Eat your new greens

Whether you are looking for new flavours to tickle your tastebuds or something different. to grow in your garden, little beats obscureand sometimes strange-looking-vegetables, says Mark Diacono

- Mark Diacono

ONE of the pleasures of growing some of your own food is getting beyond the supermarket shelves and inviting a new world of flavour into the kitchen. Every year, I grow two things that are new to me, a tradition that, over time, has introduced me to kai lan, Babington’s leek, yacon, Egyptian walking onion, parsley root and so many more. Happily, there are an increasing number of nurseries stocking more of these unfamiliar vegetables. Here, I’ve selected a handful of my favourite unusual treats and I hope that, once you’ve tried them, you might be moved to keep going.

Romanesco

I’ve given up on growing cauliflower: get everything right with it and it can still blow the day you turn your back. Romanesco— a cauliflower, a broccoli or its own thing, depending on who you talk to—has taken its place in my garden. It is quite the beauty: imagine a conical sea coral the colour of a teddy boy’s socks, arranged in a series of self-similar logarithmic spirals, so that, whether observing the whole or a miniature floret, you see a spiralling peak made up of smaller spiralling peaks. Its flavour is both nuttier and brighter than cauliflower, and—thankfully—it rarely bolts.

As with cauliflower, Romanesco takes beautifully to roasting whole or broken into florets before being drizzled in oil and lemon juice to serve, or—like broccoli— finely chopped and sautéed in oil with plenty of chilli and/or garlic, for a pasta sauce.

Three-cornered leek