you call that minimizing? (:

from bitten, the NYT food blog --

there was a post today about how how they were minimizing the Minimalist:

Mark Bittman advocated broccoli rabe with pasta, and Edward Schneider advocates rabe on toast, like a bruschetta.

well, i claim to have further minimized this iterated minimization.

it's happened several times that i cooked broccoli rabe with garlic, red pepper flakes, salt, and olive oil, and ate it straight from the pan.

heck, i even ate with the chopsticks with which i stirred the rabe!

granted, this happened at an instant of laziness. it was 2am and i had planned to fry an egg and boil up some udon noodles to go with it.

by the time the rabe was ready, though, i decided against the extras.

---

this, i think, is not such a strange phenomenon. i grew up in an immigrant cantonese household, where choy was a part of many meals i ate as a child.

also, broccoli rabe is the closest western version to gai lan (芥蘭) (or "chinese broccoli") that i know of, which means that it holds a dear place in my heart.

ironically enough, broccoli translates to "lao fan gai lan (老番芥蘭)" in cantonese, which literally means Western gai lan.