According to the The Readers' Digest Complete Book of the Garden, there are four distinct groups of cauliflowers, which include broccoli as a subgroup. Furthermore, some cauliflowers are green, while broccoli comes in green, white and purple varieties. Totally confusing stuff. Let's simplify the picture considerably by pointing out clearly that here, in Ashy's vegetarian cookbook, when we talk about 'cauliflower', we mean the white stuff and any mention of 'broccoli' entails a pile of the green stuff. I haven't yet come across a sample of the purple bloom, but I'm sure it must be a handsome vegetable. Being the intrepid adventurous sort, constantly seeking new thrills and experiences, we can probably assume that I will eventually stumble upon the creature, so let's agree here and now, that when such an event transpires, we will refer to any purple variety of flowering brassica also as 'broccoli'.
Right, 'nuff said on that front. Let's continue on to the recipe, taking only one further, tiny detour to answer the question, 'What are you doing in possession of a copy of The Readers' Digest Complete Book of the Garden, Macbean?'. I don't know if anyone is really interested enough to ask this question but, too late, I've already raised it and, as every question, no matter how trivial, implies a symmetry which is incomplete without an answer, I now feel compelled to offer the missing part to complete the whole. Here it is. My mum gave it to me as a present.
She gave me it when I told her I had bought a dacha and wanted to grow some fruit and vegetables. My new dacha was situated on a barren expanse of inhospitable sandy steppe and consisted of a large rectangular patch of slightly more fertile soilish-type sand with a few disease-ridden fruit trees and a derelict house. Sveta and I worked it for three seasons, by the end of which we had transformed the house into a cozy cottage, coaxed the fruit trees into producing patchy irregular harvests of fairly edible fruit and dug in enough of the couch-grass to grow a load of tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, pumpkins, aubergines and a number of other tasty things, though never of the quantity or quality to which my neighbours successfully aspired. During this time, I began to realize that the The Readers' Digest Complete Book of the Garden was practically useless under the prevailing climactic conditions and I became increasingly more reliant on my neighbours for advice and instruction.
My neighbours laughed at my wee gardening book. My immediate neighbour looked a little like the terminator in an army surplus uniform, but he had a heart of gold. He was a real hard-case 'expansion of the imperial frontier' merchant, equally capable on sub-arctic tundra, the high Pamirs or, indeed, the desertified steppes of southern Kazakhstan. He showed me how to protect the fragile seedlings against the harsh overnight frosts of May, how to shade the rapidly maturing plants against the fierce midday sun during the July droughts and then finally how to channel enough water onto the fruiting plants to ensure a bountiful harvest. In late autumn my neighbours turned to bottling, salting and otherwise preserving their kilos of excess produce for the winter and they tried to teach me how to do that too, but I thought, 'Bollocks to that - too much like hard work.' and politely declined.
Although I grew quite a variety of fruit and vegetables, I have to admit that the thing I grew most successfully was marijuana, and that was pretty much by accident. I guess the environment was conducive as there were wild plants growing everywhere when we first got the dacha, but they weren't very potent. One day, However, I discovered a few seeds that had escaped into my rucksack pocket and traveled all the way from the Kerelan highlands of south India, unbeknown either to me or the customs boys at Almaty international airport. I decided to chuck them into the vegetable patch to see what happened, reasoning that no one would notice them amongst the local bogweed. Well, they grew...and grew. By October, the plants were over two metres high and everything else on the dacha had died. I cut them down after dark one night and stuffed them into sacks to dry off. In the end I had several kilograms of high quality ganja and I didn't know what to do with it. Paranoia began to set in and I knew I couldn't keep it so I gave most of it away to friends. The following year we gave up the dacha. It was just too much work and I couldn't help noticing that by the time the tomatoes and peppers were ready for harvest, they were only ten tenge a kilo down at the city market.
Now here's the recipe. We always get there eventually.
Ingredients
A big chunk of broccoli
1 red pepper
Half of a small onion
1 small carrot
A handful of shelled hazelnuts
A teaspoon of sesame seeds
A splash of soy sauce
noodles
Oil
Salt
Wash the vegetables then put a pan of salted water on to boil for the noodles before going any further. Next, cut up the broccoli by slicing into the stalks pulling the bits apart to tear the flowering heads (Doing it this way means the heads don't disintegrate into millions of wee buds as they do when you try chopping them with a knife). Slice the carrot, pepper and onion thinly and chop the hazelnuts.
Add the noodles to the boiling water and turn the heat down a little. Partially cover the pan. Stir fry the vegetables, hazelnuts and sesame seeds in a very hot frying pan or wok containing a little oil, until the carrots start to go floppy. Add a splash or two of soy sauce, turn down the heat and cover the pan while you drain the noodles. Stir the noodles into the vegetables and serve.