Category: broccoli

Categories
broccoli garlic rice

adam ragusea’s broccoli in garlic sauce

This vaguely American-Chinese recipe for broccoli in garlic sauce is solely, unashamedly and wholesale lifted from Adam Ragusea. Go watch the video for it here, it’s great.

I’ve cooked it a bunch and I love the powerful, salty sauce you make. I only reproduce it in my blog because it’s easier for me to browse the ingredients here than it is to rewatch the video for the 18th time or scrubbing through the description.

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broccoli in garlic sauce

Course Main Course
Cuisine American, Chinese
Prep Time 10 minutes
Cook Time 20 minutes
Servings 2 people
Author Gary @ BigSpud

Ingredients

  • 1 medium-large crown of broccoli about 350g
  • 3-4 garlic cloves
  • 1 small thumb of ginger about the same amount as the garlic
  • 1/2 a small fresh chili or throw the whole thing in
  • 1/2 teaspoon onion powder
  • 60 ml soy sauce
  • 1 tablespoons brown sugar
  • 2 teaspoons mustard
  • 3 tablespoons oyster sauce
  • 2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil
  • 2 tablespoons cornflour
  • pepper
  • MSG to taste
  • sesame seeds for garnish
  • 200 g white rice to serve

Instructions

  • Get the rice cooking the way you like it - this will take around 20 minutes and the rest can be made while this cooks. Fluff before serving.
  • While you're getting the rice going, peel and chop the garlic and ginger with the chilli.
  • Get a pan of water on to boil, and use it for the broccoli. This will cook for a maximum of 4 minutes so it's barely tender - it will finish cooking in the sauce.
  • Drain off some of the cooking water - maybe half - into a bowl or mug so you can use it for slackening the sauce.
  • Coat the pan with a thin film of cooking oil (NOT the sesame oil), throw in the garlic, ginger and chili, stir and fry for a couple minutes until soft. Put in a generous splash of water, soy sauce, sugar, mustard, oyster sauce, sesame oil, onion powder and a few grinds of pepper.
  • While that's simmering, dissolve the cornflour in just enough water to make a thick slurry. While one hand stirs, use the other hand to drizzle in slurry until you get a very thick consistency — you might not need all of the slurry.
  • Taste the sauce, consider adding MSG (or salt) or more of any of the other sauce ingredients it might need. Remember that the broccoli and rice are totally unseasoned, so the sauce needs to be strong enough and salty enough to flavor both itself and the broccoli and rice, i.e. too strong on its own. The texture should be very thick, because the broccoli will water it down a little. The sauce is easy to burn when it's this thick, so you might want to turn the heat down (or off).
  • Dump in the broccoli and toss it in the sauce until warm and coated. You can stir in more hot water if the sauce is too thick. Dish out the rice, serve the broccoli and extra sauce on top, optionally garnish with sesame seeds.
Categories
bacon broccoli cheese food gnocchi

gnocchi cheese bake with broccoli

Sometimes you get in from work, it’s just late, it’s dark, it’s raining. The urge to pick up the phone (or app, these days) and order some food in. But you know there’s just enough stuff in the cupboards that can be coerced into something that doesn’t scream leftovers. And that’s where this gnocchi cheese bake was born.

It has a macaroni cheese at it’s heart but with pillowy gnocchi instead for a toothy bite. The broccoli is there to assuage a little guilt and have something green poking out of it, though the irony taste does help damp down the richness.

The sauce is also a lightning-fast one, made with Greek yoghurt instead of a traditional roux. It’s not quite the same but it’s a helluva lot faster. Pure comfort food.

I’m entering this into Speedy Suppers hosted by Maison Cupcake and Feeding Boys; the theme this month is cheese so what could be more apt?

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gnocchi cheese bake with broccoli

Author Gary @ BigSpud

Ingredients

  • Gnocchi
  • 200 g frozen broccoli
  • 1 slice bread
  • 3 rashers smoked streaky bacon diced (optional)

For the cheese sauce:

  • 2 tablespoons cornflour level
  • 1 500 g Greek-style yoghurt
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
  • 50 g fresh parmesan grated
  • 50 g cheddar grated

Instructions

  • Preheat the oven to 200C.
  • Put a large pan of water on to boil. Put the gnocchi and broccoli in the water until al dente and drain.
  • While the gnoc 'n' broc cooks, measure the cornflour into a bowl. Blend in a little yoghurt, stir in the eggs and whisk until smooth. Mix in the remaining yoghurt, cheeses and the mustard.
  • Get an oven-safe dish over a low heat. If you're using the bacon, fry it quickly until crispy. Whizz up half the bacon and bread in a food processor and keep to one side for a moment.
  • Add the gnocchi, broccoli and the other half of the bacon to the cheese sauce, adding a little milk if required to let it down. Top with the bacony breadcrumbs and bake for 20 mins, or until puffy and golden.

Need more cheesy dinners? Try the Jackie Kashian creamy penne. Or Heston’s macaroni cheese!

Categories
bacon broccoli egg parmesan tomato

bbt tortilla

What a great year it’s been for tomatoes. The plants in my garden have been raving with fruit, and they’ve been bursting with sweetness. A really bumper crop. Most of them have ended up in pasta sauce and pizza topping but these ones were deserving of a little more.

And so I happened across a recipe for a “BLT tortilla” in the SORTED cookbook but didn’t fancy rocket in mine, so some frozen broccoli jumped in instead. Coupled with refreshing, sweet tomatoes what you get is a portable and tasty lunch that’d be great in a picnic or easily upgraded to main meal status with a decent salad.

BBT tortilla (serves 4 – 6):

6 rashers smoked bacon, diced

About 12 frozen broccoli florets

8 eggs

A couple of handful of cherry tomatoes, halved

A handful of grated parmesan

  1. Get a frying pan over a high heat and preheat the oven to 180°C. Add a dash of oil to the pan and fry the bacon briskly until coloured, and then add the broccoli. Stir fry until the broccoli has started to soften.
  2. Mix the eggs in a bowl with the parmesan, a pinch of salt and a few grinds of black pepper. Pour this and the tomatoes into the pan, and take this opportunity to space the veg around the pan evenly. When that’s done transfer to the oven and bake for 15 – 20 minutes until the wobble has just gone. Leave to cool in the pan for 10 minutes before turning out and serving.
Categories
breadcrumbs broccoli chicken coriander cumin food noodles oyster sauce

chicken katsu with oyster noodles

I do love panko breadcrumbs. The ridiculous extra crunch the Japanese breadcrumbs give is so satisfying. So I was really looking forward to chicken coated in panko when I got home.

Until I realised I didn’t have any eggs. The typical pane station is flour, egg, breadcrumb. But with no eggs what was I going to do? I figure all it needed was something for the breadcrumbs to stick to. So why not the chef’s friend cornflour? My only problem was avoiding that gluey taste that cornflour can give, so I added some ground spices to mask the flavour. Seemed to work pretty well. To the point in fact where I don’t see the need to waste an egg on breadcrumbing again!

This is an easy to rustle-up, easy to multiply dinner that is a great combo of crunchy chicken and slurpy noodles. You could use any sauce you like with the noodles – even a splash of soy would do.

Chicken katsu with oyster noodles (serves 2):

2 chicken breasts

1 teaspoon cornflour

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon ground coriander

Milk

A little plain flour

Panko breadcrumbs

4 noodle nests

1 litre chicken stock

Large handful of broccoli florets, cut into bite-size pieces

A pinch of chilli flakes

1 carrot

A pinch of sesame seeds

  1. Get a large pan with shallow oil over a medium heat, and a saucepan for your noodles over a high heat.
  2. Lay out a sheet of cling film and dust with salt and pepper. Put the chicken on this and lay another piece of chicken on top. Using a rolling pin, bash the chicken to approx 1cm thin.
  3. In a bowl combine the cornflour, cumin and coriander. Add milk until you get a thick, sludgy paste. Set up a breading station, with one bowl of plain flour, your cornflour sludge, and the breadcrumbs. Dust the chicken with flour, dip in the cornflour paste and then in the breadcrumbs. Make sure they are well coated.
  4. Lower the chicken into the oil gently. When done on one side flip over until done, then drain on kitchen paper.
  5. Get the chicken stock on to boil in the saucepan and add the noodles. After 3 minutes or when the noodles are done, drain them and rinse well with cold water.
  6. Add the broccoli back to the noodle saucepan, add the chilli along with a splash of water. Peel the carrot and use the peeler to shave into strips into the broccoli. Jam the lid on and cook fast. After about 3 minutes the broccoli should be tender, so add the oyster sauce and toss well. Cook for a further minute and then add the noodles back to the pan, tossing well to mix. Serve in a bowl topped with sesame seeds, and top with the sliced chicken.
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