By Joel Denker
I savored the broccoli’s strong, intense taste, an unfamiliar flavor. The steamed vegetable lacked the blandness of the common supermarket variety. My wife and I were enjoying the Di Cicero “heirloom” variety that we had bought at the Gardener’s Gourmet stand at the Dupont Circle farmer’s market.
I was dreadfully ignorant of broccoli. It was just another mass produced vegetable to me. Cinda Sebastian, who runs the stand and cultivates broccoli, arugula, and other vegetables on her Uniontown, Maryland farm, disabused me of my prejudice. Broccoli is a varied produce, which comes in diverse shapes and colors—purple, green, violet, chartreuse, she told me. The requirements of mass marketing demand that the special differences be extinguished in favor of a standardized item. Broccoli normally, Cinda said, is “bred specifically for ease of packaging” and grown to maximize “shelf life.” The aim is often “largeness of the head” not taste sensation. Excessive “pampering” is a disease of mass merchandising.
Of ancient Mediterranean vintage, broccoli, I learned, belongs to the mustard family. Its closest relatives are the cabbages-kale, brussels sprouts, cauliflower. Adored by the Romans, it takes its name from brocco, the word for sprout or shoot.
Broccoli’s history is a puzzle. The most plausible story traces the plant to the wild greens of the Italian hillsides. The Italians fancied rabe, a leafy mustard that resembles turnip greens. Small buds or florets are nestled in the leaves. Mating cauliflower and rabe probably produced broccoli.
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To learn more about broccoli, see The Carrot Purple and Other Curious Stories of the Food We Eat, coming in October from Rowman & Littlefield: https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781442248861/The-Carrot-Purple-and-Other-Curious-Stories-of-the-Food-We-Eat.
