Chef Gordon Ramsay’s Broccoli Soup

Colander Full of Broccoli

The other recipe that came up when I googled “BEST BROCCOLI RECIPE” was Chef Gordon Ramsay’s Broccoli Soup. This is a soup that I had even heard of, by word of mouth, in that it has NO INGREDIENTS other than Broccoli and water, and it is supposed to be the best soup there is, well, I mean the Best Broccoli Soup that Is. It is a FAMOUS recipe!

Naturally, I was eager to try it! Maybe it would be as GOOD As The Best Broccoli Of Your Life™!

Broccoli in the Pot of Salty Water

Here is the recipe:

Boil a pot of salty water. Add broccoli and boil for four minutes exactly. Remove broccoli to a blender, with a little of the salty water. Blend. Add more salty water to make the consistency be the way you like. THE END.

EXACTLY FOUR MINUTES!

The result is, a BRILLIANTLY green SOUP! Honestly, it REALLY looks like Oobleck. Stunning.

VERY GREEN BROCCOLI

INTO THE BLENDER!!

But, even with my picked-ten-minutes-ago-broccoli, all bursting with flavor, I have to say I thought the soup flavor was Disappointing. Indeed, it bordered on flavorless. If I were to make it again, I would add sauteed onion, and garlic, and heavy cream, and cheddar cheese. HA HA in other worlds, a simple Broccoli-Cheese soup would be preferable. (And Sauteed mushrooms maybe!)

Not to mention, if I have the decision to make The Best Broccoli Of Your Life™ or Broccoli Soup of ANY kind, I would make The FORMER. (Did I mention that I did have the leftover BBOYL for BREAKFAST?!?!?!  No, not in an omelette….cold from the container with my fingers. And it was AWESOME.)

VERDICT: THUMBS DOWN. A VERY BLAND AND BLAH AND WHATEVER SOUP. EXCEPT: If you have a kid and you have been reading Bartholomew and the Ooobleck, you could make it for dinner and tell them, matt-of-factly, that you were having Ooobleck for dinner.

OOOBLECK !!!!! SERIOUSLY, THOUGH, IT IS VERY GREEN

It’s Broccoli Time!

This Broccoli plant is MUCH more gigantic in REAL life, if you can imagine that

Do you remember that POST from the Before TImes™ where I said that I usually get enough broccoli to be totally SICK OF IT? And then six months later I can’t believe I was ever sick of broccoli and I really wish I could get some more? Because one of the THINGS ABOUT GARDENING is: once you get used to fresh, seasonal broccoli (especially picked ONE SECOND ago in your own backyard), you just can’t see any POINT in buying trucked-in broccoli from thousands of miles away.

You look at it in the store and you say to yourself: Nah. I’ll just wait until next spring.

BECAUSE YOU HAVE BEEN RUINED FOR STORE BROCCOLI.

Well, now it’s that time: Broccoli Time! I could pick a gallon size Hefty freezer bag of broccoli every other day, and temperatures are staying so beautifully temperate that I will probably get another week (or two) out of the harvest. The Broccoli Harvest.

I have nine gigantic broccoli plants and they all look like this:

So, I made Pasta and Broccoli, and Chopped Broccoli, and I used the leftover Chopped Broccoli to make myself a Broccoli and Parmesan Omelette. Then I made a Broccoli, Cheese and Rice Casserole, but it wasn’t all that good (I think casseroles are a great option for families with children who are stretching the food budget, but for families of two, ONE OF WHOM DOES NOT CARE FOR LEFTOVERS (and I am not talking about myself, I rather like leftovers because you can usually make an omelette out of any leftover) (except CABBAGE)), casseroles aren’t practical.

Giant bowl of broccoli, ready for the Olive Oil

Then I had to throw a gallon of broccoli away because it had started to smell. Because I wasn’t using it UP fast enough.

Then I picked another gallon of broccoli, and I thought: I need Some New Recipes! So I googled this phrase: BEST BROCCOLI RECIPE, hoping that I would get everybody’s best broccoli recipe. (Clever, huh?)

What I got was this: The Best Broccoli of Your Life. It is a recipe that originated with The Barefoot Contessa, then made it onto this guys website, and now I am going to write about it. THIS GUY says, and I quote: “After trying this, you’ll never want to eat anything else for breakfast, lunch or dinner ever again.”

Now, you may think that that praise is a Leetle Bit Over the Top. Let me tell you, it isn’t! THIS IS THE BEST BROCCOLI OF YOUR LIFE!!! I made it the night I tried the recipe, and I made it the NEXT night, and that night I had some leftover steak on my plate, and I gave the steak to the dogs so I could fit MORE of this broccoli dish on my plate. Because I liked it better than steak.

I KNOW! (And YES this is ME!)

Here you see the garlic, the broccoli and the olive oil

You will need:

A Lot of Broccoli, like two big heads, or the equivalent amount of side heads

3-7 cloves of garlic

5 Tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil

salt

pepper

a lemon

some Parmesan Reggiano

Some Pine Nuts (optional)

Some fresh basil (optional)

A cookie sheet and an oven.

Ready for the Oven, with the garlic on top (there is a miniature cauliflower head in there too)

Here is what you do:  1) make the broccoli into florets by cutting or tearing them apart; don’t cut off the stems. 2) put the broccoli florets into a big bowl 3) Turn the oven on to 425˚ 4) drizzle the olive oil over the broccoli and toss it around until it appears to be well-coated 5) remove the broccoli to the cookie sheet with a utensil 6) peel and slice the garlic cloves, and coat them in the remaining olive oil that is still in the bowl 7) dot the garlic slices over the broccoli shove it in the oven for 20-25 minutes.

When it is done the broccoli will be darkish green, the stems will be cooked and the buds will be a tiny bit crispy.

9) take the lemon and, using a microplane zester, grate lemon zest onto the broccoli. You don’t have to zest all of the peel, just do as much as you think you would like. I used about 3/4 of the zest for an enormous pan of broccoli. 10) Then, squeeze a little lemon juice on; I used about a quarter of a lemon but suit yourself. 11) Using the same microplane zester, grate Parmesan over the broccoli.

NOW IT IS DONE! When I made this the second time, I sprinkled some raw pistachios over the dish before baking, because I didn’t have any pine nuts and the addition of nuts sounded awesome. It was awesome. This is, seriously, the Best Broccoli of Your Life. Its partially the texture: soft, yet dried-out and crispy, with wonderfully concentrated flavor; but then also the ecstatic blend of flavors, garlic and broccoli and lemon zest and Parmesan, all turned up to ELEVEN.

THE BEST BROCCOLI OF YOUR LIFE

Someone Might Actually Read My Blog!!

Yes, this GORGEOUS head of Broccoli is from my garden, and the carrots are too! LOOK UPON MY GARDEN AND DESPAIR

So I just realized that, because I mentioned it in the paper, someone might ACTUALLY check out my blog! And I haven’t posted since before Christmas! I have a perfectly good reason: I am an undisciplined layabout….no, actually, that is not my reason, it just sounded good. The real reason is I have had a sinus infection and have barely been awake since Xmas Day. For those of you who have never had one, a bad sinus infection is like getting bitten by the tse-tse fly: your body, desperately trying to overcome the bacteria that is trying to get to your brain and kill you and eat you, makes you fall asleep again like one HOUR after you get up in the morning.

But now I am taking antibiotics and presumably, should have some interest in terrestrial events soon. Of course I have continued to EAT and COOK throughout the week, however, it has been mostly EATING COOKIES and EATING OUT. Are all 55 dozen Xmas Cookies gone? Yes.

Part of me feels COMPLETELY ADDICTED TO SUGAR, and part of me NEVER WANTS TO SEE SUGAR AGAIN. Is this a normal feeling?

One of the things that I did, actually I did it about two weeks ago, is read every food blog in Austin that I could find, read them obsessively, and work out a system to rate them, (HIGHLY SCIENTIFIC of course) and I wrote a TOP TEN list of Austin Food Blogs, leaving out, of course, the blogs of my CHRONICLE colleagues, and myself. Most of those blogs would have TOTALLY been on the list, but then the list would have been all CHRONICLE folks and that seems unprofessional and just, I don’t know, like the most ridiculous cronyism.

Also, I would like to add, that two awesome food blogs tied for ELEVENTH place, and I just know that when I see these bloggers they will give me the STINK EYE, so I am never leaving the house again. (That will work in well with my undisciplined layabout lifestyle.) The just-barely-not-in-the-top-ten blogs are MISO HUNGRY and POCO-COCOA, both of which I wish I could have extended the list for. But once I invented my SCIENTIFIC RATING SYSTEM to come up with the TOP TEN, I thought it would be intellectually corrupt to jiggle the numbers. So, just remember that in MY world, my Imaginary perfect world, these two WOULD HAVE BEEN in the top ten, by extending it to TWLEVE.

But ANYWAY, one of the things that counted for a lot of points in my SCIENTIFIC EVALUATION was REGULAR POSTING. Not being regular about one’s posting was the NUMBER ONE SIN!!! So, you can imagine my embarrassment.

ONE THING, though: a number of the blogs I elected to tout have also dropped their balls over the holidays, so at least they look lame along with me. But that is not the point: the POINT is, reading all the very excellent local food blogs has made me realize that I could improve this blog in various ways. So I am going to endeavor to make HUNGERSAUCE the most KILLER BLOG in all of FOODBLOGGING!

For instance: you know what is super boring? Reporting. Food reporting is Borrrrr-inngg. ” I went to X place and I sampled Y and it was tasty and here’s a picture.” There has GOT to be a better way…if nothing else, brevity is the soul of wit, and a SINGLE picture of a SINGLE THING one ate is more compelling than a play-by-play rundown.

Of course that is going to present a problem, because BREVITY is NOT my STYLE. No, I prefer the rambling, overly thinky and parenthetical style of writing, where you run circles around your POINT for an hour before you get to it. I do.

But I can do better than REPORTING. And I shall.

But enough about ME! What do YOU think about ME? I mean, let’s get to the FOOD part.

Vigorous, bug-free winter growth. LOOK UPON MY LETTUCE AND DESPAIR

This is the time of year where the Winter Garden in oh, just so gorgeous. Cold weather makes vegetables sweet and delicious, and two of the greatest things going in the Central Texas Garden right now are Broccoli and carrots. The carrots are still smallish, but totally usable; I have also learned in my VAST EXPERIENCE and WISDOM that, if you wait for a whole bed of anything to reach it’s most perfect maturity, you can’t eat it all anyway and it just goes to seed or rots. So, it is GOOD FARMING to eat the baby vegetables as you go along.

Enormous Broccoli ensconced in enormous broccoli plant

To combat the SUGAR EXTRAVAGANZA that has been my diet, I hit the garden and made a dish that is a popular one around here, it is so popular I am not even sure it has a name. I should think of a name! Well, I will think while I am writing about it. It consists of Broccoli, carrots and onions, sauteed in olive oil (or butter), served over pasta, with Parmeson cheese. (How about BROCCOLI PARMESAN? Nah….)

You will need:

a white onion

some carrots

broccoli

pasta

butter

Parmesan Reggiano

The onions, carrots, and stems sautee, while the water boils in the other pot

Put some oil or butter in your frying pan, over medium heat. Fill a pasta pot with hot water and add a tablespoon of salt (yes a tablespoon!) and put it over high heat. When the butter melts, add the white onion, all chopped up. Salt and pepper it heavily. As it softens, peel and slice the carrots. Add them and stir it up. Slice all the broccoli stems into discs, reserving the florets. Add the sliced stems to the saute pan. Stir.

Can you EVEN BELIEVE that the producer of the James Bond Movies in the Seventies was named BROCCOLI??! Can you even believe that ANYONE would have the name BROCCOLI and not CHANGE IT? Even if they weren’t in Show Business? I think his name was Albert Broccoli. ALBERT BROCCOLI!!

Maybe I should name this dish “Broccoli Albert”!! Or “Parmesan a la Albert” ?   But no, that would be too much like rewarding him.

By this time your water should be boiling, so add your pasta or noodles. Tonight I used Egg Noodles because I felt like it. Stir after adding pasta and drain when pasta is done.

At a certain point, your onion, carrot and stem mixture will appear obviously softened and nearly done. At that point (and no earlier!) add the florets, crowns up, and you should have removed ALL the stems so they should be very tiny florets, not great big ones with stems. COVER. If you are using a cast iron frying pan like I DO, you can cover the pan with a lid that doesn’t fit perfectly, that is OK.

After a few minutes, remove cover, stir a bit, check for doneness. You can stop cooking it when it is slightly underdone, and the florets will finish cooking just sitting there in the pan.

On each plate, pile up noodles or pasta, dot with butter, spoon vegetables over, and then top with Parmesan Reggiano. You can grate it first and pile it on, or grate it on directly, whatever suits you.

(And, how in the name of God could they possibly be producing enough Parmesan Reggiano to keep up with American demand? How can they make enough for Italy ALONE? Even without the rest of the world? I think there must be something fishy going on, because that one little region could not POSSIBLY keep up with demand. Once you have bought Parmesan Reggiano, you can’t go back. You just can’t. Well, I can’t, anyway. For now we will call this the Parmesan Reggiano Mystery.)

Mystery Broccoli?

Broccoli Reggiano?

I know!! Pasta and Broccoli!!!

PASTA AND BROCCOLI

Time to Build Up my Readership….with More “Before and After” Weeding photos!

Pansies

Even though I am “over” the “flu, I am still dragging my ass around and sleeping inordinately and feeling queasy and energy-less. But everytime I get sick, I learn and relearn and RELEARN AND RELEARN this lesson: The World Did Not Come to An End When I Fell Behind In My Work/Chores.

And once you get to feeling better, the temptation is ENORMOUS to start stressing about Time Pressure even MORE than you did BEFORE you got sick, because NOW you are THREE WEEKS BEHIND !!!!!  ELEVENTY-ONE !!! But I swear to almighty GOD, THIS TIME I am going to LEARN the LESSON, that freaking out about time pressure and chores is Not Indictated. The thing to learn is to Relax and Do your Work and Enjoy It and Chill Out about time pressure and Try to Enjoy your life while you are Living It,  instead of feeling stressed all the time. Even when it comes to the Garden, what is the WORST thing that could happen if I didn’t get things planted in time? I would have to buy vegetables at the Farmer’s Market. Big Deal!

First thing after rising from my sofa, I weeded the beds I had already planted. And now…..(drum roll)……the before and after Weeding Photos!!

Broccoli Bed : BEFORE

Broccoli AFTER also MULCHED

Cabbage Bed : BEFORE

Cabbage Bed: AFTER also MULCHED!

The Cilantro Bed (or, as I really Should call it, the Nutgrass Bed) BEFORE!

The Cilantro Bed: AFTER

OOPS! Time to Get A-Plantin’ Heh Heh

Red Wheelbarrow full of screened compost and bag of LADYBUG Fertilizer

You remember how I said that we were supposed to get MORE RAIN? Well, it hasn’t happened; even though that storm system circled back on us, and we have has 20% and 30% rain predictions every day for days and days. HARRUMPH.

Where was I?

Anyway, I sat on my front porch in my underwear, and it WASN’T HOT! It was only like 85˚. Really comfortable. And I made a list of what I want to plant this Fall:

Snow Peas

My collection of OLD SEEDS

Carrots

Broccoli

Cauliflower

Lettuces

Arugula

Spinach

Cabbages

Cilantro

Oregano

Dill

Italian Pasley

My Seedling Purchases from THE NATURAL GARDENER

Fennel

Beets

Catnip

Mint

Swiss Chard

Artichokes

THEN, the next day, I got my old seeds out of the icebox (I keep them in a Ziploc Bag in the potato drawer) and figured out that I HAD most everything  SEED NEED-WISE.  I only needed to buy 2 packages of carrot seeds and a package of cilantro seeds. But I still needed to buy all the transplants (cabbages, broccolis, cauliflowers, herbs). Also I want to buy a few potted geraniums to keep in the kitchen windowsill.

So I took a trip out to JOHN DROMGOOLE’S NATURAL GARDENER (Out in BFE!) (That means “Bum-Fuck Egypt“) to buy the three packages of seeds, and to see if they had their transplants in yet. AND THEY DID! I was quite surprised, because it seemed to me to be a little early. But WHATEVER, amirite? So I bought everything I needed that they HAD (they did not have Geraniums, or “Melody” spinach plants, or Russian Kale which I forgot to mention. Mmmm…Kale).

Then, all of a sudden, instead of feeling like “I am ahead of weeding schedule!” I am all like, “DOOD, I had better get planting, all of a sudden I am BEHINDHAND!”

(Heh heh. I said BEHIND HAND!!)

So now I am going to intersperse this post with PICTURES so I can SHOW all the PLANTING I did today! Here Goes! (Oh, and it suddenly occurs to me that this post isn’t very informative; forgive me, I am really tired! I will elucidate of planting all the various vegetables tomorrow….after I weed a bed and finish planting.)

The New Carrot Bed pictured with two loads of screened compost dumped on it

Three packages of carrot seeds: carrots must be planted thickly and then thinned drastically. Why not just plant fewer? Because they don't like to germinate unless they are in a crowd.

Compost all smoothed out, and carrot seeds scattered and watered in

Snow Peas planted along the fence in bottomless cups, arugula planted in the front. Of course you just have to take my word for it!

Broccoli plants and smoothing rake. If you ever tried to rake leaves with this kind of rake, it is not for that. It is for smoothing soil in garden beds.

Broccoli Bed with mounds of screened compost prior to smoothing

Broccoli plants all planted up!

Catnip and Oregano (Greek and Italian) planted in pots

Lettuce, both seeds and plants, all nicely planted

Cilantro seeds all planted in the (former) Chard Bed

Fennel and lettuce planted in cups for later, pictured with the cauliflower and cabbage seedlings that are going to have to wait for me to WEED a BED to put them in.

Broccoli For Dinner Tonite!

Broccoli is Central Texas is to winter what Tomatoes are to summer: your most productive crop. I always plant too much ( I planted a dozen plants this year,which was insane.) What makes Broccoli so productive is that, after you harvest the initial, large, supermarket-looking head of Broccoli, it keeps making many little side heads in it’s desperation to flower. (If you leave a broccoli plant alone, the head of broccoli turns into a large, yellow flower.)

See the Bees?

My Mother always let the broccoli flower at the end of winter; she said, “there is nothing else for the bees to eat at this time of year!” which was true. It starts really trying around the middle of February. It is hard to stop it from flowering, actually, because by the end of winter you are so tired of broccoli that you can’t keep up with eating it. (It is a waste of time to freeze it, it loses all of it’s lovable characteristics when frozen.) 

It’s a little late to still have Broccoli, but I have a few plants that just keep on producing. What with The Global Warming and everything, my first planting of Broccoli (which is usually my only planting) came to head in December: super early (it used to make heads in late February). So I thought I had time to make a second planting, which I did, resulting in way too much Broccoli. I think I gave away all of the second crop of main heads. The plant pictured at the top is a second planting one; Here is  what  the FIRST planting  looks like now.