Purple reign

IF a cauliflower is, in Mark Twain’s eternal words, nothing but cabbage with a college education, then what the hell is purple-sprouting broccoli? Not so much Borstal calabrese as kale with an art degree. With its magnificently mauve heads and elegantly slim-ish stems, it resembles a cross between a brassica Beau Brummell and a particularly flamboyant punk.

This vegetable-patch dandy is as tough as nails, too—a thoroughly well-dressed bruiser, not merely enduring the extremes of British winter, but positively revelling in that chill. Frosts, tempests and snowstorms are but