Purple Sprouting Broccoli ... Simply the Best

No kitchen garden should be without it.  One of my favourite vegetables.  So expensive to buy at the supermarket - £2.00 for five spears.  Pictured above is a colander full, that is about £10.00's worth by supermarket prices. And yet it is a wonderful brassica that keeps on giving and giving and so easy to grow.  Admittedly it stays in the ground for nine months or so before you can actually pick anything - but when it starts producing stems it just goes on and on.  We have had countless meals from just three plants - that can't be bad, and still there are more to come - what's not to like!  I did say in my last post that I wouldn't be planting any brassicas this year - but maybe I could find space for one or two of these somewhere - it would be a shame not to - they are still going strong when everything else has finished and fill in that hungry gap in the garden.  So if you are wondering what veg to grow this year I would definitely recommend putting purple sprouting broc on your list - it's a no-brainer.

"The whole lightly trimmed stems can be dropped into boiling water, steamed, or pampered like asparagus with the tips slightly out of the water, so that the buds steam whilst the stems boil.  Whichever way you go, the stems are ready when a knifepoint inserted into their thickest part goes in without pressure. [...] I must put in a word for the leaves.  I never discard them.  Slender, quietly flavoured, elegantly fringed, they cook in seconds.  It would break my heart to see them sent to the compost." ~ Nigel Slater