Lemon Ginger Broccoli

Rain all week. The kind of Vermont rain that isn't dramatic — no thunder, no wind — just a steady, persistent gray that turns the road to soup and makes the house feel smaller than it is. Frost doesn't like rain. He stands at the door, looks at me as though I'm personally responsible for the weather, and goes back to the rug by the woodstove. I understand the impulse.

\n\n

I spent most of the week reading. I'm rereading Walden for what must be the thirtieth time. Every time I pick it up I find something I missed, which either means Thoreau was a genius or I'm getting slower. Probably both. There's a passage about simplifying your life that I used to assign to my students, and half of them would write papers about minimalism and the other half would write about how Thoreau was a fraud because his mother did his laundry. Both groups had a point.

\n\n

With the rain keeping me inside, I decided to make baked beans. Real baked beans, not the canned kind that tastes like someone described beans to a person who had never encountered one. Helen's recipe — my mother's recipe, really, passed down on one of those index cards — calls for navy beans soaked overnight, then slow-baked with salt pork, molasses, mustard, and an onion studded with cloves. You put it all in the bean pot — we have one that's older than I am, brown ceramic with a lid that doesn't quite fit anymore — and you bake it all day at 250 degrees. All day. Eight hours. The house fills with a smell that is, and I don't use this word lightly, perfect.

\n\n

I served them with brown bread. Helen steams the bread in a coffee can, the way her mother did and her grandmother did. I've tried to make the brown bread myself. It's not the same. Helen says the recipe is exactly what I follow. I say the bread knows the difference. She says I'm being ridiculous. She's probably right. But the bread knows.

\n\n

David and Karen drove down on Saturday despite the rain. The kids stayed home with Karen's mother. David ate two bowls of beans and said they tasted like Gram's. He meant my mother. He was right. I told him it was the same recipe, same pot, same kitchen. Some things don't change if you don't let them.

\n\n

Rain stopped Sunday evening. Frost went outside immediately and rolled in the wet grass like a lunatic. The garden is a swamp. The beans are gone. Vermont is green. We're fine.

Helen made this broccoli on a Tuesday, I think, one of those nights when the garden was giving us more than we could keep up with and neither of us had the energy for anything complicated. She steamed the crowns, tossed them in a bowl with lemon and ginger and soy sauce, and set it on the table without ceremony. It was the kind of thing you eat and then sit quietly for a moment because it’s better than it has any right to be. I asked her for the recipe. She said it wasn’t really a recipe. I wrote it down anyway.

Prep Time: 10 min | Cook Time: 4 min | Total Time: 14 min | Servings: 8

Ingredients

1/4 cup soy sauce
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 tablespoon grated lemon zest
1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger
1 1/2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil
1 1/2 teaspoons hot sesame oil (or hot pepper oil, which is found more readily at the grocery store, may be substituted)
1 tablespoon fructose or sugar (optional)
8 cups bite-sized broccoli florets and peeled stems (about two medium crowns)

Instructions

Prepare the sauce. Combine the soy sauce, lemon juice, lemon zest, freshly grated ginger, sesame oil, hot oil and fructose in a small bowl. Whisk to combine.
Steam the broccoli. Steam the broccoli for about 3–4 minutes until tender but still crisp. Drain well.
Toss to coat. In a large bowl, combine the broccoli and sauce and toss to coat the broccoli.
Serve. Serve hot, warm or at room temperature.

Nutrition (per serving)

Lemon Ginger Broccoli — Some Things You Don’t Ruin