Blue Cayenne

Brussels sprouts. Yuck!

Over the years, bitter little brussels sprouts and I have not been close. Sure, we hung out together a few times. Sure, I oogled the little green brussels in the bins at Sprouts and picked out the most handsome ones to bring home with me. I’ll admit, I even included them once at my holiday table.

But, there was just no spark between us. Ever.

I had pretty much decided to end our relationship forever when this Food52 recipe for brussels sprouts gratin came across my desk. Maple syrup? Pecans? A gratin? Maybe this could be a game changer.

I swiped right.

I know. I know. One should never-ever-never rekindle a relationship, particularly one where there has been some bitterness involved,  because you think you can change the other party for the better. But, you know, sometimes the heart wants what the heart wants.

Turns out, brussels sprouts can be pretty delicious.

I served this dish to my handyman Tony yesterday at lunch (along with a bowl of the tomato basil soup that also appears in an earlier posting on this blog). Tony was doing some of the never-ending jobs that seem inevitably to come with home ownership–at least, my home ownership. He told me he had never before eaten brussels sprouts and was pretty interested in giving them a try. He confided in me that, as a child in Mexico, he used to juggle brussels sprouts as a game. He said he pretended to be a giant who was juggling cabbages. I love that image.

Tony and I both give this recipe two thumbs up.

Here is the gratin recipe:

Yields 6-8 servings

Brussels Sprouts Gratin

30 minPrep Time

35 minCook Time

1 hr, 5 Total Time

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Ingredients

• For the gratin
• 1 pound brussels sprouts
• 1 C. vegetable broth
• 1/2 C. heavy cream
• 1 T. whole-grain mustard
• 1 t. maple syrup (grade B is best)
• 1/2 t. kosher salt
• 1/4 t. freshly ground black pepper
• For the topping:
• 1 C. bread crumbs (from dry bread--I used a baguette)
• 1/2 C. chopped pecans (or more)
• 2 T. unsalted butter (melted)
• 1 and 1/2 t. maple syrup
• 1/4 t. kosher salt
• 4-6 ounces gruyere cheese (optional)

Instructions

1. Place your oven rack in the middle position and preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Wash and prepare your brussels sprouts. Trim off the tough stem ends, wash and discard any damaged leaves.
3. Using the shredding blade on your food processor, thinly slice the brussels sprouts. Set aside.
4. In a medium-sized bowl, whisk broth, cream, mustard, maple syrup, salt and black pepper together. Add the brussels sprouts to the mixture. Pour this mixture into a one-quart gratin dish or a shallow baking pan in an even layer.
5. Combine all the topping ingredients into a medium bowl. Stir this mixture until everything is well-mixed. Spread this topping mixture evenly over the top of the shredded brussels sprouts.
6. Bake, uncovered, for approximately 35 minutes. The gratin should be golden brown when the dish is ready.
7. Remove from oven and let dish cool on the counter. To my taste, this is best served when the gratin is only slightly warm. I was better able to taste the maple flavor.

Notes

I deviated from the original recipe by adding the gruyere cheese to the topping. I thought the cheese gave added flavor to the dish. Next time, though, I'm going to prepare the dish without the cheese and see how it tastes. The maple syrup flavor is a wonderful foil for the bitterness of the brussels sprouts. The flavor of the maple syrup (and the pecans) might be stronger without competition from the cheese.

The photo posted with this recipe is a photo of the gratin before it is baked.

7.8.1.2

43

https://bluecayenne.com/brussels-sprouts-gratin

The recipe in this post is adapted from one that appears on the Food52 food blog. Here is a link to that blog:

Brussels Sprouts Gratin

Interesting (and entertaining) TED talk about food  and how we taste it.

After decades of procrastinating, I bought some sourdough starter from King Arthur Flour. Sourdough starter is “a fermented dough retained from one baking to another,” according to their site.  For $8.95, King Arthur sent me a small plastic jar containing one ounce of their classic starter.

I fed it. (I’m a good person.)

I gave it a name. (Kellyanne.)

And I waited.

Kellyanne frothed like she was supposed to. Then, after eight hours sitting on the top of my microwave, she began to emit little gas bubbles that floated to the top of the starter batter.

Kellyanne was alive!

(I felt like Dr. Frankenstein must have felt when the monster came to life–or, at least, like Gene Wilder did.)

Then, I procrastinated again. Kellyanne languished in my refrigerator.

Whenever I opened my refrigerator, there sat Kellyanne. Guilt. I felt guilt.

So I fed her every day or two. I owed her that.

Crankily (is that a word?),  it seemed to me that I had added one more hungry creature to my seemingly-endless morning feeding ritual here in Huntington Beach. Kibble for Juliet. Bananas and Harrison’s for Moti. Pellets for the Koi. And now, flour and water for Kellyanne.

Then, in one of my late night bouts of sleeplessness, I tapped in “sourdough recipes” and there was grandma–grandma’s sourdough biscuits that is–with forty-five positive reviews. “Pollen,” who posted the recipe, cooed that her grandma “makes these every time we go over to dinner.” Bleary-eyed, I decided that, if these biscuits were good enough for Pollen and her Grandma, they might be good enough for me and Kellyanne. I pushed print.

Before I post the recipe, let me me give you a little more of Kellyanne’s bio.

King Arthur’s Flour boasts that Kellyanne is a sourdough starter “lovingly nurtured for over a century.” This piqued my interest. It’s 2017. A hundred years would put Kellyanne’s birth roughly around the time of World War I. It was a stinking war but I liked the connection. Since sourdough starter  is a marriage of local wild yeast with lactobacilli, that means my Kellyanne is a modern-day bit of time travel. Kellyanne is related to the wild yeast that was floating around when Wilson was President, Ataturk was beginning the great republican experiment in Turkey (that Erdogan is destroying), Wilfred Owen was writing “Dulce et Decorum est”  and Siegfried Sassoon was writing “Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man.” How cool is that?

Moving beyond the history…  According to the King Arthur Flour site, when sourdough starter is fed,  you make it your own. The wild yeast, a tiny fungus, here in Huntington Beach insinuates itself into my Vermont-originated starter from King Arthur and a unique new living leavening is born. So, Kellyanne is mine. The biscuits you eat at my table are unlike any you might eat even a mile away. Again, how cool is that?

So, how long has this been going on? Apparently, records of sourdough microflora date back at least to 1500 b.c. and the Ancient Egyptians. Wild beer drinkers that they were (I didn’t know that.), there was a lot of wild yeast floating around Upper Egypt. Serendipitously, some of the wild yeast from the beer settled into some flour and there you were–sourdough starter.

Here is the link to King Arthur’s Flour:

http://www.kingarthurflour.com/shop/items/classic-fresh-sourdough-starter-1-oz

Yields 8 Biscuits

Grandma’s Sourdough Biscuits

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Ingredients

• 1 C. flour
• 1/4 t. salt
• 1/2 t. baking soda
• 2 t. baking powder
• 1/3 C. butter (cold)
• 1 C. sourdough starter

Instructions

1. Sift flour, salt, baking soda and baking powder into a large bowl. Add cold butter and cut it into the flour mixture. Add the sourdough starter and mix until the mixture turns into a dough.
2. Turn the dough out on to a lightly floured board and knead the dough a few times until it becomes smooth and elastic.
3. Pat the dough into a 3/4 inch high round. Use a biscuit cutter to cut the dough into eight biscuits.
4. Bake in a 425 degree F. oven for 12-15 minutes until slightly brown.

7.8.1.2

37

https://bluecayenne.com/grandmas-sourdough-biscuits

Here is the link to the original recipe for Grandma’s Sourdough Biscuits:

http://www.food.com/recipe/grandmas-sourdough-biscuits-18995