Mike Van de Elzen: Broccolini, mushroom and roasted garlic rigatoni

This week we are pretty excited as we have just started to harvest our Brassica's from the gardens. Which is amazing as last year we just fed the possums! There are so many uses for Broccoli, cauliflower and Baby broccoli or Broccolini and are fantastic buys right now.  The recipe today focuses on Broccolini, which is a hybrid of Broccoli and Gai lan or chinese kale. With its long stems and smaller florets it's a super crispy green.  This recipe calls for you to blanch and refresh in iced water. This does two things, brings out the amazing green colour and also sets the crunch! I would recommend doing this when cooking not only broccolini but all brassica's. Enjoy the recipe.  Broccolini, mushroom and roasted garlic rigatoni Cook time: 25 minutes Prep time: 20 mins Serves 4  Ingredients:  500g rigatoni pasta  500g field mushrooms 2 garlic bulbs 4 Tbsp grapeseed oil  300g broccolini stems  100g Smoked cheddar cheese  flaky salt  freshly ground black pepper  Hot sauce if you want  Instructions:  Preheat the oven to 180*C.  Cook the pasta as per packet instructions. Peel the field mushrooms and put in a roasting tray along with the whole garlic bulbs.  Drizzle with grapeseed oil and season with salt and pepper.  Place into the oven and cook for 30 minutes. Allow the garlic to cool slightly then squeeze out the flesh. Put half of the garlic in a food processor with all of the mushrooms, a little oil, salt and pepper. Blitz until combined.  Bring a pot of salted water to the boil. Remove the outer leaves of the broccolini, when ready drop them into the water. Removing after 1 minute.  Heat a frying pan, add the mushroom puree and cooked pasta and toss to coat the pasta evenly.  Finally add the broccolini and remaining garlic cloves until just heated through.  Serve in small bowls with some finely grated smoked cheddar. (I like to pack a bit of heat so you could also add a splash of hot sauce) Check out Mike's website for more.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.