STRAIGHT FROM THE BACKYARD...RESTAURANT QUALITY! - 5 December 2012

High winds and rain might have prevented me getting out in the garden today, but they weren’t going to keep me from harvesting broccoli for dinner tonight!  We seem to be having great success with broccoli at the moment which is great as I have so many dishes that usebroccoli as an ingredient.  This is my secondYates Broccoli – Summer Green that I’ve harvested this week.

I have to be completely honest, but harvesting the vegetables right before I start cooking dinner, is the best thing about gardening in my opinion.  It makes me feel really good as I go out to the garden and select the produce for dinner…knowing that I’ve grown it myself!  It is a sensational feeling!

I also love chopping vegetables from our garden.  They are so incredibly crisp and the smell is sensational.  Store-bought vegies just aren’t the same.  It has to be the freshness of the vegetables – right from our backyard, straight to the kitchen.  Amazing.  (And I won’t even go on about the flavour….)

Tonight on the menu was Broccoli, Pine Nut and Saffron Orecchiette.  It is one of my absolute favourite dishes.  I try to have a vegetarian dish at least once a week and this is one of my favourites to cook.  It is so simple and incredibly delicious!  I used bay leavesand dried chillies from our garden too.  (I’m running really low on my dried chillies and frozen chillies from last season’s harvest, so I hope this year’s ones start flowering soon!!)  My husband thinks that this is restaurant quality food…however, this only cost about $8 in total to make and we have left-overs for lunch tomorrow!  This is also quite good to make from all the side shoots if you leave your broccoli plants growing after harvesting the main head…

MICHELLE’S BROCCOLI, PINE NUTS & SAFFRON ORECCHIETTE PASTA – SERVES 4

Ingredients

 500g broccoli

2 fresh bay leaves

500g orecchiette (or you could use spiral or shell pasta)

3 pinches saffron

 2 cloves garlic, crushed and finely diced

1-2 small dried chillies

1 tsp olive oil

1/3 cup olive oil

1/2 cup pine nuts

sea salt

freshly ground pepper

freshly grated parmesan

Method

1. Trim stalks off broccoli and cut into small florets. Plunge broccoli into a pot of salted boiling water and add bay leaves. Cook until tender. Drain and put broccoli florets into a bowl with ice and water. Discard bay leaves and drain off water thoroughly.
2. Heat first measure of olive oil over medium heat in a frying pan. Add pine nuts and cook until golden. Remove from heat and drain on a paper towel. Sprinkle with sea salt. Put saffron in same pan and toast over medium heat until the saffron darkens in colour. Transfer to paper towel and keep separate from pine nuts.
3. Add second measure of oil to pan and add garlic and chillies. Cook for a few minutes over medium heat until slightly golden. Add broccoli and mash into oil with a fork. Remove from heat and re-heat just before pasta is ready.
4. Cook pasta until al denté, drain and mix in with broccoli mixture, pine nuts and saffron.
5. Serve immediately with grated parmesan and freshly ground pepper.