Romanesco Pasta
Photo: Carolina Ayala / Contributor
The season of brassica continues with beautiful heads of Romanesco, a cousin of the broccoli. With a shape of a fractal (a geometric curve in a repeated pattern) in a bright chartreuse green, this stunningly beautiful floret is packed with vitamins and fiber. Romanesco can be eaten raw, almost ceviche style, marinated with copious amounts of lemon juice and salt. Roasted, and drizzled with olive oil and lemon is another option. Roast and puree it to turn it into a creamy colorful soup. If chopping and braising it with pasta and rice, it cooks quickly and evenly yet the key is to cook it just enough to soften it slightly while maintaining its bright chlorophyll green color.
All the vegetables in this pasta are just barely cooked, to help maintain the crispness and their nutrients. If you buy the Romanesco at the farmer’s markets, the greens around it, which possess a lot of fiber, are usually attached to it. Don’t discard those, mince them and use them as the base for the sauce. The addition of aromatic ginger offsets the sulfurous aroma that arises when almost any brassica is cooked, particularly broccoli related vegetables.