A quick, easy and delicious side dish – beautiful steamed romanesco cauliflower with golden, buttery seasoned crumbs. Everyone loves its fractal patterns – and its flavour!
A week and a half ago, while contemplating fractal vegetables like broccoli, I asserted that romanesco cauliflower is out of season. I should have known better than to make a statement like that, because shortly thereafter I came across a pile of them in a local farm shop. D’oh!
Mathematical veg
Of course I had to buy one! These amazing, alien-looking vegetables are as delicious as they are fun to look at. Although I had no clear plan for my beautiful romanesco, I couldn’t leave it in the shop. Especially when the number of spirals on the head of a romanesco is a Fibonacci number!
What exactly is a romanesco?
Interestingly, there seems to be no clear consensus on what a romanesco actually is. Some say it’s a broccoli, others claim it as a cauliflower. The French call it chou Romanesco, meaning “Romanesco cabbage”, although it doesn’t look much like a cabbage to me.
I like its German name the best – they call it a Pyramidenblumenkohl or “pyramid cauliflower”. In any case, it’s definitely a brassica of some sort.
The flavour is somewhere between a broccoli and a cauliflower – slightly sweet, slightly nutty, robust without being overpoweringly ‘cabbagey’. We are big fans of this beautiful and delicious vegetable.
Beautiful Fractals
It’s almost a shame to take the romanesco to pieces to cook and eat it. Fortunately, it’s fractal nature means that each floret is a mini-romanesco!
However, this means that as you cut it into pieces, it seems to multiply on your kitchen counter. Perhaps it really is an alien life form, and this is part of its plan for world domination… Eek!
Just as well we saw it coming and polished it off with some crunchy, buttery, seasoned crumbs. Yum.
Simple vs elaborate?
I was going to do something altogether more elaborate with this romanesco – you can basically do anything you’d do with broccoli or cauliflower (similarly, you can substitute either of them for the romanesco in this recipe, if you can’t get hold of it).
In the end I opted for this fairly simple treatment which gives this superstar vegetable a chance to shine, both in flavour, and in aesthetics. It looks gorgeous, and tastes divine!
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📖 Recipe
Romanesco cauliflower with rosemary garlic crumbs
Ingredients
- 1 medium-large romanesco (or use a regular cauliflower)
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 tablespoon butter
- 15 g breadcrumbs
- 1 garlic clove crushed
- 1 teaspoon dried rosemary
Instructions
- Divide the romanesco (or cauliflower) into florets, and wash thoroughly. Steam the florets for 5-7 minutes until tender.
- Meanwhile, heat the olive oil and butter in a heavy frying pan, and add the crumbs, crushed garlic and rosemary. Cook, stirring, for a few minutes until golden and crispy. Set aside.
- Transfer the steamed romanesco to a serving dish and scatter the crumbs over. Serve.
Nutrition
More delicious Romanesco cauliflower recipes
If you love romanesco like I do, you’ll probably also enjoy whole roast romanesco with za’atar, and these garlic and parmesan roasted veggies.
You can also use it anywhere you’d use cauliflower, for instance in this delicious roasted cauliflower chowder, or this fabulous roasted vegetable and barley salad with creamy tahini dressing.
March’s theme for the Cooking with Herbs challenge is rosemary. Check out all the other lovely recipes (or submit your own) here.
I’m also linking this up to the Cool Cauliflower linky party, hosted by Karen at Lavender and Lovage and Choclette at Tin and Thyme.
choclette
Romanesco is so architectural and it’s great to see it in a dish where it can shine and not be obscured by everything else. Thanks for sharing it with #CoolCauliflowerRecipes.
Helen
Thanks Choclette. We love it and all its fractal wonderfulness! Tastes great too! Thanks for organising the cauliflower link-up
Karen Burns Booth
I LOVE this fractal veggie – it has such a subtle taste and is brilliant when cooked with cheese and nuts too!