Purple sprouting broccoli

I love it because it is such a generous vegetable: sweet and succulent, bursting with good things.  I dedicate more and more ground to purple sprouting broccoli each year, and just can’t get enough of the stuff. I love it because it is such a generous vegetable: sweet and succulent, bursting with good things like a spring tonic, and it keeps on coming. Once it has been cut, the sugars in the stem revert to starch within hours, so the broccoli you grow yourself and cook within an hour of harvest will far exceed anything you can buy in the shops. The fresher it is, the less cooking it needs. My just-picked stems get no more than 3 minutes’ steam-boiling (i. e. in a pan with about a centimetre of lightly salted boiling water). Shop-bought PSB, two or three days’ old, needs 5 or 6 minutes to help bring out the sweetness, but no longer or it will be too soft.