Friday, December 18, 2020

Broccoli with fried shallots and olives

 

 

My father always combed the food pages of the New York Times and clipped recipes for my mom to try.  I have copies of some of those recipes, most notably, the Dutch baby pancake known and revered by Times readers as David Eyre's Pancake [my post is here, the recipe is here]  And I have recipe clippings of my own, from the many years when the Sunday Times appeared on our doorstep each week.  The Wild Mushroom and Green Peppercorn Meatloaf has been a family favorite for at least a quarter of a century.

These days we don't subscribe to the newspaper but I follow the Cooking Section and several of the Times food writers on social media.  The recipes and food articles are behind the New York Times paywall, so I clicked sparingly to use my monthly allotment of free recipes.  Then I realized that the Times offers an annual subscription to their recipes on the New York Times Cooking site - also available as an app. 

I was delighted when Santa brought me a subscription for Christmas last year!  And I have loved discovering new recipes as well as exploring ones from their extensive archives.  In fact, I enjoyed the gift so much that I requested a renewal for Christmas this year.

This week my friends in the "Good Friends Good Food" blog group are all cooking a "holiday green vegetable."  The theme was chosen by yours truly, and even though I have been rather spotty in my group participation, I was happy to get in the kitchen with my fresh-from-the-farm-box broccoli and a recipe that the New York Times had recommended for Thanksgiving.

 n.o.e.'s notes:

Here is the recipe from The New York Times Cooking site.  (It is behind a paywall, but I think you can access several free recipes/articles from the Times each month.)  It's a Melissa Clark recipe, and her food is reliably tasty.


- The recipe has you fry shallots in olive oil for the topping, and the blanched broccoli is combined with olives and sliced garlic, and tossed with the shallot oil and optional sherry vinegar (to brighten the flavor, as Melissa Clark says).

 - I made 1/2 recipe, but used the full amount of oil and almost the full amount of shallots, because extra fried shallots is always a good idea.  At the end, I only used half of the oil to toss with the broccoli.

- I steamed rather than blanched my broccoli.

- The comments on the online recipe were helpful, including a suggestion to add a sliced almonds, browning them with the olives and garlic. 

 - I did toss with the optional sherry vinegar at the end, and would do that again.

the verdict:

We really loved this recipe!  It had a lot of depth of flavor, earthy from the olives, slightly sweet and toasty from the shallots, crunchy from the almonds.  I can see it at as a side dish at a holiday dinner where the main is a simple roast.  But maybe not if there are a lots of competing sauces and flavors on the plate from multiple dishes.

You can see other green vegetable posts from the bloggers of GFGF by visiting their blogs: Kayte, Peggy, Margaret,  Ulrike, Donna, Ellen

6 comments:

ostwestwind said...

Broccoli does not work well in our house and I have many fee required subscriptions. I must rely on your word about this delicious sounding salad.

Happy Holidays

Peggy said...

Always love reading your posts! I made broccoli as well, but mine was an easy, non-glamorous dish. Yours looks very fitting for any Christmas feast. Merry Christmas!

Donna said...

Your broccoli dish looks beautiful and sounds like a different way to prepare it that I would like. I couldn’t access the recipe without a subscription but plan to use the ingredients you mentioned to see how it goes.

Merry Christmas!

Unknown said...

Nancy, my recipe was also from the times. They do have some good recipez. Broccoli is one of my fave veggies and I like finding new ways to cook it. That's what great about this collection of friends - a penchant for good recipes. Trying this one.

Anonymous said...

I see you are a Melissa Clark fan as well. Santa surely knew you well with that subscription. The whole dish looks fabulous and all the flavors sound just perfect meeting up like this. We eat broccoli several times a week as it must be our favorite of favorites. I would love to try this recipe. Yum.

Kayte said...

The comment re Melissa Clark, etc. is from Kayte...I could not get it to accept under my name! lol