Jackie French: Six reasons to adore broccoli

You know wine tasters? We need broccoli tasters – picking a good head of broccoli is the true test of excellent tastebuds and the first reason to love it. Why is this good? Because it will encourage you to grow your own broccoli next winter, to gather autumn leaves and garden waste now to make compost to feed it. Broccoli is fine boiled but don't boil it so long that it loses its structural integrity or turns pale – structural integrity is as important in the vegie garden as in the aerospace industry (says she who is a gardener but not an aerospace engineer, though I am married to a rocket scientist. Well, there were rockets and he is scientist … mostly I just love the phrase).

Back to broccoli. Old broccoli stinks. Fresh broccoli doesn't – or not till the weather warms up and it turns tough as well as stinky. For some reason broccolini seems to survive storage better, which may explain its growing popularity.

2. Broccoli is good for you, for reasons I will not go into here as you can look them up in just about any nutrition chart, most of which have broccoli in the first five or 10 of the so-called "super foods". Sulphurous, squidgy broccoli, however, is not a superfood. It is an anti food, liable to turn you off eating your veg. Do not even feed too much of it to the chooks, or their eggs may have an … interesting … flavour.

"Good for you" is only sustainable in your diet if it's also delicious or you are a health fanatic masochist. I am not the latter. Yet I have just eaten a whole head of broccoli with a little chicken gravy. Bryan eats the chicken, I eat the veg and gravy, a kind of Jack Spratt household. Broccoli with gravy is a sure way to actually eat those five servings of vegies a day.

3. Broccoli is compensation for living in a climate where black ice covers the road and you need two layers of socks if you are going to stand or sit still outdoors during winter. Cold winters give more delicious heads of broccoli. Frosty mornings also mean diamond dusted cob-webs on the fences, but that is another subject.

4. Broccoli is easy to grow – if you plant it at the right time, that is at the end of summer and into early autumn. Cover with nets or bottles with the bottom cut out till they are about 30 centimetres high and won't be devastated in a single night by caterpillars – it will take them two or three days instead. Or pick off the caterpillars by hand and squish or throw to the chooks – or the yellow robin if you have one in the garden following you around hopefully, or dust with flour.

Feed well with compost or, lacking compost, with weed-defeating mulch and a scatter of organic fertiliser on top. Water well too. They need to grow lushly so that when they stop growing as the weather turns cold they will feed you and feed you – eat the side shoots and thinly slice the tender stems too. And they will be tender, if they are well grown, at least till the weather warms up.

5. Convenience. Broccoli will crop slowly over winter, ready to pick whenever dinner needs to be put on – or lunch if you have left-over chicken gravy, or lemon juice and olive oil vinaigrette (served hot, not cold) or even a squeeze of lime juice. Or stir-fry with oyster or chilli sauce, especially if the broccoli is possibly not entirely pristine.

6. Boastability. Anyone can grow a tomato. Winter broccoli? Delicious, not at all tough or sulphurous winter broccoli? That is a veg of honour.

* Watching the wombats gather closer to the house, one by one – I have a feeling that even though grass is still plentiful they are claiming territory for next summer when it won't be.

* Not sure whether to be delighted or disgusted as the yellow robin waits for Bryan to empty the maggot-filled fly trap – he eats them like chocolates (the robin that is, not Bryan);

* Lusting over seed catalogues.

* Telling myself I should be cutting back the blue salvias as the base has begun to shoot, but not having the energy (I am crook).

* Should also be dead-heading the hydrangeas now they have turned more brown than pink or parchment, but not doing so (for the same reason).

* Deciding that if we plant just one thing next year it will be Queensland Blue pumpkins, which love hot dry summers, and mini watermelons, ditto, and apple cucumbers. And tomatoes. OK, if I plant just five things next summer…

Serves 6

News flash: Coffee is good for us. Chocolate is good for us. Raspberries are good for us. Put them together with cream, sugar, meringue and they are, OK, , not so good for you. Except that as this is a "made" dessert and won't last for more than a few hours after it's made, it's a rare indulgence, not like the mid-morning packaged bikkies.

I am a firm believer in rare, incredibly luscious treats combined with a daily diet that is healthy, varied, fresh and also incredibly luscious. Do this and you'll never be tempted by a packaged lamington again. (Except on business trips lasting more than four days. Or when the hotel breakfast was fortified sugary cereal and the white watery stuff they pretend are scrambled eggs. Can one sue a kitchen for false advertising when they call that stuff "scrambled eggs"?)

Back to the "mess". It's a variant of Eton Mess, a treat made by upper-class English schoolboys. This one is not suitable for children ... REALLY not suitable. You also need an espresso coffee maker or make incredibly strong plunger coffee.

But it is gorgeous.

1½ cups thickened cream
2 tbsp rum
½ cup espresso coffee
4 tbsp castor sugar
4 tbsp chopped dark chocolate, very good quality
4 cups fresh raspberries
2 cups meringues, roughly crushed

Whip cream, sugar, rum and coffee until soft peaks form. Just before serving, mix in berries and meringues. Divide into six glasses so you can appreciate the brown and red. Top with grated chocolate.

Simple and elegant and delicious to cheese lovers like me who rarely like Stilton. Other crumbly blue cheese can be used, but will of course give a different effect and flavour.

Like all simple recipes, this is only as good as its ingredients.

Buy the best Stilton you can, not the cheapest in supermarket plastic; use chicken stock simmered from chicken carcasses, either raw or left over from the roast. If you use these it will be sublime. If you don't, it will still be show-off delicious.

And incredibly fast to make.

6 cups chicken stock, as good as you can manage
6 tbsp Stilton cheese, crumbled
3 large potatoes or more smaller ones, peeled
4 tbsp butter
3 tbsp chives, very, very finely chopped

Boil potatoes in the stock and the butter till soft. Mash. It should be soup quality liquid. If it's too thick – and the binding properties of spuds vary enormously – add more stock and reheat till it reaches serving standard.

Pour into six heated bowls. Top each bowl with cheese, whirl it in a little – don't over mix. Each taste should be distinct, some potato, some chicken, some cheese, some a bit of each. Top with chives for both bite and looks.

Serve at once.

The potato soup and stock can be frozen, but not after you have added the chives and cheese.