Roast Purple Sprouting Broccoli, Lemon & Chili Tapenade

This recipe is the result of one of the first recipes I made for my blog, but as I failed to write down the recipe it never made it that far! So 9 months later and after several mental re-workings, this is the finished article! As purple sprouting broccoli is in season at the moment, it seemed only right to do something a little different with this fantastic vegetable. Roasting may not immediately spring to mind, but it creates such a great flavour, and is a million miles away from the limp, water-logged broccoli that so many of us were served up for school lunches. The sauce is a bastardised hybrid of a dressing and a tapenade, with a great Mediterranean flavour kick to boot. Think of this as a pre-summer recipe, in anticipation of all the warm, sunny days that are (hopefully) to come!

I’m using some brilliant cold pressed, extra-virgin Yorkshire Rapeseed Oil in this recipe, which works really well & has half the saturated fat of olive oil too. They’ll be selling their products at the upcoming BBC Good Food Show in Harrogate on 8-10th April, and you can save 20% off your tickets for the event by using the code: BL20

Serves 2

• Purple sprouting broccoli. 2 large handfuls
• Rapeseed oil. 1 tbsp
• Salt & pepper
• Red chili. 1/2
• Fresh parsley. 1 tbsp
• Sun-dried tomato. 5 pieces
• Black olives. 1 large handful
• Pumpkin seeds. 1 tbsp
• Lemon. 1/2
• Rapeseed oil. 3 tbsp

Pre-heat the oven to 180°C. Trim the cut ends of the broccoli stalks and spread out on a baking tray lined with foil. Drizzle over 1 tbsp rapeseed oil and a little salt & pepper too and roast for 15-20 min, or until cooked and starting to turn a little brown at the edges.

To prepare the sauce, Roughly chop the chili & parsley, then add to a nutribullet/small blender along with the sun-dried tomato, black olives, pumpkin seeds, juice of 1/2 lemon & 3 tbsp rapeseed oil. Blend until it’s all finely chopped and mixed together, but not totally pureed.

To serve, pile the roasted broccoli on a plate and dollop the sauce over, along with a little more lemon juice, oil & seasoning for good measure.

Ted x

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