Cream of Broccoli

All of us know what I do when life gives me tomatoes, so what do I do when life gives me Broccoli? To those of you who are wondering, how come miraculously life gives me first tomatoes and then broccoli, here is where I sheepishly admit, it is not life, it is me. I really do get greedy, when I see fresh vegetables and get more than the two of us normally eat. Then, I come up with “creative” ways to use these in every dish I make – regardless of the cuisine. So, you will see sweet bell peppers in my pulao, brussel sprouts in my korma, all varieties of squash in my kootu, radish / squash in my noodles, all varieties of spinach in my pasta. While I try and keep the base of the dish true to its origin, the add-ins of vegetables are decided based on my imagination and produce selection in my refrigerator.

Anyway, I digress. When I looked at my freezer a few days back, I realized I had a huge bag of frozen broccoli (Note: When I run out of ideas, I freeze the vegetable). Amidst all the veggies, broccoli is the one that has not lend itself very well to my experimentation. I normally use it in noodles, pasta and sometimes Thai curry, I am clueless otherwise. I cannot see how this can be used in Indian cuisine; if any of you readers have any ideas, do drop in a word or two. I guess after using it in few of these dishes, I shoved it in the freezer, a while back and had promptly forgotten all about it, till I opened the freezer one day and the broccoli decided to greet me. I remembered the cream of asparagus soup and though of replicating it with broccoli. Before starting the preparation, as has been my practice for a while, I decided to check the blogo-sphere and found this.

Both recipes are quite similar except the vegan version uses cashew butter instead of cream to get the creaminess in the soup. I did the same as well, but used almond butter instead of cashew butter. The soup was delicious, not over-powering with broccoli, surprising as it is the main ingredient and it is a great way to eat broccoli whether you like it or not.

Now tell me, what do you do when life gives you broccoli?