Brussel Sprouts and Bacon: Sprouts for the Haters

I was inspired to actually write a damn blog post today by a Facebook status update I read, posted by someone that I think is hilarious and great. He made a bold statement that is absolutely partly true:  "Food bloggers irritate the piss out of me". When I indicated that his statement made me get my dukes up, because I don't think all food bloggers are irritating, he clarified that he thought our era of every supposed "foodie" in the city running around, eating out, taking photos, posting them on some website and calling themselves an expert was, well, irritating the piss out of him. Sure, I agree. But do you know what's worse? There was a horrendous video someone else posted on Facebook that showed a horde of people literally physically fighting each other to get their hands on cheap smartphones on Black Friday somewhere in Georgia or something and here's what I think:  go ahead, annoying people, post photos of that stupid panna cotta that you probably paid too much for, do your worst, just don't push a fellow human out of the way in the name of a phone. Like I guess on a scale of what's kind of annoying and what's 100% wrong, I'm with the panna cotta photo-posters. The comparison is a bit extreme, I know, and I'm sure the friend I mentioned would absolutely agree - but my point is that the overabundance of food bloggers is pretty damn harmless, in my opinion. Plus, I am one, you know? But just to be clear, I don't take pictures of food in restaurants, or ever review restaurants, because I find the first annoying and intrusive, and I don't purport to know enough to do the latter. So, there. 

 

Let me know if you find this photo irritating.

To the food! A wonderful thing happens to sprouts when you slice them up finely and add bacon and pine nuts. They become the kind of vegetable that people who say that they HATE brussel sprouts actually like. They are honestly DELICIOUS. It's a bit of work to slice these babies up, but it's worth it. And brussel sprouts should not be relegated to holiday dinners - they are a happy side dish with pretty much anything. 

Brussel Sprouts with Bacon and Pine Nuts

Originally a Lucy Waverman joint, slightly adapted

Who could even know these were sprouts?

1 pound of brussel sprouts, finely sliced

4 slices bacon, or a little hunk of pancetta, or even prosciutto

1/4 cup of toasted pine nuts

olive oil for sauteeing the sprouts

salt and pepper to taste

First, fry your bacon or other desired pig product in a big pan that'll hold all your sprouts. Once it's cooked, remove it from the pan and dice it up into little wee pieces of pig product. Drain most of the fat off, keeping a bit of fat for flavour - you'll add a tbsp or two of olive oil to the fat to fry your sprouts, once you've sliced them. I usually cut them in half, down the middle, core and all (who has time to core brussel sprouts?), and then I lay them flat and slice them into ribbons.  

Add a tablespoon more or so of olive oil to the pig fat in your pan, on medium heat. Add the shredded sprouts, and saute, stirring often, for about 10 minutes. You'll see that they'll wilt and begin to lose some of their mass, in the same manner that cabbage or sturdy greens do. Add salt and pepper to taste; but a good hit of both is necessary. After ten minutes, taste some and make sure they've cooked down enough. If they haven't, keep cooking them. Obviously. If they're as soft as you'd like them, stir in your toasted pine nuts and toss them around, and serve the whole enchilada with the bacon sprinkled over top.  

I am an impeccably clean cook.
P.s. I forgot to take a photo of the end result, so you're on your own.

I love these transformative kind of recipes, where something you thought you knew takes on a whole other quality when you do something different with it. To me, it's what makes cooking exciting, you know? You should serve these as a side dish the next time you decide to have people over for dinner, instead of going out and taking poorly lit panna cotta photos. Added bonus? You'll save yourself from irritating the piss out of my friend.     

Summahtime: Corn Salad with Bacon and Green Onions

This was a dynamo of a side dish that I'll most certainly be making many times throughout the month of August. It's corn season in these parts, and I find it hard to walk past hefty, luscious looking corn on the cob without buying some. And it's always priced for five cobs or whatever, and of course that means that I MUST buy five instead of buying, say, two cobs, which would be a much more reasonable number based on the number of people in my household. But no matter, one can never have too much corn when one lives in Ontario and one likes to enjoy the summer's bounty.

Summer in a saute pan.

So, say you gots lots of corn and you want to do something different. Not because you need to, but because you want to. You could do the whole mayonnaise and parmesan treatment, as I've written about before. It's ridiculously good. We've busted that one out already this summer. Or you could incorporate bacon, which is very rarely a bad thing, and go this route. It's a little ditty that will not disappoint.

Corn Salad with Bacon and Green Onions

2 big fat cobs of corn

2 slices of bacon, cut into a small dice

2 green onions, sliced thinly

Butter, just a wee pat

A handful of halved cherry tomatoes

A small handful of chopped cilantro

Salt and pepper to taste

Saute the bacon in a large frying pan on medium to medium-high heat - you want the pan hot enough to really crisp up the bacon. During the time that the bacon is coming to its crucial crispy point, slice the corn off two cobs. The easiest way to do this is to stand your ear of corn up on a cutting board or similar and slice down on each side of the cob. I usually do the bottom half first, then flip the ear and repeat.  It seems to minimize the amount of corn clean up. I've recently seen a plethora of tips and tricks on various food websites about how to cut corn off a cob without making a mess. I guess if the way you cut corn off a cob results in corn everywhere, you should check those out. I, for one, am probably not going to change my method to save seven kernels. But you should do what you want. Anyway, put your corn into the pan with the bacon, and then add your sliced green onions. Stir everything around and add salt and pepper to taste. Saute for about five minutes, and then add the halved cherry tomatoes and the cilantro, and stir those in well. Let it go for a few more minutes, and you're done! Oh wait, not quite! At the very end you should add that little pat of butter. It will make you and everyone who eats it happy, trust.

Corn, plated.
Also, people should eat more drumsticks. 

Serves two as a side dish. Or, you could put it all in a big ol' bowl and sit on your porch and eat it and not share a single kernel. 

Sweet Potato and Swiss Chard Gratin: Hearty and Heartwarming, and Mildly Healthy

Made this little number the other night to serve with pork tenderloin. It was a really good, cozy dish...but I gotta say off the top that it was a bit of a multi-pronged, significant-pot-dirtying kind of dish. But it was so bubbly and cheesy and a little bit crispy that I had to share (also, it's oddly delicious cold, right out of the casserole dish, say, this morning or something). Just block off a bit of time and the inclination and a layered dish of healthful ingredients with lots of cheese will be your reward. Serve it with something that's easy and no-fuss.

Chard, de-stemmed.
It's so pretty, the red, no?

I'm totally avoiding apologizing for not posting more in the last month, because I fear that my apologies for not posting will become less and less meaningful the more often I write them. So, I'll spare you. I think about posting in the blog a lot. Like, daily. But what good does that do for anyone. Diddly squat. But I digress.

Chard is nice in this dish, but it would also work with spinach, or kale. As for the sweet potato element, one could easily replace that with regular potatoes, if one wished. One can do many things of one's own choosing, really.

Without further ado...(remember, I said it was a bit of a pot-dirtying recipe)...

Swiss Chard and Sweet Potato Gratin
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen, www.smittenkitchen.com

1 bunch of chard, de-stemmed, with stalks       (chard is a beautiful thing - and the stalks are just as good as the leaves - so slice them right out of the leaf, and then dice them.  Then I just pulled apart the leaves into big chunks.)
1 small onion, diced
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 cup of milk
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp flour
1 cup of grated cheese      (the original recipe called for Gruyere, and though at one point I hope to be the kind of woman who just has Gruyere in her fridge, I'm not there yet. I used a combo of old cheddar and parmesan.)
1 pound or so of sweet potatoes, peeled and sliced into 1/4 inch slices
a big sprig of thyme, or rosemary       (feel free to use dried, but don't skip it, it's a good addition)
salt, pepper
butter or oil for frying chard

First, deal with the chard. Saute the onion in a some butter or oil, until it's softened - about 5 minutes or so. Then throw in the diced chard stalks, and saute those for a few minutes to soften. Then in go the leaves, until they are thoroughly wilted and cooked down. Now this is an important step - you need to squeeze this chard action as dry as you possible can. Just use your hands. And do it longer than you think you need to - the gratin will be too wet if you don't. Having said that, it will be wet because of delicious things like melting cheese and butter, so, you know.

Without natural light, I have no game when it comes
to taking pictures.  

Heat the 1 cup of milk in a small pot with the big sprig of thyme or rosemary in it, and the minced garlic. Don't let it boil, just heat it up nice.  In a medium-sized pan, melt your tablespoon of butter over medium heat. Once it's melted, add in your tablespoon of flour, and whisking the shit out of it to avoid lumpiness. You just made a roux! Congratulate yourself. Then slowly pour the heated milk (remove the sprig if you used one) into the butter and flour (I mean the roux!) and continue whisking over low heat, and remove once you've got a mildly runny pasty kind of texture. Okay, that's done.

Now get a deep baking dish. The recipe asks for a 9 X 13 baking dish but I'll be honest with you, I have no conceptual idea what size that actually is. I just used a big-ish, round, deep pyrex dish. Preheat your over to 400 degrees F. Layer half the sweet potatoes on the bottom, then 1/3 of the cheese, and then half the greens. Salt and pepper it up, then pour half your milky roux over all that. Repeat the process, and finish with the last third of the cheese.

Soooo good. Seriously, so good. It's an ultimate winter dish.

Pop her in the oven for about an hour, covering with foil if you're getting concerned about advanced browning of the top of the gratin. Let it sit for ten minutes before dishing it up. It's really fantastic, and worth the effort. A very special side dish.  

Collard Greens: A Side To Soak Up Some Good Ol' Southern Grease

I catered a party on Friday night, for the first time evah. It was a sit-down dinner for a friend and some of her work colleagues, and she wanted it to be a southern barbecue theme. I cooked up some pulled pork with a coffee chipotle rub and a tangy, tomato-based barbecue sauce, and some barbecued chicken with a marinating and basting sauce of, well, a shitload of butter, Worchestershire sauce, and lemon juice. I also did a vinaigrette-based potato salad, a creamier coleslaw, biscuits, hush puppies, and, wait for it, one green dish, the collards. To finish, I made some pecan brownies and the BEST brittle ever, Dr. Pepper peanut brittle. Oh my God, it was kill-ER. That one was definitely blog-worthy, but I'm going to wait until a nice, cooler day to make it again. I cooked the brittle last Thursday. Do you remember last Thursday? When it was so ridonculously hot that the sweat produced by getting up from the couch to get a glass of water required a cold shower rinse-off? Do you realize that I was standing over a pot of boiling sugar and butter with a candy thermometer on that Hades-like day?

Oh, the sacrifice!

Collard greens, pre-living daylights being cooked out of them.

Anyway, the greens. I've cooked collard greens a few times before, but I liked these the best. I'm pretty sure it's because I cooked the living daylights out of them, but no matter, it worked. They were a really wicked complement to the rest of the dinner, and I almost put the leftovers into my purse (in a container, obviously) when I left the party. But I checked myself, as I thought professional, seasoned caterers, such as myself, aren't supposed to take the leftovers back to their place.

Oh, the restraint!

Braised Collard Greens with Celery

1 big bunch of collard greens, tough stems removed and leaves sliced finely into ribbons   (this exact dish could also be made with kale, or chard, or even mustard greens - you might think spinach would also work, but it just won't - you really want to cook this for a while, and spinach will just not last that long - you could do a modified, quick saute with the same ingredients save for the chicken stock, but I'd leave the braising for the sturdier greens. Just, if I were you.)

1 large onion, sliced finely

3 cloves of garlic, minced

5 celery stalks, sliced finely on the diagonal     (I added the celery as a means of bulking up what I thought wouldn't be enough greens to feed everyone, but it ended up tasting really good, so I think you should do it too)

2 cups-ish of chicken stock

Salt and pepper to taste

A pat of butter or other neutral oil - I used soya    (you could also just use olive oil if it's what you have hanging about)

Saute the onion in the butter or oil, for a fairly long while. About 20 or 30 minutes, over medium heat, should do it. You're basically caramelizing the onion, to add a really robust first layer of flavour. Then add in your garlic, and saute it with the onions for about a minute or two. Toss in the ribboned collard greens, and the thinly sliced celery. Give it a good shake in the pan, and then add in about a cup of chicken stock. You want there to be a nice amount of liquid, this will really bump up the flavour and also make for almost a creamy consistency once it's finished. I cooked these for probably about two hours, over medium-low heat, adding more chicken stock as necessary. By the end, you don't want too much liquid left, but give them lots of time in lots of stock, and they'll get extremely delicious, trust. It takes a bit of time, but it's a low-maintenance dish. You don't have to stand over the stove the whole time, by any means.

Collards and celery, bathing together in stock. Ew, that sounds gross.

A lot of people toss in some kind of animal action to their collards:  ham, bacon, pancetta, smoked turkey. Feel free to do that here. I exercised restraint again here (amazing!) and just let the vegetables do the talking. There was more than enough lily-gilding in this particular meal. 

This will serve about 5 or 6 people as a side dish. If you're like me and you serve a zillion sides, it'll serve even more. Also, I forgot to take a picture of the finished bowl of collards, likely due to the fact that I was in a panicked state trying to figure out how to tell if a hush puppy was done or not and fending off hot oil splatters. But the dinner was a total success!