food to glow

I love broccoli in all its forms: the year-round green, fat-headed bunches (the only time fat-headed is not an insult!) – perfect for chopping and throwing in soups and pasta, as well as the more delicately-shaped purple sprouting broccoli that is so welcome come early spring. My own purple sprouting broccoli is a miracle survivor in my garden; I’m still snipping its now-waning and rather skimpy stalks and using some most days, although it is now verging on July. That’s Scotland for you!

But, as the purple stuff goes I replace it mostly in the form of Tenderstem® rather than the chubbier calabrese that I grew up eating. With calabrese it is all about the head, its unwieldy and intimidating bulk made more manageable with dividing and conquering. It always feels a bit like performing minor surgery, hacking away with my trusty Japanese knife. Perhaps it is just as well I am not a doctor…With Tenderstem® the clue is in the name, tender stem. The stems are supple and so sweet for something so green and well, vegetabley; the florets small and fairly open, bursting into tiny yellow flowers if left too long – very pretty but that is an indication that it is a little past its best.

One of the most appealing things about Tenderstem® is that you eat the whole thing, only neatening up the ends where they were cut from the growing plant. No hacking into florets and chucking out the often-tough stem of a calabrese variety (although I peel it with a vegetable peeler and use it too, as well as nibble some as I cook – so sweet!).

Minimal cooking too gets the best from this fabulous and delicately-flavoured summer vegetable – steamed, griddled, briefly roasted, raw (wonderful dipped into hummus). But please don’t waste it on soup. Well, waste is harsh but you would need a few packs or bunches to make a soup where a single small calabrese would be perfect.

For this recipe I have you use the WHOLE plant. You make a quick sauce with the lower half of the stalks and leave the thinner, frondy, showy end for topping the polenta. I have instructed for sautéing and cooking the sauce, but if you have a super-blender type thing like my Froothie, then just literally bung everything in the jug (no oil though) and blend until warm and ‘cooked,’ keeping those lovely, water-soluble nutrients intact.

As a fan of Tenderstem® I was more than chuffed to be contacted by the company itself (who knew they were an actual company?) to come up with a recipe for their latest campaign, #tenderstemdatenight. Using some of the bits that came with their lovely wicker hamper (daughter snapped that up in a hurry) – namely olive oil and the broccoli itself, although they also included anchovies, citrus and a really very nice curry sauce I used in something else (oops!) – I wanted to make an easy recipe. Because the last thing you want on date night is faffing and running around while your date/partner is drumming his or her fingers on the table. Or drinking all the wine…

To make it quicker the sauce can be made ahead and just reheated with a little squirt of lemon to freshen it, and the polenta too can be made ahead and just warmed gently on the hob with splash of water or milk. But it is quick and easy to do on the night itself with all the ingredients organised and ready to roll – have the pine nuts toasted, broccoli chopped, the cheese crumbled, the kettle boiled. You can make this so quickly that you will have time to get to the movies or catch that concert. But it is also so good that you may just stay for seconds. 🙂

For more information on Tenderstem® nutrition (it is a superstar, cancer-fighting brassica), more recipes and competitions just click this link. It is a very attractive website and I have found a few recipes I wish to try soon.

Disclosure: this is a sponsored post.