Prue's Tenderstem Broccoli Agrodolce

Prue’s Tenderstem Broccoli Agrodolce

Prue Leith

Featuring:

Broccoli

Effort:

Complexity:

Cost:

Serves: 4

Prep time: 10 mins

Cook time: 15 mins

Ingredients:

tenderstem broccoli spears

olive oil

onion

garlic

vinegar

honey

currants

parsley

pine nuts

salt & pepper

Photo from Ant Duncan. Recipe kindly donated by Prue Leith from ‘Life’s too short to Stuff a Mushroom’.

This is a gorgeous way to serve tenderstem broccoli spears from Prue Leith. “Agrodolce” is the Italian term for a sour and sweet sauce – here provided by the vinegar, honey and fruit.

Method:

Bring a saucepan of salted water to a boil.
Trim the ends of the broccoli and blanch the spears for 2–3 minutes, or until they are just tender. Plunge them into a bowl of iced water (see hack). Drain, pat dry with kitchen paper and set aside until just before serving.

In a large saucepan, heat the olive oil on a medium heat. Add the onion and cook for 4–5 minutes, until softened. Add the garlic and sauté for another 1 minute.

Stir in the vinegar, honey and currants. Leave the mixture to simmer for 1–2 minutes, then turn off the heat (but leave the agrodolce mixture in the pan).

Just before you serve, warm up the onion mixture and stir in the chopped parsley.

Add the blanched broccoli to the pan, turning it gently to coat it in the sauce and to reheat it.

Add the pine nuts and season with salt and black pepper to taste.

Engaging Kids

Kids who engage regularly with veg through veg-themed activities, such as arts and crafts, sensory experiences, growing and cooking are shown to be more likely to eat the veg they engage with. Encouraging kids to engage and play with veg is the handy first step to them developing a good relationship with veg and life-long healthy eating.

Kids in the kitchen

The eventual aim, if possible, is to get kids in the kitchen. Don’t worry, this doesn’t have to mean they are with you from start-to-end creating mess and rising stress levels! It can be as simple as giving them one small job (stirring, measuring, pouring, grating, chopping…) ideally involving veg. They can come in to do their little bit, and have fun with you for a few minutes. Getting them involved, making it playful and praising them plenty for their involvement, perhaps even serving it as dinner they “made”, makes it much more likely they will eat the food offered, not to mention teaching them important life skills. Find ideas, safety tips, videos and even a free chart in our Kids in the Kitchen section here.

Activities

While getting kids to interact with veggies for real and using their senses to explore them is best, encouraging hands off activities like arts & crafts, puzzles & games or at-home science experiments can be a great start, particularly for those who are fussier eaters or struggle with anything too sensory. Use these veg-themed activities as a stepping stone to interacting with the veg themselves. We have loads of crafty downloads here, puzzles here, and quirky science with veg here.

Sensory

Once you feel your child is ready to engage a little more, you can show them how to explore the veg you have on hand with their senses, coming up with playful silly descriptions of how a veg smells, feels, looks, sounds and perhaps even tastes. Find ideas, videos and some simple sensory education session ideas to get you started here.

Serving

The moments before food is offered can be a perfect opportunity for engagement that can help make it more likely a child will eat it! Giving children a sense of ownership in the meal can make a big difference to their feelings going into it and the pride they take in it. You know your child best, but if you aren’t sure where to start, we have some fun and simple ideas for easy roles you can give them in the serving process over here.