Romanesque broccoli is a naturally occurring hybrid of cauliflower and broccoli. I have a feeling that text cannot do justice to the countenance of this vegetable, which appears completely inedible. Maybe it's an evolutionary niche: be charming enough that the humans can't bear to let you die off, but keep your numbers plentiful by being off-puttingly odd enough that nobody will eat you.

If you do dare, the first peril you face is an OD on math. Every intimidating head of Romanesque broccoli sports dozens of greenish-white florets, each of which is an individual Fibonacci spiral. Fibonacci spirals are what happen when a nerd draws a tiling of squares with side lengths equaling successive numbers from the Fibonacci sequence and connects their opposite corners with curved lines. Romanesque broccoli is also fractal, which means that it has the geometric property of self-similarity: if you split it into parts, each part is a rough copy of the whole thing. Yes, that means that the spiral on each floret is covered with even smaller spirals.

It is also a good source of fiber, vitamin C, and folic acid.

The only known recipe involving Romanesque broccoli is identical to that of ragu of cauliflower, leading us to hypothesize they can be used interchangeably, with Romanesque broccoli as some kind of stoner/math professor alternative. Delicious(?)!

Advice and other tidbits about Romanesque broccoli:

Log in or register to write something here or to contact authors.