Most people, when faced with a head of broccoli, will hack it up and throw it in a pan, sautéing it or steaming it and doing very little else to it. Nothing wrong with that; I have eaten broccoli in exactly this manner hundreds, maybe thousands of times and been perfectly happy. But there’s also nothing wrong with giving your broccoli the royal treatment every once in a while.

I find it hard to think of anything more royal than a good salt and vinegar potato chip. What’s more, dear reader, is that potato is not the only vegetable to take kindly to these flavors. Broccoli, with its cabbage-y overtones, is an ideal candidate. I actually first learned this at No. 7 in Brooklyn, when I tried their trademark double-decker broccoli tacos. They take a hard taco shell and a soft one, paste them together with black bean hummus, fill them with finely chopped broccoli treated with shallot vinegar and top the whole thing with feta cheese. Holy-brocc-oly! It was better than a salt and vinegar potato chip, and that, I recognize, is a bold statement.

You can certainly try to replicate those tacos, but once you have a mess of salt and vinegar broccoli, why stop there? Use it on a sandwich with ricotta cheese and fresh tomatoes. Scoop it on top of a baked potato with some cheddar cheese. Mix it with some hot sauce and use it as a garnish for a quesadilla or burrito. I did all of these things with great results, but I surely did not exhaust all of the possibilities. Seize the broccoli, seize the day and come up with your uses.

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