Many years ago, I learned to make orecchiette with broccoli and cauliflower from the Zuni
Cafe cookbook by the great chef that I think of as my culinary soulmate, Judy Rodgers.
This dish is a great example of layering flavors and textures. Great chefs do it subconsciously,
but they often have a hard time communicating that. And Judy can communicate that in a way
that can help you get that spark in your cooking. I haven’t looked at her original recipe
in years. It’s likely that at this point my dish is a little different, but the basic
concept is the same.
It all starts with how you cut the veggies. This dish can be made with either broccoli
or cauliflower or both. Today I’ll use both. Great flavor comes from browning. And great
browning comes from the ingredient making good contact with the pan. That’s why we
are slicing our veggies. These flat surfaces will make good contact with the pan and will
brown way better than if we break them up into florets. Stems are delicious too. For
cauliflower, I just cut them into little cubes. For broccoli, I peel them a little to reduce
fibrousness and then cut them up.
What you see on my cutting board is a tad too much for the 4 servings that I am making,
so I’ll save some veggies for some future use. The measurements don’t really matter
here, but in case you are wondering I am using roughly 600 grams of vegetables here. If you
want to eyeball, it’s this much broccoli plus this much cauliflower.
We’ll also need a garlic clove thinly sliced and a couple of teaspoons of drained and rinsed
capers. I’ll chop them up a little. You can also use olives in addition to capers
or instead of them. Please don’t leave me comments that say “what if I don’t like
capers”. If you don’t like something, you don’t use it. No need to ask me for
permission.
Now, let’s make the breadcrumbs. Serving pasta with bread crumbs is not silly. It’s
brilliant. Everything in this dish is soft and the toasted breadcrumbs will give us some
crunch making this dish much more complex. Make sure you are using good bread. Remove
the crust from 1 or 2 slices of bread, and slice it extremely thinly. Don’t use a serrated
knife here. It works a lot better with a chef’s knife. It’s a bit easier to cut if it’s
stale, but if you only have fresh bread that’s fine. Then cut in the other direction
and finally mince. Please don’t use store bought bread crumbs. They work great in some
applications, but not in this one. We don’t want to turn our bread into powder here, so
I don’t recommend putting this bread into a food processor.
Set a medium skillet over medium-low heat. Add about 1 and a half tablespoons of butter
and wait for it to melt. Add the breadcrumbs, stir them with the butter and cook stirring
occasionally, regulating the heat very carefully so that they brown, but don’t burn.
While our bread crumbs are cooking. Set the biggest skillet you have in your kitchen over
high heat and add 3 Tbsp of olive oil. Mine is 12 inches with straight sides, which gives
me lots of room for browning. If your skillet is smaller, you either have to cook the vegetables
in batches or in 2 skillets.
When the oil is hot, lay out the biggest and flattest veggie pieces on the bottom, then
fill in the holes with smaller pieces and finally pile the remaining vegetables on top.
Give it another drizzle of oil, but don’t stir. We are trying to keep maximum contact
between the veggies and the pan. Cover the pan and cook until the bottom veggies brown.
Check frequently, but be patient. Absolutely no stirring, until you get color, which will
take between 2 and 5 minutes.
My breadcrumbs need a stir. They are making good progress. The further along they get,
the lower your heat should get.
Let’s check up on the veggies.
This is a happy sight. We have color and it’s time to stir.
Try to pull up the brown pieces to the top and shove the pale pieces on the bottom. By
the way, this is a good time to salt the veggies. I forgot until later, which was fine, but
not intentional.
Keep cooking your veggies like this until a lot of them are brown. The reason we are
covering the pan is so that the top veggies steam and get tender while the bottom ones
are browning.
Let’s check up on our bread crumbs again. They are getting very close. I am judging
how done they are not only by color, but by texture. I want them to get crunchy.
Back to veggies. We’ve got color again and can give them another stir. By the way, keep
adding oil as necessary. The bottom of the pan should always be well lubricated. Here!
I finally remembered to salt things. Don’t get carried away with salt yet because we
are adding capers which are quite salty.
Once the veggies are brown, move them to the side. Add a drizzle of oil, a pinch of red
chili flakes (as big or as little as you want), and garlic and capers that we chopped up earlier.
Cook until aromatic, about a minute,
and then mix it with the veggies. Now we need a very generous squirt of lemon. All the flavors
so far are very hearty and they need something refreshing to balance them.
Stir well, and taste for salt and acidity. I needed more salt. When people see me cook,
they often laugh at me that I always need more salt. That’s intentional. If I don’t
need to correct the salt in the end, it means that I was too aggressive in the beginning
which is dangerous. It can easily result in oversalting. I always salt at 80% of what
my intuition tells me I actually need until the very end, when I go for a 100%.
Ok, our veggies are done. Our breadcrumbs are done and it’s show time. Cook your orecchiette.
We made fresh orecchiette last week. The video for them is linked below, but this works great
with store bought pasta as well. The broccoli cauliflower mix is great on toast, on pizza
on anything you want. I moved it to the side to give myself a chance to first toss my pasta
with a couple tablespoons of butter. That tastes better to me than dumping wet pasta
directly onto the vegetables. Sprinkle it with bread crumbs (i usually reserve a tiny
bit for garnish) and freshly grated parmesan. Give it all a good mix and then taste for
salt, acidity, and butter. I needed more butter. See -- sometimes it’s not the salt.
Ok, so let’s talk about those layered flavors and textures. Smell wise, you’ve got caramel
notes from the browned veggies, sharpness from garlic and chili, a bit of funk from
the capers and parmesan and of course the wheat and butter from pasta and breadcrumbs.
Tastewise, you’ve got sweetness from browning, acidity from lemon, saltiness from capers
and well, salt. Texture-wise, you’ve got creamy veggies, chewy pasta, and crispy bread
crumbs. This dish is a mouthful. I know my descriptions of food are more clinical than
poetic. I am bad at poetry, so I have a challenge for you. Make this dish and write me something
beautiful.
By the way, if you want to get the Zuni Cafe cookbook or the pan that I used to cook broccoli
and cauliflower, amazon links for them are below. It’s a great way to support my channel.
Thank you!
Here are more very detailed culinary tutorials for you to check out and if you are ever in
the Boston area, maybe I’ll see you in one of my classes.