Broccoli Soup Love

My wooden spoon finds the walls of a Le Creuset dutch oven drum, as the Zipf's law white noise from the simmering chicken broth complement the blanched broccoli's intimate crunch in my mouth, and I am engulfed by the thousands of clapping hands emerging from butter-deep onion. This is my kitchen's Avant-garde concert tonight.

A similar open jam occurred last week, though the recipe was ad-lib. Neither the reception, nor the texture, was as smooth.

I am a firm believer in coincidences. As such, when I received a Cook's Illustrated magazine today with a feature on Broccoli Soup, I thanked the many Gods of Probability and immediately dove in and tried to make it again.

Cook's Illustrated, a cooking magazine known more for its television counterpart, "America's Test Kitchen", does an excellent job of finding classic and modern recipes, optimizing the hell out of them, and churning them back out 15 at a time, five times a year. Their methodology is nothing short of scientific (gastronomics?). Melissa was kind enough to gift me a subscription for the holidays.

Melissa is also to blame for my recent broccoli binge, for mentioning off hand that a poster at the Science/AAAS conference last Fall claimed that broccoli helped the brain heal. As this PhD webcomic clearly illustrates, we can safely conclude that eating a little more broccoli directly increases brain size. Despite listening to 4 years of Melissa's advice, only my heart seems to be growing. Happy Valentines Day - I love you Melissa!