Broccoli is one of my favourite vegetables. And I like it cooked any style possible...
You can make a main dish or a side dish out of it, but today we prepare a soup.
Vegetarians may try it with some fried tofu instead of the sausage, the recipe of the fried tofu is HERE.
INGREDIENTS:
Servings: 4
700-800g broccoli (2 medium ones)
1-2 medium potatoes
1 small onion
1-2 sausages
EVO oil
salt
1. Peel potatoes and cut them into cubes 2x2cm.
Note: If you like your soup thick, use 2 potatoes.
2. Cut the broccoli into florets.
3. Put potatoes and broccoli into a pan and pour the water just enough to cover the vegetables. Add some salt.
4. Cook the vegetables till they are soft enough to be smashed by a fork.
5. Keep the vegetables aside.
6. Chop onion finely.
7. Pour some EVO oil into a frying pan, crumble the sausage into small bits and add chopped onion. Cook for about 5 minutes till it's nice and golden.
8. Using a blender, mash broccoli and potatoes together with the water they were cooked in.
9. Mix the pureed soup with the sausage and onion, keeping some of the sausage aside.
10. Serve the soup with some sausage crisps as a decoration.
Note: You may add some EVO oil when serve it without mixing it with the soup.
ENJOY !!!
I said : Let's have a light dinner! I mean, no steak, no sausages, no burger... What do we have as a veggy? Broccoli....
OK!!! I'm not on a diet but sometimes you really need something lighter...
INGREDIENTS:
Serving: 2-3
1 big broccoli
3-4 large slices of ham
100g Gruyer cheese
50g Pecorino cheese
salt
chilly
EVO oil
1. Divide broccoli head into florets and cook them in non-salted water till half done. Drain them carefully.
Note: Why not to salt the water? If you boil green veggies without salt, they will keep their nice green colour. You can always salt them later, cannot you?
2. In a pot pour some EVO oil and distribute nicely the florets.
3. Rip ham into small parts and insert them in between the florets.
4. Add salt, chilly and pour some more oil.
5. Grate finely Pecorino cheese and coarse way Gruyer cheese. Mix them.
6. Spread the cheese mix over the broccoli generously.
7. Cook in preheated oven at 200C for 20 minutes then increase the heat till 220 and cook for 10 minutes more till it's golden on top.
To those who said not to like how broccoli smells while it boils dedicated!
Hey, it wasn't much easy to start but so much difficult to continue....
I realized that even if I have made more pictures in my life than an everage person, I still cannot catch a nice shot of what I'm cooking..... hmmmmm...... So, what? - I thought... I'll learn in the process....
Ah, I have nearly forgotten: Mind, I'm not a native English speaker, so..... be so kind not to pay attention to my mistakes!.... :-) Why am I writing in English then? The thing is that I have soooo many English-speaking friends from all over the world and they would never ever forgive me for not sharing with them what I'm posting.....
Sooooo, what shall we cook today?
Quiche with Broccoli
I actually don't call it "quiche", for me it's just a "Salty cake" as it's not sweet so... salty! Call it a Pie if you like it better....
I like preparing this type of a pie when I cannot decide what to have for dinner or if there's a holiday and I don't have much time for cooking....
INGREDIENTS:
230-250g Brisèe Dough
2 small Broccoli OR 1 big one
3-4 slices of Prosciutto Cotto (Ham)
1/2 Scamorza cheese
3 Eggs
150g Ricotta
salt
1. Clean the broccoli and divide it into small parts, then boil it without adding salt. If you want to preserve it's nice and green color, never add salt while boiling it, you can do it later while the broccoli is still hot. If you have enough time you can always cook the broccoli a bit more in a pan with some olive oil, salt and chilli to give some more taste.
Cool the broccoli to the room temperature.
2. Switch the oven on to preheat it.
3. Cut scamorza and prosciutto into small pieces.
4. Mix eggs and ricotta in a bowl, add some salt. Try not to measure when you need to add salt, I advise you just to taste the food, then you will be able to add a right amount of salt to your dishes, it will become spontaneous ....
5. Add ham and cheese to the egg mix.
6. This time I used a 22cm silicon cake form but if you a bigger one your cake is just going to be thinner.
So, unwrap the Brisèe dough and place it in the form carefully. The excess of the dough should be cut off leaving 1cm over the ridge of the form. You will use it for decoration. Cut the excess of the dough with a sharp knife and try not to break the stripes.
I usually buy ready Pate Brisèe but if you prefer you can prepare it yourself, I'll try to post the recipe later on.
7. Fill the form with broccoli and cover it with the cheese-egg mix.
8. Place the stripes of the dough to form a grate. After that turn inside that 1cm of dough that you left over the ridge of the form, pinching it after each 1.5-2cm to create a decoration ....
9. Cook the pie at the temperature of 200C for about 30 minutes. Sometimes the time depends on the oven so check that your pie has a nice gold color before taking it out of the oven.
10. Cool your pie down on a cake grate not to render the bottom of it moist and sticky.
I'm pretty sure that even those who don't like veges will have a slice of this cake.....
Note: You can bake this pie with different fillings, like spinach and ricotta or fried artichokes... I'll add some more filling for the quiche later....
7. Pour some EVO oil into a frying pan, crumble the sausage into small bits and add chopped onion. Cook for about 5 minutes till it's nice and golden.
