At a glance
Dinner for two with bread, or a side for four
EasyOne pan, no technique to learn first.
- Prep
- 5 min
- Cook
- 12 min
- Total
- 17 min
- Serves
- 2
Steamed broccoli is a vegetable you have to be talked into. Charred broccoli is one you eat standing at the stove before it reaches the table, and the difference is entirely about heat and patience.
Most of the sweetness in a brassica is locked behind a sulphurous edge that boiling makes worse and browning removes. High, dry heat on a cut face converts sugars, drives off water, and leaves something closer to roasted cauliflower than to school dinners.
The flat face
Broccoli is an awkward shape and the trick is to make it less awkward. Cutting wedges through the stem, rather than breaking off florets, gives every piece a flat plane of dense stem to sit on. That plane is what browns. Loose florets have almost no surface that can contact the pan, which is why a tray of them comes out dusty and dry.
Peel the main stalk and slice it into coins. It cooks in the same time and it is better than the florets.
Anchovy as seasoning, not ingredient
Four fillets in a pan of butter melt into nothing visible in about sixty seconds. What is left is glutamate and salt — the same reason a Caesar dressing tastes the way it does without anybody thinking about fish.
If you are cooking for somebody who has told you they do not like anchovies, this is the dish to make them, and I would not mention it until afterwards.
Turning it into dinner
With bread and a fried egg it is a meal for two. With the crispy rice it is a better one. As a side it stretches to four and will still be the thing people mention.
Ingredients
Method
4 steps
Cut for flat faces
Halve the head through the stem, then cut each half into wedges through the stem again, so every piece has one flat side. Peel and slice the thick stalk; it is the sweetest part and gets thrown away far too often.
Do not move it
Get a large, heavy pan properly hot with the oil. Lay the wedges cut-side down in one layer and leave them for four to five minutes without touching them. You are looking for black in places, not tan all over.
Turn once, then steam
Flip everything, add a splash of water, and cover for three minutes. The stems should give to a knife with a little resistance left.
Build the butter in the pan
Uncover, push the broccoli to one side, and drop in the butter, anchovies, garlic, and chilli. Stir for a minute as the anchovies dissolve, then toss everything together off the heat with the lemon juice. Salt, and eat it out of the pan.
Cook's notes
- Anchovy does not taste of fish here. It tastes of salt and depth, and it is the reason this works with nothing else on the plate.
- Crowding the pan is the only real failure mode. Two batches beats one grey one.
- Keeps
- A day in the fridge. Cold, chopped, and folded through pasta the next night, it is arguably better.
