Kitchen Garden

Simon Courtauld

During his election campaign in the US in the 1980s, the former president George Bush Snr was questioned about his vegetable likes and dislikes. Broccoli, he said, was his least favourite and promptly had to apologise to the large number of American broccoli growers and those who import the vegetable from Mexico. Bush was referring to what is more correctly called calabrese, with a bunched green head and thick stalk.

I know that broccoli contains all sorts of vitamins and is meant to lower your cholesterol, but it is not my favourite vegetable. It is not growing broccoli that presents any particular problems, provided that your soil is not too acid, in which case add lime, and that no brassicas have been grown in the soil in the previous year. But I find it difficult to boil or

steam the vegetable without either overcooking the head or undercooking the stem.

Once the main head has been cut from the plant, it will produce thinner, tastier and more easily cooked side-shoots. Which leads me on to purple- and white-sprouting broccoli, hardier than calabrese and an altogether more satisfying vegetable. I think of it as a vegetable for late winter, when there’s not much else in the ground, but nowadays it appears in the shops from December onwards.

I have had only limited success in growing sprouting broccoli because, like all brassicas, they are at risk from two persistent predators: pigeons and cabbage caterpillars. Netting is essential, but when, a couple of years ago, the net blew off in a gale, the birds got there before I did. Last season I decided to try growing the romanesco broccoli, that slightly oddlooking vegetable with little pointed pale green heads. Everything was going well until the end of August when I went away for a fortnight and returned to find the leaves stripped by caterpillars. Having got rid of the little creatures, the leaves did regrow but the plants had been weakened and it was too late for the hearts to form. So we have been enjoying the leaves steamed and added to winter soups.