Densely Plant Your Broccoli Raab

This is only my second year growing Broccoli Raab.  My first time, year before last, I only had a couple of plants.  Just enough for a meal for the two of us.  This year I dug two or three little troughs, (I can't recall which) sprinkled seeds in and covered them up.  My intention was to thin the plants when they sprouted, but I never got around to it.  As it turns out, that was a good thing.

Broccoli Raab acts more like lettuce than regular Broccoli.  So, plant it densely, just like you would salad greens. Harvest and cook the heads and the leaves.

The picture above was taken yesterday. You can see that it has already produced small heads.  It's perfect for picking.  By today it is already starting to flower.  Broccoli Raab flowers are edible, too, but when it starts to flower, it's on its way out.

Another Day, Another Broccoli Raab Post

I harvested the Broccoli Raab this morning before work. Apparently you can eat the heads, the leaves and the flowers. I decided to use it to make a simple pasta dish. I sauteed onion, garlic, mushrooms and crushed red pepper in olive oil then added the green stuff. I dumped it over some cooked Penne pasta. It tastes pretty darn good!

The problem is that the Rapini shrinks a lot and I really needed about 4 times as much as I had.

Anybody wanna come over for pasta?

Harvesting Rapini (Broccoli Raab)

This was my first time growing Rapini. I fell in love with it when I tried it for the first time at my favorite Italian restaurant, La Piazza . It has since been moved and renamed Gaetano's after a long terrible feud between the property owner and the chef, but they make their own bread and pasta fresh at the restaurant so if you are ever in Forest Park, IL be sure to visit them. When the chef came over to our table he gave such a romantic description of it that we had to try it.

The heads on this broccoli are really small compared to the standard ones so when I woke up this morning to yellow flowers I looked it up and was really shocked to learn that this is as big as they get."To harvest, cut the budding shoots just before the flowers open. Harvest until shoots are too small and tough." Uh - I'm late. Here's what the tops look like. Now that you've seen what the opening flowers look like you can take a second look at the first photo and see that they are about to open any second. I hope they'll hold on until the morning so that I can harvest a few for dinner.

The Rapini plant has really pretty soft leaves and it's not nearly as big as the standard broccoli I grew last year.

Full frontal view.

Did I mention I have no idea how to cook this stuff? Anybody got any great Rapini recipes?