"Damnit, I've Burnt the Broccoli!"
How Samin Nosrat saved my relationship with the vegetable.
I started to get sick again this week and knew immediately what was wrong.
I wasn’t eating right.
It is hilarious to me I’ve become this attuned to my body, but I shouldn’t be surprised. I’ve changed in all sorts of crazy ways. I vacuum even if I’m not expecting company and I no longer leave dishes in the sink. I’m simply brimming with virtue, people.
But my body? I’ve been at war with it for over forty years. I thought there were people who weren’t tortured by their bodies and people who were, and I was firmly in the latter category.
Most of the time, I just gave up. I was never going to have the body I wanted, I was always going to want to eat all day. Nutrition, bah. Who cares, pass the Doritos. It’s stupid to fight one’s true nature.
But to my horror, I found the high number of my weight range could grow. It got higher, and higher, and higher. And in my fifties, I worried I’d never feel well again. My body became a prison.
I am not fond of prisons.
So I gave up again, but differently. I decided to eat like a healthy person and ditch refined sugar. I eat three meals a day with plenty of vegetables and fruit, and I don’t snack.
Go figure. I dropped over sixty pounds with no fretting.
However. Since my mother died, I’ve been sloppy. I have relied heavily on takeout. The amount of money I’ve spent on Uber Eats since January is shameful. Although I’ve stuck to three meals a day and no sugar, the quality of my food has declined.
That’s because I’m not cooking it.
I love to cook. It delights me because there is a result: a meal. It’s not quite instant gratification, but it will do.
In the past six weeks, between death, cleaning, clearing out apartments, renovating apartments, inventories, exploding plumbing, surprise tax bills, winter, commuting between two states several times a month, and the horrors of probate court, I am flipping exhausted at the end of the day. I don’t want to cook.
Chicken wings sound great.
So when I woke up day before yesterday with a sore throat, I knew. I haven’t been feeding my body properly. I got up and instead of eating a piece of bread, made my boring oatmeal. And for lunch, the first thing I did was roast some broccoli.
I now consider roasted broccoli the potato chip of vegetables. It’s that good. If you told me a few years ago I’d crave broccoli, I’d tell you it’s impossible. For the record, I still can’t eat it unless it’s roasted.
Without question, it’s my mother’s fault.
In the south in the seventies, there were no roast vegetables. There were boiled vegetables, though, and they were boiled to death. They no longer resembled themselves when they came out of the pot.
I don’t know why, but my mother could not cook broccoli without burning it. And every time the god-awful smell of burnt broccoli reached my nose, it was sure to be followed by uncharacteristic yelling, the clattering of pans, and this phrase:
“Damnit, I’ve burnt the broccoli!”
Every time. Not once did she cook broccoli without singe.
Both my parents grew up in the Great Depression and were fanatics about not wasting food. If you think boiled broccoli is bad, try eating it both boiled and scorched.
I must credit the fabulous Samin Nosrat for saving my relationship with the vegetable. Before Samin, the very mention of broccoli gave me shivers of horror. It is the only thing I had in common with George H.W. Bush. We shared a hatred of the vegetable.
If you haven’t watched Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat on Netflix, get thee to the computer and stream it. It’s also a book, but I like watching Samin make things. You will fall in love with her, of course, because she is a magical person. She makes a roast vegetable salad on the show.
People, it’s a labor of love. I was intrigued by her insistence that it was a luxurious dish to make, because it takes time to make properly. Anyone can learn to grill a steak. Roasting vegetables properly takes time.
I have made this on Thanksgiving to rave reviews, and I made it several times a month during the pandemic, when I had three hours in the afternoon, every day.
You can Google many variations of this salad or follow my loosey-goosey recipe below.
It’s my experience that when I invest time in eating right, my health is rewarded. I am feeling fine now, through a combination of Vitamin C dosing, Zicam, and roast broccoli.
This recipe contains a lot of vegetables and takes three hours. But you can make it with fewer vegetables and cut the time in half. This is the Thanksgiving edition. I like using a lot of colors.
Roast Vegetable Salad à la Samin
Fresh Vegetables:
Carrots, beets, broccoli, cauliflower, scallions, Brussel sprouts, turnips, sweet potato, head or two of garlic.
One 15 ½ oz can of white beans, rinsed and drained. I use cannellini.
Salad dressing high in vinegar, not sweet. I use Good Season’s Italian envelopes and make it with apple cider vinegar and olive oil.
Crumbled feta cheese.
Herbs: I don’t always use herbs with this, but topping with fresh herbs is recommended. Use what you like. But make sure to triple-wash them.
Olive oil.
The short version of this recipe: peel vegetables, slice thin or break up in small florets, mix in a bowl with some olive oil, put on metal (not insulated) baking sheet, roast each vegetable at 400 degrees for 20 minutes, layer on large platter, roast the garlic being careful not to burn, top vegetables with roast garlic, beans, feta, chopped herbs if you use them, and salad dressing. Serve at room temperature.
The long version has a few extra notes:
1) When I make it for Thanksgiving, I use a whole sweet potato, a couple of beets, several carrots. At home, it can be a full meal for two using half a sweet potato, one small beet, etc. I try not to make too much because it’s best day of, not day after.
2) I like to slice the beets extra thin because they have a wonderful texture.
3) Do not try and cheat on cooking time. It takes 20 minutes per vegetable. Moisture is your enemy. Only use one tray of vegetables per twenty minutes, and don’t crowd the tray. Depending on your oven, certain vegetables might take a little longer. The important part of roasting is caramelization.
4) You’ve got to find out how long to roast garlic in your own oven. It takes eleven minutes in mine. It’s inedible when scorched.
5) Although you want to use enough olive oil to mix in before cooking, don’t use too much either. Too much liquid interferes with roasting. Samin’s best advice is to avoid all moisture.
6) Layer artfully. Or artfully-ish. This is what it looks like before the beans and feta:
Enjoy!