Purple fronds

We've got a bit of a backlog in terms of meals that need blog attention. I'll get an easy, and delicious one out of the way before it goes out of season!

The Pigs have a bit of a soft spot for broccoli (especially the Canadian Pig who calls them "the little brushes for the colon".)... We eat it all year, even when it's not in season, but it's a veg that can grow at any point of the year, really. We grew some in the garden last summer/autumn and it tasted marvelous. Iron, vitamins A & C, folic acid and fiber - broccoli is king!

Around 1 March I went to our local outdoor market on the High Road. In a corner near the bramley apples there was a crate of virtually ignored purple broccoli. I don't think I'd ever seen them stock it before. I went a bit mad and bought a huge bag of it. The kid who was at the till only works there on the weekends, I think. He's always yelling out the football scores which they receive on a live feed at the back of the stall. Though he has a remarkably large vocabulary, he's the last one you would think would say in reference to the broccoli, "Aw, these are really nice. I just bought my mum a bunch for Mother's Day; she loves them." I adore that guy. He's my hope for humanity. A working-class, English teenager who likes purple broc, bought it for his mom for Mother's Day, and was happy to tell me about it.

Purple (or normal) Broccoli, Sausage and Fennel Pasta
(extracted and adapted from Pig Out 2007, our first book!)

4 cloves garlic, chopped
Extra virgin olive oil
4 fresh sausages (pork and leek is good; I think I did lincolnshire)
1/2 cup dry white wine
Purple broccoli, cut down to edible pieces
1/4 cup salt water (from pasta water)
1 Tbs whole fennel seeds
Salt & pepper
Parmesan
1 lb/500 g pasta (pref. orecchiette, penne or fusilli)

Steam the broccoli over the boiling and salted pasta water (or blanch for a couple of minutes. This will turn the pasta water purple, which is really cool.) Cook the broccoli less that you would to eat it plain, slightly underdone. In the meantime, fry the garlic and pieces of sausage in the olive oil over medium-high heat. Cook thoroughly. Add the wine and cook it down a bit. Add the fennel seeds, black pepper and fry for another minute. Then add a bit of salt water from the pasta water to the pan and all of the broccoli. Cook on medium with the top on until the broccoli is ready. If a bit too watery, just cook with the top of for another couple of minutes. While that finishes, cook the pasta. When it's done, mix with the sauce, serve and smother each bowl with grated parmesan.
Serves 4.

I had mine with a glass of prosecco.

I found this on purple broccoli:
Early Purple Sprouting: An English heirloom variety, bred for overwintering, produces lots of purple broccoli sprouts in the spring. Grows slowly through the winter, very frost hardy; a great variety that is very hard to find in this country; delicious! rareseeds.com

So you see that, folks - plant your purple sprouting broccoli in May and you'll have it in the winter (providing you live in a temperate climate like good ol' England).

Roman Markets 1: Testaccio

I recently had a working trip to Rome and had lots of time off to go grocery shopping. The supermarket near the hotel was mediocre, so I hit some real markets instead.

Il mercato di Testaccio is in the southern part of central Rome, just south of the Aventino hill (Piramide Metro). I’d been there before, but this place is devoid of tourists and has some great specialty shops, so always worth going back. The market is not huge, but has some good quality stalls under a covered square. You can find fruit and veg, all really fresh and mostly local. In February, the romanesco broccoli is enormous and gorgeous. Expect to find pristine radicchio of several types as well as piles of all sorts of greens. Real roman specialties are puntarelle, curly, handcut salad greens often served with olive oil and anchovies.

At a baker’s stall, I bought fresh focaccia and a couple types of cookies. Brutte ma buone (“ugly but good”) are a Roman cookie basically made of a hazelnut meringue. They look a bit like a turd, but taste wonderful. Ideally, they should be slightly crunchy on the outside and soft inside, which means eating them within one or two days of baking. Damn. The other cookies were some sort of marzipan. Yum.

I also bought “transparent” slices of mortadella, cut so thin they melt in your mouth, and prosciutto and a bit of some sort of hard goat cheese. Had I a kitchen, I would have bought some fish. The focaccia, sliced meats and a blood orange were consumed in the Giardino degli Aranci on top of the Aventino, sitting in the warm sun with a view of Rome and a cat politely awaiting a handout.


Where I ate my meal, in the sun, with a view of Rome below.


Check out all of the cool greens and salads to buy!


A close up of huge, fresh, BEAUTIFUL roman broccoli.


Where I bought my radicchio and broccoli.


Fishy fishy. All fresh fish from around Italy.

Italian supermarkets = heaven

A couple of us pigs went on a four-night jaunt to Venice and instead of staying in a hotel, rented a cute little apartment in the Castello area (authentically Venetian with only a few brave tourists, crumbling buildings and grafitti-smattered streets). The place was delightful and had a full kitchen. Armed with Italian language skills and culinary know-how, we decided to pig out at the grocery store and cook all our own meals. They usually added up to less than half the price of what if might have cost in a horribly over-priced Venetian restaurant.

One night we had a smattering of antipasti, such as bresaola, mortadella, prosciutto, olives, mozarella (latte di bufala), sun-dried tomatoes, artichoke hearts and fresh bread from the bakery down the street. A tip on mortadella - always try to get it as thinly sliced as possible, like tissue paper, so that it practically melts in your mouth.

On the same evening, we had a first course of a mix of ravioli, some filled with radicchio and prosciutto, others with pumpkin, both specialities of north-eastern Italy. With little morsels already that tasty, just a simple sauce of prosciutto barely fried in olive oil and single cream (plus a dash of pepper) is necessary. To round out the meal, we split a thin beef steak.

The following night was shellfish heaven. After we'd sampled leftover antipasti, we scarfed down big bowls of spaghetti alle vongole (clam sauce pasta) and shared a bowl of steamed muscles (just with a bit of lemon). We'd bought the clams and muscles at the local fishmonger. Spaghetti alle vongole is my favorite pasta ever. All you do is fry a bit of garlic in olive oil, add a cup or so of white wine, let it reduce, and then add the whole clams and cook until they all open up. Remove any that don't. Finally, add chopped parsley, a tiny bit of salt and generous pepper and serve with the spaghetti. Words do not describe the joy this dish brings me.

Monday night we wanted clams again, but because no one fishes on Sundays, there is no fishmonger on Mondays. Tragic. So we ate potato and pumpkin gnocchi with the prosciutto and cream sauce again with steamed romanesco broccoli as a side and another thin beef steak to split. Romanesco broccoli is pretty hard to find, by the way, outside of Italy. It's a cross in taste between cauliflower and broccoli and is chartreuse in color. But the best part about it is it's construction. A beautiful thing.

Verdict = When in Venice, cook your own.