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NYT Project: Shredded Brussels Sprouts w/ Bacon & Pine Nuts

19 Dec

Brussels sprouts were the bane of my existence as a child. The mere mention of them would send me into fits of eye-rolling, gagging and desperate complaining with the hope of being spared from their inherent repulsiveness.  My parents would insist that they liked them and I could only assume that they were either a) blatantly lying or b) insane.

Fast forward twenty years and I find myself at the market, buying a pint of Brussels sprouts voluntarily. What has gotten in to me? It started back in the summer with reports of a friend making absolutely delectable Brussels sprouts for a group of eight or so. So the story goes, people were actually fighting (cordially…but still) over the last few sprouts. After verifying this story and hearing said people swear up and down that they were great, I began to rethink my stance. If all those people – most of whom hated Brussels sprouts as kids – liked them now, maybe it was time to give them another chance. Flipping through the NYT cookbook, I came across a recipe that looked easy and, importantly, included bacon. Bacon makes everything better, as far as I can tell.

This recipe does require you to do a few steps, but if you have a food processor, it is well worth using it! Alternatively, if you have Brussels sprouts large enough, you could shred them on a box grater. Just watch your fingers!

They look so harmless!

Serves 2.

Ingredients

1 pint Brussels sprouts
3 strips bacon, diced
1/4 c pine nuts
3 scallions, finely sliced
1/4 ts nutmeg
salt & pepper

Directions

1. Trim the Brussels sprouts. If you have time/desire to, you can core them as well but it’s not necessary. In batches, shred in the food processor.
2.  Fry the diced bacon until crispy, roughly 10 minutes. When cooked, remove the bacon and drain on paper towels.
3.  Add the pine nuts to the pan with the bacon fat and cook over a medium-low heat until the pine nuts have turned a light brown. (2-3 minutes.)
4. Add the sprouts, scallions and nutmeg. Cook until the sprouts are done, roughly 6-8 minutes. They should be bright green.
5. Stir in the bacon pieces and season with plenty of salt and pepper. (Make sure you taste, though, as the bacon is salty, too.)

Looks great, tastes better.

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Taking on the (NY)Times

25 Nov

A few months ago a friend mentioned to me that she’d picked up a fantastic new cookbook and thought that I’d get a kick out of it. It’s very difficult for me NOT to buy cookbooks, so when one is recommended I’m probably going to get it. In this case, the book is The Essential New York Times Cookbook: Classic Recipes for a New Century and it is a doozy. Over 900 pages long, it is a compilation of the best recipes published in the history of the NYT newspaper. Each recipe features a short,  entertaining and enlightening blurb about its history, the cook who created it and why it was chosen over other possible submissions.

I have now gone through many of the hundreds and hundreds of recipes and have chosen a few that I want to tackle up front:

  • lemon chicken
  • shredded Brussels sprouts with bacon & pine nuts
  • roasted cauliflower
  • arctic char with ancho-shallot butter
  • steamed fish with thyme and tomato vinaigrette
  • sauteed cod with potatoes in chorizo mussel broth
  • salmon cakes with yogurt chipotle sauce
  • Thai beef noodle salad
  • herb-crusted broiled lamb chops
  • marinated flank steak with Asian slaw
  • Malaysian-inspired pork stew
  • cucumber, tomato and avocado soup

…and that’s just to start.  First on the list will be the lemon chicken. I’m already very comfortable with roasting a bird and have been looking for a new recipe, so lemon chicken it is! I will be posting each recipe to see if it lived up to expectations. If anyone else out there has the book, has tried a recipe and liked it (or otherwise), let me know!

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Bitten by Bite Me

18 Aug

I was lucky enough to win a shopping spree at Chapters a year ago and one of the first things on my list was a plethora of cookbooks.  They’re like crack to me.  I bought books on baking, on Jamaican, Italian and southern American food and so on. One book that wasn’t initially on my list but has subsequently become my favourite cookbook of all time (sorry, Joy of Cooking. I’m sure this is blasphemy in many circles) is Julie Albert & Lisa Gnat’s fantastic Bite Me.

This book pulls off the feat of not taking itself seriously – at all – while providing incredibly delicious, accessible recipes. I have yet to make anything from this book that did not meet with rave reviews. Their Cranberry-Mango-Toasted-Pecan salad (found here!) with Dijon dressing was an instant classic. Salads can be pretty blah as, let’s face it, they are often an afterthought. But I guarantee that no one will forget this dish.  It takes a little bit of time to sugar the pecans, but the most work involved in this dish is cutting up the mango…which takes all of 2 or 3 minutes. Equally winning were the Apple Muffins with Streusel topping that I brought to a friend’s birthday brunch.

Bite Me is full of hilarious pictures, playlist suggestions for prep work, food quotes and, most importantly, page after page of flavorful, manageable recipes. I made the Herb-Encrusted Beef Tenderloin a while back which, unsurprisingly, came out beautifully despite my own timing issues. (Apparently converting cooking times isn’t my strong suit, but it all worked out in the end!) I can’t recommend it highly enough for cooks of all skill levels. My husband has promised me that he’s going to tackle the Chocolate-Crusted Creamy Caramel Cheesecake. Given the success of the previous dishes, I’m sure it will disappear within hours.

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