The Wildest-Looking Vegetable Makes the Coziest Fall Pasta

Oh, Broccoli Romanesco, how I love you. You’re delicious and creepy and weird, like an alien vegetable. I know you are misunderstood, but that’s only to people who are put off by your freakish appearance and won’t take a chance. I, however, understand you completely, and appreciate you to boot. Now jump into this pot of boiling water.

How about you, dear reader? Are you the type that is startled by a vegetable with bizarre, pointed, conical spheres jutting out of it? Be brave, and take my word for it, there is an ample reward waiting. Cavolo broccolo romanesco, as it is officially known in Italian, is surprisingly sweet and mild when cooked tender, more like its close cousin the cauliflower but with a denser texture that holds up well to different cooking methods.

The chill of the autumn market brings broccoli romanesco front and center, both here in New York as well as in its native Rome. A native of Lazio, this vegetable has a noble past, dating back to the days of Julius Caesar. As an occasional Roman resident, I have come to love broccoli romanesco, which arrives to brighten my mood when trattoria tables move indoors with the chilly weather. Along with puntarella and fresh oranges, it is one of the few things that make Rome’s rainy season bearable.

Tips for Cooking Broccoli Romanesco

Broccoli romanesco is both economical and versatile. The heads are deceptive in size—start separating the florets and it never seems to end, which allows for a bit of experimenting with each purchase. The most basic—and sublime—way to enjoy it is steamed or boiled with a squeeze of fresh lemon and a generous splash of olive oil. The firm, compact nature of the florets makes it a natural addition to a verdure fritto misto (mixed fried vegetables), and if you want to get your fancy on, try broccoli romanesco with brown butter and crispy shallots.

Pairing it with Pasta

Like other forms of broccoli and cabbage, the noble romanesco pairs perfectly with pasta. I like to use the smaller florets for that purpose and use a diminutive pasta shape like ditalini (little tubes) or mezze rigatoni. My simple method for pasta with broccoli romanesco can be adapted to include other ingredients, but in its most basic format, garlic, olive oil, and a bit of pepperoncino are really all you need.

Blanch the florets in plenty of boiling, salted water until they just turn tender, and shock them in an ice bath to stop the cooking. Sauté sliced garlic and a bit of crushed red pepper flakes in olive oil. You can add a little tomato paste to the pan for an extra layer of flavor. Add the broccoli romanesco florets and sauté briefly, making sure the florets are well coated with olive oil, then toss everything with the al dente pasta and a splash of the pasta cooking water. Grate over plenty of Pecorino Romano off the heat.

It isn’t often that something so weird-looking becomes something so delicious.

How This Recipe Has Been Updated (by Daniel Gritzer)

When this recipe was originally published, there was no full recipe, just the write-through you can read in the paragraphs above. In updating this recipe with new art, I decided to take Gina’s description and steps as outlined in her headnote and develop a recipe based on that with measurements and more detailed cooking instructions, which you will find below.

In doing so, I made a couple of small adjustments that I wanted to point out, since they are my contributions to the recipe and not part of Gina’s original vision (though I doubt she’d be against either of them).

The first thing to know is that romanesco and related vegetables, such as cauliflower, can have a very mild flavor when cooked in this way and used as a pasta sauce. At times, almost too mild; this risk with this and similar recipes is that you end up with a dish that lacks flavor. So, in addition to the tomato paste Gina calls for as an optional flavor enhancer, I suggest adding a couple of anchovy fillets on top of that, also optional. I strongly recommend them to anyone cooking this, as I feel the anchovies transform the dish and help complete it, though you can omit them if you like.

On top of that, I chose a farro-based dried pasta for the photos here. I don’t often like whole-wheat pastas, but I find their more rustic texture and deeper flavor work particularly well with vegetables in the brassica family. You don’t have to use a whole wheat pasta here, but I think it’s good, and a welcome moment when a healthier choice is also a tastier one (in my opinion).

Lastly, I found through testing that using a full pound of dried pasta is too much for the amount of sauce a single head of romanesco creates; much better is to cook half a pound of the pasta; the servings are still good despite this, as the romanesco adds heft to the dish. (You could double the recipe, but then you’d need a much bigger pot to accommodate all the cooked pasta and sauce.)

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