A few weeks ago my godson had his thirteenth birthday dinner at a Japanese restaurant in Mayfair called Roka. We went with his mum and his godfathers, Ralph and Tim (Ralph, who is the genius blog creator on here) The food was amazing, we ate lots of amazing dishes including a Japanese risotto, but weirdly the dish that bowled us over hugely was their stir fried broccoli. It was beyond delicious. It was a  perfect combo of savoury and sweet and the broccoli wasn’t over cooked, but just tender enough. I tried to recreate it from memory for last night’s dinner and we all thought it was as good as Roka’s. I could live on it, and it’s perfect if you want to eat broccoli but you aren’t that keen. Brilliant with just plain basmati rice and my Asian sea bass.

Recipe

Serves 2.

Ingredients:
1 bunch of tender stem broccoli
1 tablespoon of oyster sauce or vegetarian  oyster sauce (I get this in Asian supermarkets) check for gluten
1 teaspoon of sesame seeds (I use black ones)
1 tablespoon fish sauce or a teaspoon of tamarind paste
1 tablespoon maple syrup
½ tablespoon Soya sauce or gluten free soya sauce
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon ginger cut into tiny skinny matchstick pieces (optional)

How:
Boil the broccoli for three minutes in boiling water and then drain and put to one side.
Heat the olive oil in a large frying pan till quite hot and put in the ginger pieces and fry for about two to three minutes until they start to get golden.
Put the completely drained broccoli into the hot oil with the rest of the ingredients except the sesame seeds and stir fry for about 2 minutes to impart all the flavours and reduce the sauce a bit. Once cooked, the broccoli should still be bright green and not soft, I like it a tiny bit al dente.
Place on a serving dish and sprinkle with the sesame seeds and serve and as I said its great with basmati rice . Yum.