Backyard Bounty all-Tasmanian Vegie box: 15th July

This week’s boxes are full of broccoli – both the common broccoli “heads” and its more modern cousin, which comes under a range of trademarked names, but can safely be called baby broccoli or broccoletti without any threat of legal action… Broccoli is one of a group of surprisingly diverse plants that were all selectively bred from wild cabbage by growers in the northern Mediterranean from about 600 years B.C.; other familiar variations include cabbage, kale, Brussels sprouts and cauliflower. A “broccolo” in Italian is the flowering head of a cabbage, and broccoli is just the plural of this – a head of broccoli (as it’s a plural we don’t call it “a broccoli”) is full of yellow flowers that haven’t bloomed yet, and forms in the centre of a loose cluster of large green leaves which are technically cabbage leaves. Broccoli is very nutritious, although some of its water-soluble nutrients can be lost if you boil it, and actually has more vitamin C than oranges!