We loved the empty marketplace we found at the Ferry Building on a soggy New Year's Eve day. Few buyers wanted to come out on the wet holiday. Sadly, many farmers felt the same way, and the thriving market was a shadow of its normal self. Ah, well, we still found some bright green Brussels sprouts to take home for dinner.
Brussels sprouts are one of those love-em-or-hate-em vegetables, and we hope you'll use the comments to share your opinions on the little cabbages. We used to be firmly in the hate-em camp, but the nutty, earthy flavor of these oh-so-cute veggies won us over a couple years back.
If you don't like Brussels sprouts, you're probably turned off by the bitterness, which is never popular with Western palates. There's no easy way around it: Brussels sprouts are often bitter. As Harold McGee says in On Food and Cooking, "whether we cook sprouts rapidly to minimize the production of thiocyanates, or slowly to transform all of the glucosinolates, the result is still bitter." Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Thiocyanates are tricky little devils.
McGee offers one strategy for taming the bitterness: Slice the sprouts in half and cook them in a lot of boiling water. The water leaches the offending compounds out of the center stem of the vegetable, where they tend to congregate. Alice Waters suggests a more time-consuming approach: Cut out the stalk's core before cooking the sprouts.
Photos by Melissa Schneider
The most laborious solution we've seen, albeit one of the more delicious, was a Thanksgiving dish contributed by our friend Tom and his friend Anne, who concocted the salad to emulate one she ate at the now-closed Gordon's House of Fine Eats. Peel the leaves off a whole lotta Brussels sprouts. Pickle shallots and garlic with salt, pepper, and vinegar for half an hour or more. Sauté bacon and remove it, but use the fat to cook slices of red onion. Remove them and use the rest of the fat to sauté the sprout leaves. Toss everything together and serve while warm.
But the dish we always come back to is the one that changed us into Brussels sprouts fans in the first place. Thomas Keller's Bouchon has you tear off the darker outer leaves, trim the stems, and cut a small X in the bottom (the folks at Cook's Illustrated debunk the idea that the small X helps the sprout cook more evenly, but it does give the boiling water a chance to get up into the stem and suck out some of the bitterness). Bring a big pot of salted water to boil, and put the sprouts into an ice bath for a few minutes. Pull them out, cook them in the boiling water until they're just tender, and then drain them and return them to the ice bath so they stop cooking. Once cool, drain and slice in half. You can hold them like this in the refrigerator for a few hours. When you're ready to serve dinner, warm the sprout halves in a mustard sauce of reduced stock, sautéed shallots, and mustard. We served these veggies over a slice of bread and next to a big piece of crisped goose confit. And though we hoped to find a really meaty wine from the Southern Rhône or Provence in the SFist wine cellar, we had to make do with a California Zinfandel.
In the interests of giving you, dear readers, more options for cooking these little guys, we tried the Braised Brussels Sprouts from Perfect Vegetables, and it's a technique we'd use again, if only for its speed. Cut one pound of sprouts in half, sauté cut side down in duck fat (that was our embellishment; any fat will do) until they start to brown, add half a cup of flavorful liquid and a dash of salt, cover the pan and reduce the heat to low. Cook until just tender, about seven minutes, remove the lid, and reduce the liquid while tossing the sprouts to coat in the sauce. We served this with roast chicken and a brown butter sauce, and washed it down with a New Zealand Pinot Noir.
Brussels sprouts love other earthy flavors such as ham, bacon, cheese, and onions. But high notes complement them as well. When we made the braised sprouts, we used fresh-squeezed orange juice for the liquid, and added strips of orange zest as we reduced the braising liquid to a glaze. The mustard sauce and the splash of vinegar in the brown butter sauce serve the same purpose as the tart orange, adding a spark to a dish that would otherwise be nothing but bass notes.
What are your favorite sprout recipes? Let us know in the comments.
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"Flavorful liquid"?
What?!?
Danny, the options are plentiful. Stock is probably the easiest, but I mention orange juice in the post. A good white wine might work, or a court bouillon (stock with acid).
Thanks for responding. Clearly my comprehension didn't pull me through the last paragraph. I blame it on this blasted cold. Sorry about that.
As with many vegetables, I always hated brussels sprouts until a few years ago when I finally had some that had been cooked properly (i.e., not soggy). Thanks for spreading the word on how I might achieve that at home . . . I'm particularly fond of them when cooked with bacon
For Love of the Brussel Sprout
The brussel sprout has been maligned for years now. Here are two recipes that may help to change your minds about our delicious little friend. The first recipe is how I normally prepare that rascally friend from the Brassicaceae family. The second recipe is lifted from the pages of Food and Wine magazine and is a delicious and unexpected twist on this personal favorite food.
Recipe #1 Down Home Brussel sprouts
1 lb of Brussel sprouts
2 minced gloves of garlic
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes (or to taste)
1/4 tsp black pepper
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp Extra Virgin Olive Oil
1 tbsp basalmic vinegar
Trim the rough stems and outer leaves and cut sprouts in half. Boil in 2 quarts of water with 1/2 salt added for about 2 minutes. Drain and set aside.
Heat a large frying pan with the olive oil. Add red pepper flakes and garlic. Cook until fragrant; about 30 seconds. Add brussel sprouts. cook for about 5 minutes on med-high heat. Remove to a large bowl. Toss sprouts in Basalmic vinegar and sprinkle with remaining salt and pepper. Serve hot.
Toasted Cornbread Hash with Brussel Sprouts
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup cornmeal
1 tablespoon baking powder
Salt
2 large eggs
1 cup milk
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
2 tablespoons honey
1 pound brussels sprouts
2 tablespoons mustard oil or vegetable oil
Pinch of crushed red pepper
Freshly ground black pepper
Preheat the oven to 400°. Butter and flour a 9-inch square baking pan. In a large bowl, whisk the flour with the cornmeal, baking powder and 1/2 teaspoon of salt. In a medium bowl, whisk the eggs to mix, then whisk in the milk, butter and honey. Using a rubber spatula, lightly stir the wet ingredients into the dry; stir until just blended. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and bake for about 25 minutes, or until the corn bread springs back when lightly pressed. Transfer the corn bread to a rack to cool. Cut half of the corn bread into 3/4-inch cubes. Wrap the remaining corn bread and reserve for another use.
In a medium saucepan of boiling salted water, cook the brussels sprouts until crisp-tender, about 3 minutes. Drain and slice lengthwise ¬ inch thick.
In a large nonstick skillet, heat 1 tablespoon of the oil until shimmering. Add the corn bread cubes, sprinkle with the crushed red pepper and cook over high heat until browned all over, about 30 seconds per side. Transfer to a platter. Add the remaining 1 tablespoon of oil to the skillet. Add the brussels sprouts and cook over moderately high heat, stirring, until hot, about 1 minute. Season with salt and black pepper and gently stir in the corn bread. Transfer the hash to the platter; serve.
Feel free to email me and let me know how this recipes worked for you!
I've only just started cooking with brussel sprouts and have had surprising luck with them. I usually remove the outter leaves and cut what's left of the stem. Then I'll either cut them in half or slice them into 1/4 inch strips. Sautee on medium-high heat until the leaves show some signs of carmelization (vary the fats and add some the flavors of your choice... I like proscuitto or hazelnuts). While I haven't noticed bitterness when I've used this method, I sometimes note an undertaste of mustard. Yum.
christmas eve at the ferry building wasnt exactly thriving with farmers either, but its nice that they should be able to have a break when lots of people are out of town anyway.
I have a lifetime aversion to brussel sprouts so far only overcome by Firefly and Eos. I am trying.
That yummy warm brussel sprout salad can still be found at Gordon's Pizza Antica (www.pizzaantica.com). But hurry before they're out of season and it's off the menu!!!!
brussel sprouts are good, farts are bad.
I'm a recent convert to the wonderful world of brussels sprouts. Orangette played the part of the Pied Piper with her sultry Hashed Brussels Sprouts with Poppy Seeds and Lemon.
Hmmm, duck fat, you say?
Jason and Lyle,
Thanks for the great recipes suggestions!
Sam,
How do they do them at Firefly/EOS?
Tarren,
Thanks for the tip on the salad. Maybe my wife and I will give it a try.
Dr Rhombus,
Hmm, that's a good point, though James Joyce famously disagreed - see http://www.rotten.com/library/medicine/bodily-functions/farting/ for his arguably not-safe-for-work text
s'kat,
Molly does have the gift of gab in all things gustatory. I'm glad to hear from another recent convert.
And yes, duck fat is a staple in my kitchen.
This is my absolute favorite way to cook brussels sprouts, and probably the simplest as well:
Halve or quarter your sprouts (about a pound), depending on size. Toss in a roasting pan with three or more cloves of garlic, chopped, some chopped pancetta, and a few tablespoons of olive oil. Salt and pepper to taste, then roast at 400 for about 20-30 minutes.
Also, you can slice the sprouts thinly, lengthwise, and saute in olive oil with lots of garlic, then toss with pasta, some pecorino and chopped hazelnuts or walnuts.
I never really cared for boiled or steamed sprouts that much--roasting or sauteeing seems to bring out the sugars--and I have converted some avowed brussels sprouts haters with these dishes.
If you don't like Brussels sprouts, you're probably turned off by the bitterness....
actually you should add some sugar to the water
you cook them in and traditionally they are plucked after having been exposed to at least one frosty night in the garden - Bitterness seems to come exclusively with the supermarket edition...
Greatly enjoyed browsing thru your various sites!
Does anyone have the recipe for the Warm Brussel Sprout salad from the pizza antica? I split an order with my daughter and it was incredible.
Does anybody have the recipe for the Brusssel Sprouts Salad from Pizza Antica. It is a wonderful dish. Thanks.