I found a Romanesco broccoli at the farmers market yesterday.  This is a food I’ve never actually seen before, but have read about in math books.  I couldn’t let the poor thing go ignored.

Edit:  New picture, rather than the picture stolen from Wikipedia.  Supposedly it’s my hand holding that fractal flower, however, this is not the one we ate.  There are some inconsistencies in the story here.  Thanks to raven for supplying the photo.

Not sure what to do with it, but it tastes a lot like cauliflower, all I could think was some sort of cauliflower recipes.  But what are cauliflower recipes?  Well, I came up with the idea of thin noodles plus vegetables, or perhaps a curry, like aloo gobi.  I asked one of the people to be fed which they’d prefer, and it was decreed, curry.

So I looked in my Indian cookbook, and did not find any good cauliflower recipes.  Undeterred, I sought out the great internet, and found this recipe.

On the salad front, a friend of mine told me about a spicy salad she had made, and she also gave me a recipe.  Oddly enough, cucumbers were near impossible to find, and I wound up getting them from the supermarket at $1.19 a piece.  Cilantro wasn’t much cheaper.

The aloo gobi was made first, and thus I’m listing it first:

  • One of the romanesco broccolis, chunked into bite sized pieces
  • A bunch of potatoes, diced into little cubes
  • A spoonful of chili powder (yes I actually measured)
  • A spoonful of cumin, whole seeds
  • A spoonful of cumin, powder
  • A spoonful of tumeric
  • A spoonful of ground coriander seeds (I used a spoonful of whole coriander seeds, and then ground them.  It’d be more if I ground first and then measured a spoonful).
  • Some salt
  • A bunch of scallions, chopped
  • A can of unsalted, chopped tomatoes with juice

I put way too much oil in a pan and cooked the potatoes, not quite deep frying them.  I added very little salt, tasted a potato, and went “OMFG that’s way too salty!”.  Of course, they’ll be added to other stuff, so hopefully that will mute the saltiness.  After they were done, I poured the oil into two other pans–a small one for the salad, and a large one for the rest of the curry.

I actually followed the recipe pretty closely–I hadn’t done this before and didn’t want it being yucky–so I added the whole cumin, tumeric, and red chili powder, just let the oil get hot and stirred it up.  I chunked up the fractal flower into bits and put it in, stirring it all around.  I added the can of tomatoes, and in the juice, added the rest of the spices.  Added the potatoes, chopped and added the scallions, and lots of stirring, until I felt everything was done.

The only thing I noticed was everyone except me added salt to this.

The thing I learned–romanesco broccoli is delicious.  And, when you’re afraid your cauliflower or broccoli would be too soggy from cooking too long, the romanesco holds up well.  And it does this while still looking cool.  It’s not a true fractal (I looked at it under a microscope) but as you get smaller, you approach a limit where you can no longer be self similar, so no real-world object can be a true fractal.  I think.  But it is certainly fractal-like!

The salad was made nearly exactly to the recipe as well, except I used lots of bell peppers.

  • Two large cucumbers, chopped into bite sized pieces
  • A considerable amount of rice wine vinegar
  • A huge amount of ginger, diced fine
  • half a spoon of sugar
  • Six thai chilies, sliced and chopped
  • A bunch of cilantro, chopped
  • Two huge yellow bell peppers, chopped into bite sized pieces

Again I followed the recipe fairly closely.  The cucumbers went into about a half-inch of vinegar with the ginger, mix in the sugar, with lots of stirring so all the bits could sit in there.  Saute the thai chilies.  After some sitting, toss the vinegar (what a waste!) and add the chilies and oil.  Stir it up.  Add all the other ingredients, and stir some more.  You might think you need to worry about the temperature, but no, really, it doesn’t need much (if any) cooling.

People were surprised by the salad being spicy and the curry being not.  One commented it worked perfectly–the salad gave a good kick, and then you eat the curry, and it “feels” as spicy as you would expect it.