When you find a crop or variety that likes your garden conditions, it makes food gardening look soooo easy. This is Green Sprouting Broccoli. I figure the yield is in the range of 50kg per plant, and our favourite way to eat it is as broccolini chips
But the cabbage moths have arrived, and I think that’s about the end for this year. We’ve had a good three months of harvesting broccolini, cauliflowers, kale, pak choi, napa cabbage, mustard. But from now on it’s not worth it, at least not here in the sub-tropics.
There are many, many organic remedies for cabbage moth caterpillars (and the web moth caterpillars that will be next to arrive). There are nets and traps and fake moths and eggshells and trichogramma wasps and dipel. But the only one I reckon is worth the time and effort for results is timing.
There’s a little mind shift I’ve found helps in feeling at home cooking eastern Asian style. Most of the time with western dishes, I amble along, starting with what I have, multitasking, substituting, tasting and adjusting as I go, ducking out to the garden for some herbs or garnishes as I think of them, and getting plates out and ready while it cooks.
Cheesy broccoli omelettes for breakfast (my geriatric chooks only lay for a few months of the year, but they’ve decided it’s near enough to spring to start too), and broccoli with hollandaise for dinner. Raw broccoli in salads and lightly steamed broccoli with sesame oil, lemon juice and toasted sesame seeds in the lunch box. Broccoli in noodle stir fries, and in pasta. And a broccoli based party dish I’m…
Which is a two part dish, consisting of an Asian style omelette in a mildly ginger laced vegetable stock sauce. It’s surprisingly addictive! I used duck eggs for this one, just because we have them, but chook eggs work just as well.
This recipe is a riff on Mollie Katzen’s Enchanted Broccoli Forest, or at least it owes some heritage to that inspired combination of broccoli, lemon, eggs and cheese – which you wouldn’t think would work but it so does.