I thought it tasted more like a cauliflower.

If you ever come across the vegetable at the grocery store or a farmers' market, I recommend that you try it.

J.B.

4 comments:

  1. My husband came home with one of those from the farmer's market a couple weeks ago! We were both mystified. Thanks for the identification. I was planning to steam it, but unfortunately it didn't keep long enough for me to get to it. Next time!

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  2. I want to come to your house for dinner!

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  3. strange!!

    one summer brian and i undertook tasting every strange and new fruit and vegetable we could find at the grocery store and farmer's market. one of our favorites was a cherimoya. i probably would have never discovered it if we had not decided to be "so" adventurous.

    sorry i have been mia on comments for a (very long) while. i'm still keeping up with you, never fear. :)

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  4. Ditto on the comments for you too! The down side about having all my blogs in Google Reader is that it takes extra effort to write comments and so I've been doing it less and less!

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What are your thoughts? I'd love to hear.