HEALTHY EATING Cooked vegetable adds color, vitamins to meals

This tough vegetable will keep you eating greens year-round.
By RONNIE FEIN
STAMFORD ADVOCATE
Broccoli is the workhorse of vegetables. Hearty in winter, light in summer and amazingly versatile. Use it as a side dish or plunk it into soup. Drizzle it with vinaigrette to make a salad. Mix it into a savory custard or pie. Partner it with pasta. Add to that a kind of glamour: The little green florets are gorgeous enough to garnish plates in the best restaurants. Broccoli is inexpensive, too, making it accessible for everyone's budget. And it's good for you: Studies have shown that a compound in the vegetable might have anti-tumor effects.
Small wonder, then, that broccoli, relatively unknown until the 1970s, has become an American culinary staple. We should thank the Chinese, who redefined cookery for Americans during those years when they advised us not to boil vegetables to death. We've been cooking them to just-tenderness ever since.
Chinese cooks have special ways with broccoli. They know how to make the most of the entire stalk, including the fibrous stem, so nothing is wasted. Here's their trick: Peel the stem's thick, outer skin using a vegetable peeler or a sharp paring knife. The stem becomes tender and crisp and offers a vaguely sweet counterpart to the more powerful florets.
Preparation
It can be tricky to prepare broccoli. If you don't cook it enough, it's difficult to chew. If you overcook it, it becomes soggy and the color of World War II Army uniforms. Worse yet, it smells bad. One of the simplest ways to get broccoli right is to stir-fry.
Begin with fresh, crisp-looking broccoli. You can buy heads only, but the stems are tender and tasty, so it's smart to include them. It's cheaper that way, too. Remove the florets and cut them into bite-size pieces. Take off about an inch from the bottom of the stem and peel the outer skin back toward the top (use a paring knife or vegetable peeler), then cut the stems into bite-size chunks. Keep the pieces the same size so that they cook evenly. Wash and drain the pieces and set them aside.
Heating things up
While you can use any type of skillet to stir-fry, the handiest is a wok, stir-fry pan or "fait-tout." Their rounded sides help radiate heat quickly and evenly up the sides of the pan so food cooks more evenly. They also prevent the ingredients from being tossed out of the pan.
Preheat the pan so the broccoli starts to cook as soon as it hits the metal. Use medium-high heat to cook the pieces quickly. You need only a small amount of vegetable oil; after pouring it in, swirl the pan around to coat the sides. Once you add the broccoli, keep the pieces moving in the pan using a rigid spatula.
Because broccoli is hard, you will have to steam the pieces in the pan for a couple of minutes. After the initial stir-frying, add some liquid -- water, stock or juice, depending on how you will be serving the vegetable -- and cover the pan briefly.
Adding flavor
Our master recipe for stir-fried broccoli calls for salt and water only and makes a simple side dish to grace any meal. But there are endless variations, and we've offered a few suggestions: seasoning with garlic, scallions and/or red pepper. You might add soy sauce or fresh herbs such as thyme or savory. Consider mixing broccoli florets with pieces of cauliflower. Toss in some sesame seeds. Add mushrooms. Make a glaze by adding a small amount of cornstarch to the liquid left in the pan. Our second recipe calls for dried red chili peppers, fresh ginger, orange juice and sesame oil. The peppers give the dish some heat, but the fire is tempered by the sweet juice.
Stir-frying is quick, so it's important to prepare all the ingredients, including any cornstarch mixtures, beforehand. Keep them separate on a plate or in little bowls. You don't want to be mincing parsley while you're cooking. When you make an elaborate dish such as our Stir-fried Broccoli with Sausage, Tomatoes, Pasta and Pignoli Nuts, prepare the other ingredients first and have them at the ready. With stir-fried broccoli the work is the preparation. Cooking time is minimal, so you can enjoy the dish right away.
XFein is the author of "The Complete Idiot's Guide to American Cooking" and "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Cooking Basics."