One of my favorite vegetable is cauliflower. Usually I make this dish with it, but when I saw this alien looking, strange creature, I was sure it will be a perfect substitute.
If you never tried before the Romanesco broccoli (sometimes called pagoda cauliflower), the taste is something between broccoli and cauliflower, but it is slightly closer to broccoli. It has an amazing attractive color when its raw, and it keeps its beautiful shape even after cooking. It is a very easy recipe if you are looking for a light meal for dinner or you like vegetarian food. It has very clear and simple flavors, you can feel the duet of tomatoes and Romanesco broccoli. In my kitchen it is a dish that I cook every 2 or 3 months, so it is one of my top listed recipes. Hope you will love it as I do!
Ingredients:
- 1 big romanesco broccoli or cauliflower (cut into byte size pieces)
- 1 can of tomatoes (better chopped)
- 4-6 pieces of sundried tomatoes in olive oil chopped
- 1 tbsp of tomato paste
- 2-3 gloves of garlic crushed
- just a little bit of salt (be careful, because we will get the saltiness from the sundried tomatoes and from the cheese at the end)
- a pinch of brown sugar and black pepper
- 2-3 tbsp of olive oil
- 100-200 ml of water (it depends on how much juice you will have from the canned tomatoes)
- Any kind of feta type white creamy cheese
- Schwartzwalder (black forest) ham, if you don’t prefer the vegetarian version
- freshly chopped parsley for decoration
Instructions:
- Take the florets apart into byte size pieces.
- Pre heat a deep frying pan, place the olive oil and the garlic, fry for about 30 seconds, add the tomato paste, the chopped canned tomatoes (you can use fresh tomatoes if you want) and the sundried tomatoes. Add a bit of sugar and black pepper.
- Insert the florets, put a little bit of water and put the lid on, start to steam on a medium heat. I like when the veggies are still a bit crunchy and not overcooked, so in general it will take you about 20 minutes to cook the whole dish. Add more water or tomato pulp if needed.
- Serve with freshly chopped parsley, creamy cheese (plus optionally ham).
Julia's Food Therapy 