Eat Well: Broccoli or Bust

The following post was written by my mom, WWW. Thanks mom!

I have a huge confession to make: I don't like broccoli... the traditional mature heads of broccoli, the type you get at the store with thick stems and large florets. I love broccoli rabe, broccoli leaves, broccolini, and any other vegetables in the cole family:

broccolini = love

In fact, they rate at the top of my vegetable love list and I have often talked about them here. I adore young picked home grown broccoli and especially savor the second, third, and fourth side shoots that appear after the first large head has been picked. I just can’t figure out what it is about the large heads that leave me cold but I guess others share this distaste. It’s probably the only thing George H.W. Bush and I have in common.

This week I was cleaning out my refrigerator and came across two HUGE bunches of mature broccoli, one that I got in my CSA box and the other left over from when the kids were here (the only green thing that Archer will eat is broccoli). So not wanting to be wasteful, I had to figure out something to do with it. “I could use it all up in one fell swoop if I make soup,” thought I, but as it turns out, I don’t even like cream of broccoli soup. (I know…I need serious therapy). But I decided it would be a good opportunity to experiment. Larry loves broccoli and all things soup, so I knew that if I couldn’t concoct a soup that I liked, he would happily eat it up.

The only dairy product I had in the house was organic low fat cottage cheese and because I now am the proud owner of a Vitamix, I decided to puree it to use as a thickener for the soup (this works GREAT I found out…it is kind of like crème fraiche). You could also use silken tofu the same way if you want to omit the dairy. And do you remember the garam masala I made several weeks back? I decided to add that to make a normally bland soup more interesting. The miracle is, I not only liked the soup, I LOVED it, so much so that we have been eating it every night for three nights and I am still not sick of it. So here it is, my broccoli hater’s cream of broccoli soup. Hope you like it as much as I do!!

Wendy’s Broccoli Haters Cream of Broccoli Soup

6 cups vegetable broth

2 cups water

2 potatoes, peeled and cut into 1 inch chunks

2 large carrots, peeled and cut into 1 inch chunks

1 onion, chopped

1 jalapeno chili, seeded and chopped

2 large bunches of broccoli, broken into florets (can use stems, too, if they are peeled)

2 cups low fat cottage cheese or silken tofu

2 teaspoons (more to taste) garam masala (either store bought or home made. Recipe here)

2 teaspoons curry powder

Salt and pepper to taste

Bring vegetable broth, carrots, onion, potatoes, and pepper to a boil. Cover and cook for 15 minutes. Add broccoli, curry powder and garam masala (or cumin and curry powder) and bring back to a boil.

Turn down and cook for another 15 minutes or until broccoli is tender (don’t over cook). Meanwhile, in a blender, puree cottage cheese or silken tofu until completely creamy.

When vegetables are tender, puree with an immersion blender or blend in batches in a blender. Add blended cottage cheese or silken tofu and blend until combined.

Add salt and pepper to taste and add more seasonings if desired. Simmer until hot and serve. Makes 8-10 servings.

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The day after I made the soup, I was thumbing through Dr. Weil’s book, “Spontaneous Healing” and just happened to open it to the page where he extols the virtues of broccoli’s “cancer-protective effect” via the compound sulphoraphane. After insisting on the importance of eating broccoli, he recommends to those of us who think we don’t like broccoli to cook it the following way:

Dr. Weil’s Broccoli

(for those who think they don’t like broccoli)

1 large bunch of broccoli

¼ cup water

1 T extra virgin olive oil

Several cloves of mashed or chopped garlic (I used 4)

Salt to taste

Red pepper flakes

Parmesan cheese

Cut off the main stem of the broccoli, peel it beneath the fibrous layer, and cut into edible chunks.

Separate the head of broccoli into bite-size pieces and peel a bit of the skin from the stems to make them more tender. Place broccoli in a pot with the water, oil, salt to taste, and garlic. Bring to a boil, cover tightly, and let steam until it turns bright green and is crunchy-tender, no more than five minutes. Remove the lid and boil off most of the liquid. Season with red pepper flakes and Parmesan cheese.

Serve as a side dish or with pasta.

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I made this recipe tonight and I have to admit Dr. Weil is right—it’s really delicious, owing, I’m sure, to the large amount of garlic in the recipe. I think the trick to making broccoli palatable to those of us who aren’t broccoli fans is to cook it with strong flavored ingredients such as garam masala or garlic. When David was little, he loved dill pickles but hated broccoli so I would soak his broccoli in pickle juice. For years, that’s the only way he would eat it. Maybe all these years I should have been eating it that way too!

Do you like broccoli? Do you have a favorite way of cooking it? I’d love to hear from you!

Love,

WWW

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