hello this is chef john from foodwishes.com
with roasted roman style romanesco that's right i was going to start with a
joke about this being a vegetable brought to earth by aliens
but these days if i did 30 to 40 percent of the country would believe me
so instead i will just say it looks like a vegetable brought to earth by aliens
and because of its bizarre and unusual appearance this is the kind of thing
people pass over in the market mostly because they're confused by it
and not sure quite what to do with it well stay tuned because i'm going to
show you exactly what to do with it and if you do what i do you're going to
be enjoying one of the most delicious vegetables you've ever had
so with that let's go ahead and get started with how to prep romanesco
and the first thing i do is usually remove any of these tough stems and
leaves from the outside which you can do by pulling off although
it's probably easier if we just cut those off when we portion this
and to do that what we'll attempt to do is cut this directly through the center
into two pieces and then like i said we can use our knife to trim off any of
those tough stems on the outside and then if we wanted we could roast
these just like this but because that core in the center is so large and thick
i think this cooks a lot more evenly if we actually cut these again into
quarters but make sure you know exactly where that core is so you're cutting
right through the center of it and that's it once we have our romanesco
heads broken down into quarters we will simply set those aside while we
mix up a very simple dressing with which we're going to coat these with before we
roast them and that's going to start with a few
olive oil packed anchovy fillets to which we will add some olive oil and
then what we'll do is take the back of a fork and give these a little bit of a
mashing which if you want you can leave kind of
coarse like i'm going to or if you're afraid of people seeing you
put anchovies in something they're about to eat
you could smash this down all the way to a paste so you decide
i mean you are after all the johnny cash of how fine the mash
and speaking of rings of fire once that's been accomplished we'll go ahead
and add some red pepper flakes as well as some freshly squeezed lemon
juice and then what we'll do once we have
everything in the bowl is give that a quick mix with our fork
to create a temporary emulsification at which point we'll stop and add our cut
up romanesco and then we'll take a couple clean hands
and we'll get in there and we'll get in there deep
and we will toss these until they are completely and utterly coated with that
dressing and then what we'll do once we're 110
sure those pieces have been 100 coated as it will stop and sprinkle over
some plain breadcrumbs as well as a very generous grating of
real parmesan cheese right out of all the recipes you could
get away with using fake parmesan this is not one of them so go get
yourself a nice chunk of parmigiano-reggiano
and do this right oh and by the way because our anchovies are salty
and we're going to use a good amount of parmesan here i did not add any salt at
this point but if you want to add a little bit go
ahead although we can always add a little more when we're eating
and it's impossible to take some out but anyway once that's been crumbed in
cheese we'll go ahead and give that a toss
at which point it's ready to transfer into some kind of roasting pan
into which we've drizzled a generous amount of olive oil
and we'll go ahead and place those in fun side up and then once those have
been placed in we'll make sure to scrape out any of those cheesy crumbs in the
bowl and sort of scatter those evenly over
the top since all that stuff's going to brown up and crisp up beautifully as
this roasts speaking of which to hedge our bets once
that's done we'll go ahead and grate some more parmesan over the top
and please don't be shy and then for one last touch we'll go ahead and drizzle
these with olive oil at which point is ready to transfer into
the center of a 475 degree oven for about 20 minutes or so or until
everything is beautifully browned and looking incredibly gorgeous
and more importantly our romanesco is tender but you can't see tender
you can only feel tender so we'll go ahead and give that the old polka poke
with a knife and i confirmed the mine was in fact
perfectly tender which means it's ready to serve which i
decided to do garnish with some little lemon wedges
plus one last drizzle with olive oil except if you place the lemon down first
and then drizzle the oil over the top you're gonna end up with what we call in
the business slippery lemon so it's probably a much
better idea to do your olive oil first and then garnish with your lemon wedges
alright i make these mistakes so you don't have to
but anyway once incorrectly garnished i went ahead and grabbed a fork and knife
and dug in and that my friends bizarre appearances
aside is one of the most delicious vegetables you will ever taste
and i know it does look like it's going to taste like a cross between
cauliflower and broccoli which it sort of does but at the same
time it really does have a unique flavor all its own
okay it's kind of sweet and nutty and definitely milder and not quite as
bitter as broccoli but to summarize what it really tastes
like is romanesco and while it is quite delicious just
roasted like this it's also very very nice with a little squeeze of slippery
lemon so this really is a beautiful way to
serve it but my favorite way and why i didn't put any garlic in the
dressing would be served next to a beautiful garlic aioli
and yes that is redundant and while it would be perfectly acceptable to serve
this as a side dish i really do think serve like this is
more than special enough to serve on its own
so i just went ahead and turned it into an entree and why something like this
works so well with aioli and also why we use so much olive oil is
because the fatal flaw with vegetables is they don't have any fat content
so by simply enjoying them with some flavorful fatty ingredients
we make up for that and it really does help bring out and enhance all their
natural goodness especially something like this romanesco
which is surprisingly savory and certainly more than worthy to be
eaten with a fork and steak knife and if you're thinking he sounds kind of
overly excited for eating a roasted vegetable
well then i'm guessing you never had roasted roman style romanesco
because this stuff really is fantastic so the next time you're at the market
sometime between late summer and early fall and you see this gorgeous but
bizarre looking vegetable that may or may not have been brought to
this planet by aliens i really do hope you pick some up and
give this a try soon so please follow the links below for the
ingredient amounts a printable written recipe and much more
info as usual and as always enjoy
you