We get them in our local veg box regularly but…beautiful as they are, they don’t live up to their hype in the taste department. Give me steamed purple sprouting broccoli any day.
Thanks for posting this, CairoCarol. Just getting ready to put in the Burpees order and I see they have these so will have to give it a try. It’s so pretty I’ll grow it for its looks! It’s described as “heirloom” so maybe it was lost and is making a comeback. The Burpee catalog says best eaten raw so it will make a lovely addition to a salad. Maybe that’s why the taste is not so much, Novelty Bobble; were you cooking it?
I used to see it at the grocery store here occasionally in Chicago, but I haven’t seen it in awhile. I remember it as Novelty Bubble describes: looked great, but flavorwise, kind of blah. Not bad, mind you, but nothing I really felt the need to buy again.
I tried growing some in my flower bed a couple years ago, but they didn’t produce before giving up the ghost. Bad drought that year, and the soil bed was probably the wrong pH or something. It was a whim. Too bad, because I thought they would look pretty flanking the nicotiana.
I saw that at a farmers’ market in Bozeman a few years ago. Didn’t buy any, though.
The only rational explanation is that it escaped from a fractal dimension into ours and is masquerading as a harmless cauliflower before launching its plan for world domination … REAL SOON NOW! John Bigfractals, you bet!
Raw and cooked it is rather bland, not bad by any means but just…meh!
Mandelbrot would be proud!
I saw this thread this morning and so when I went to the grocery store today I kept an eye out for them. Sure enough, there were a few tucked in next to the broccoli and cauliflower. Pretty cool looking, but I wasn’t adventurous enough to buy one.
They’re available for sale sometimes here in the Midwest; they taste like cauliflower. It’s a seasonal thing, and they are fairly expensive.
I made romanesco for our Christmas dinner this year. My daughter said, “Mom, you killed a fractal!” It was not especially strong flavored, but it sure is pretty. Maybe next year I’ll make it again, but this time put bits of different colored vegetables on it for decorations like a Christmas tree. It was hard to find, though.
It looks to me like one of the lumps or warts on one of those desert lizards I’ve seen on the National Geographic Channel.
Can anyone who has tasted it describe the flavor? Bland broccoli or cauliflower really doesn’t help me.
I’ve never seen this, but if i did I would at least try it. Although if cooking/steaming it ruins the flavor, it might be a one-time purchase. Eating this raw would not appeal to me unless it was bursting with flavor.
Yeah, as other have said it’s expensive and bland. I’d never seek it out.
Is it better when you eat it raw? To me, cauliflower has basically no flavor once it’s cooked, but raw I can detect some flavor and I actually like it (I don’t mind it cooked of course).
Not really. Potatoes and celery have more flavor.
It’s just boring and expensive. As a culinary oddity to amuse your guests with it’s pretty appearance it may have some value, otherwise it’s best to admire it from a distance.
Well, I’ve ordered some seeds so if I have any luck I can try it fresh from the garden and see if it tastes better. Will report back sometime this fall…
Romenesco is great, but you need to cook it properly. Boiled or steamed it is bland, and it doesn’t make a flavorful soup like cauliflower does.
You need to cut it into pieces, brush it with olive oil, sprinkle it with kosher salt (or fleur de sel) and roast it. Awesome stuff.
The reason they don’t taste so great is that they’re impossible to cook completely. In order to cook it you need to cook it halfway, then half of the remaining way, then half of that, then half of that, and so on ad infinitum, so they never get quite done.
That really is the best description of the flavor that I could offer. It’s in that same family of vegetables as cauliflower and broccoli and the flavor does have some elements of both broccoli and cauliflower.
It’s not necessarily bland in a bad way, but you’re not going to make it the star flavor of a dish no matter what you do. Anything you would do with broccoli or cauliflower will work here. If I did it again, I’d be inclined to add something like a cheese sauce just to pep it up a little, but it really isn’t bad with just a little butter, salt and pepper.
One of the first rules about cooking things like broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, or, I guess like Romenesco, is to remember to smother them in cheese sauce. Makes anything taste great!