Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
that what is usually called purple cauliflower is actually a broccoli and that Romanesco is
actually a cauliflower. Current work is focused on examining the plants' DNA.
Cooks don't need DNA to tell the difference; we can just take a taste. Broccoli is green,
wild and assertive. Cauliflower is nutty, subtle and quiet. The taste of broccoli will come
through no matter what other ingredients you throw at it, but it will shrink from extended
cooking. Cauliflower's flavor is more malleable and seems to deepen and become richer
the longer it cooks. In part this difference in character is directly traceable to their respect-
ive amounts of certain chemicals that, when the vegetables are cooked for very long, form
sulfur compounds. Broccoli is up at the top of the sulfur ranking - right behind cabbage
- but cauliflower is way down at the bottom. Combine that with the way chlorophyll-rich
broccoli changes from green to olive drab with overcooking, and you have two vegetables
that, though very closely related genetically, need to be treated very differently.
Broccoli should be cooked quickly and used in ways that show off its bright color,
verdant flavor and crisp texture. Use broccoli in salads (steamed or blanched first, please;
you're not running a steak house salad bar), as a side dish or in pasta toppings. Broccoli
is one of the great flavor matches for olive oil and lemon, and, truth be told, that simple
treatment is difficult to beat. You can make it a bit more complicated if you like: saute
minced garlic, red pep per flakes, capers or salted anchovies (or all of the above) in the oil
first. Add toasted pine nuts or slivered olives, or the very Sicilian toasted bread crumbs, at
the end. A salty sheep's or goat's milk cheese works well, too, such as pecorino Romano
or feta.
Whereas broccoli dishes should be vibrant and immediate, cauliflower is a vegetable
that repays more careful cooking. There is a world of flavor in cauliflower, if only you
have the patience to discover it. You can cook it quickly and use it in almost any wild
way you'd use broccoli. Or you can cook it slowly until it is nearly melting in texture and
transform it into one of the most elegant vegetables on the planet. Prepared this way, cauli-
flower is wonderful combined with butter and cream. Bake it in a custard, and you get
a dish of almost shivering delicacy, with a deep, profoundly earthy flavor. This is one of
fall's most regal vegetable creations, and it's an amazing base for pairing with some flavors
that might surprise you. Despite its down-market image, cauliflower is amazingly good
with caviar and may be even better with white truffles. (The perfume of white truffles is
formed by chemical compounds related to some found in cauliflower.)
To get that really rich, deep cauliflower flavor for a custard, you need to cook it thor-
oughly. The timing is important: the longer you cook it, the more powerful the mustardy
flavors will be. You want them to be pronounced enough that they will cut through the