Guess THIS one!…oh well, drat.

Oh well, THAT took about five minutes. (sigh) So a couple of days ago I promised a free drink to the first one to correctly identify the subject of this image:

If you’ve been reading the blog you may have noted my recent forays in the rainy Portland Farmers’ Market, which might have been a clue. It’s where I picked up this intriguing-looking, organically grown heirloom broccoli variant of cauliflower, Broccoli Romanesco (Roman broccoli):

As usual, Gary gets one free drink for being first to hit it generically  (and at this rate, Gary, it’d better be lemonade unless you want a hangover of elephantine proportions the next time you hit town). But Ondine not only named it, she gave the real name of the beast, so I think that’s good for another. Lemme know when you want to collect, Ondine.

Despite my love of cruciferous veggies, I mostly bought this one for its photogenic qualities. Between the leaves and the whorls on the fruit itself, it probably corners the market on mathematical equations. Those knobs are particularly interesting-looking fractals, arranged in near-logarithmic patterns, so I couldn’t wait to photograph it. After it’d be sliced, roasted and incorporated into a linguini for dinner.

Too bad it’s a particularly high-protein veggie, thanks to the thousands of houseguests it brought along. I set it up in the kitchen (if you’re into photographing produce, always get a kitchen with a black granite counter–built in backdrops), started snapping away with long exposures and noticed odd blurry areas in the images. Went back and checked, and discovered green aphids, white aphids, odd little purple- and blue-striped bugs, caterpillars, gnats and spiders. (The dancing bugs are the soft blue-white spots on the photo at left)

That cauliflower had more insects than an ant farm, and they eagerly set out to explore the kitchen.

I immersed the veggie in a fast-running coldwater bath for about 15 minutes, probably destroying entire civilizations’ worth of bugs without a whit of conscience. Then I took the rest of my photos.

The bath didn’t phase the surviving bugs a bit–turns out those whorling nodes make excellent bug shelters. When the cauliflower had rested and dried a bit, they popped back out and resumed explorations. More bath, more bugs. When the three-inch caterpillar wended his way across my viewfinder, I pretty much lost my appetite for cauliflower.

So the cauliflower wound up in the yard debris bin outside. And I’m still itching and scrubbing down the kitchen.

You know, sometimes a few pesticides aren’t the end of the world..

P.S. Looked it up on the web and read that it’s very delicious, far more than regular broccoli or cauliflower. Also that the spirally, fractal florets are great hiding places for bugs and that it needs to be soaked in salt water for at least 15 minutes to get rid of them. Hmmmm. Must be the salt that does it; soaking in fresh water only encourages ‘em…

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