Like most brassicas, broccoli is a cool weather vegetable and grows best between 15 to 24 degrees, a far cry from the weather we’ve been seeing lately where farmers have been battling consecutive heatwaves and drought.
Our growers have done exceptionally well to get the crop through these conditions and into our cold stores at such great quality. This week we have broccoli from John and Rachel at Newfields in North Yorkshire and the Edwards family at New Farm in Lincolnshire.
John and Rachel at Newfields grow a wide variety of crops up on the North York moors, all of exceptional quality, but they are best known for their root crops and his brassicas, which we are very happy to have back on the shelves this week.
Will Edwards and his brother Rob manage New Farm Organics in Lincolnshire. One of the larger scale growers that we deal with, their family has been growing in Lincolnshire since the 1700’s. Organic pioneers, their two farm’s became officially organic in 1988 but had in fact been free of pesticides and artificial fertilisers since the 1800’s.
Their huge field scale operation is impressive to say the least and our buyers were in awe at the size of their vast cold stores when we paid them a visit a couple of years ago.
We’re convinced here that broccoli isn’t just for cool weather eating in a soup or on a roast! It can feel rich, thinly sliced and eaten raw in salads with big flavours like a chilli and tahini dressing or roasted and charred on the bbq. But it also works just as well in fresh, light summer dishes, stir fried or with a little tofu in a delicious pho.
