There are those who quite rightly hate them, and those whose tastebuds checked out years ago.
Lol, no editorial bias on show here... :)
Nothing says festive fun like a Chrimbo dinner encased in lovely crispy batter, and as luck would have it, a chippy north of the border is serving up such a wonder to its clientele. Dunkeld Fish Bar in Perthshire is keeping things classy: for just £10, it is selling deep fried turkey goujons, battered devil’s testes Brussel …
kids' nappies, they needed no encouragement or specific dietary additions to produce a contents which warranted full HAZMAT protocols
Never having had (or wanted) kids I can't confirm - however, in the cat world, the equivalent is your moggie eating either shrews or house martins.
Both a *violent* emetics. I've never seen a cat projectile-vomit and have the violent runs at the same time before..
He competely ignored birds from that moment on.
Obligatory video from Bottom. Though you really need to watch the Christmas episode to know where they come from.
That said, I thought the biggest problem with sprouts was a general tendency to brassica intolerance compounded by the infrequency: some people only eat them over Christmas. Don't know what they're missing!
Raffinose. A trisaccharide produced by beans, broccoli, brussels sprouts, etc. Humans don't make the enzyme needed to digest it so it all goes through to your intestines where bacteria have a field day. Kind of like lactose intolerance but everyone has it. You can buy the enzyme supplement needed to digest it (Beano); it works pretty well.
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Obligatory video from Bottom. Though you really need to watch the Christmas episode to know where they come from.
That said, I thought the biggest problem with sprouts was a general tendency to brassica intolerance compounded by the infrequency: some people only eat them over Christmas. Don't know what they're missing!
Don't have the sprouts!
Not exactly festive but, come the appropriate season (Easter, I do believe), a local chippy does deep-fried Cadbury's Creme Eggs. Never had the nerve to try one. Also heard of deep-fried Mars bars. Again, I find the idea of actually consuming one quite easy to resist. Call me unadventurous, possums, but I quite value my digestive system and I'd rather it stayed intact.
Boiled for 9 minutes? You're not doing it right. My Nan used to put them on a low gas before she went to church on a Sunday morning, with the meat and tatties in the oven on a low-ish heat - so the family could come home to a dry piece of meat, soggy roast potatoes and weird green explodey things. When Nan served sprouts, you just touched them with your fork and they sort of slid/exploded apart into individual green slimey leafy things which used to float on top of the gravy.
Ah nostalgia, boiled ham, boiled tatties, gravy so thick you could plaster a wall with it and self-destructing sprouts. Then to add to the horror, tea involved crab paste sandwiches. Well it was the 1970s... And then there were Mr Kipling French Fancies, Cherry Bakewells and Jaffa cakes to follow. Vitamins? Missing in action.
Despite all that I actually now like a sprout or two. Steamed and not over-done. Even better with bacon and chestnuts.
Don't know where the nine minutes comes from. If you like 'em crunchy and actually tasting as they should, five or six of the beasts (depending on size) done in a microwave (covered, vented dish) in a tiny amount of water for around three to four minutes is OK by me and I'm now a convert. Quite like 'em now!
Boil for 9 minutes? No, no and no.
First take some bacon lardons and cook them over a moderate heat in a sauté pan until you have rendered most of the fat off them. Put the lardons to one side and stir-fry the sprouts in the bacon fat for 5 minutes or so. Then add a splash of water, cover the pan and let the sprouts steam gently for a few minutes. Finally, turn the heat back up, return the lardons to the pan and stir gently a few times, making sure any remaining water has evaporated. For a really festive touch, mix in a few sliced marrons glacés before serving.
First take some bacon lardons and cook them over a moderate heat in a sauté pan until you have rendered most of the fat off them. Put the lardons to one side and stir-fry the sprouts in the bacon fat for 5 minutes or so.
My advice is much that, except with less detail and timings,
parboil the sprouts then halve and fry with chopped bacon and chopped onion and mushroom, bit od a stir fry style side dish. Also works with cabbage.
Finally, turn the heat back up, return the lardons to the pan and stir gently a few times, making sure any remaining water has evaporated. For a really festive touch, mix in a few sliced marrons glacés before serving.
You missed the step where you remove the sprouts before serving.
My sprouts go in a 1 litre microwaveable container with a loose lid. Layer of sprouts topped off with broccoli florets. Microwave 800w full power for 3 minutes - shake halfway through to avoid hotspot burns. No added water - they steam in their own juices.
Drain liquid away before serving. Serves one - as my food regime has lots of vegetables/salad but only a small amount of potato.
Directions for Brussels Sprouts en Absence
Clean, trim and slice thin.
Batter and deep fry until golden brown color is achieved.
Place on paper plate to drain.
Move to serving tray and squirt decorative patterns on sprouts with Sriracha sauce.
Place on dinner plate and allow to rest for a few minutes.
Move back to paper plate for eventual forced consumption by neighbor's cat that keeps going in your flower bed.
Eat dinner plate, thinking how much worse it almost was.
I didn't enjoy Brussels sprouts until I left home and realize that my mother's idea of how any vegetable should be cooked involved boiling it well past its demise. Finding alternatives was quite nice.
Never steamed.
Halve your sprouts, put in an oiled baking dish little-bald-headed-man side up. Sprinkle pancetta over, drizzle with pure maple syrup, a bit of balsamic vinegar and olive oil, and bake gently until caramelized.
Absolutely awesome, and I've won over a lot of sprout haters (including my *very* fussy daughters) with these.
Merry, Jolly etc.
That's not xmas dinner! Where's the cranberry sauce, stuffing, bread sauce, bacon, prunes and roasties? I suppose chips can replace the roasties, but they're not the same. I suggest a proper, complete traditional full christmas dinner, with everything, wrapped into a filo pastry parcel, and then battered and fried.
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Possibly true if all you ever eat is roast beef. But with poultry? Gravy yes, but not horseradish.
The rule is: if you can have cabbage with it, you can have mustard with it (the same family after all), but you don't have to. Just make sure it's the good stuff: purveyors of any of the "mild" stuff should join the marketing department of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation when the revolution comes!
"That's not xmas dinner! Where's the cranberry sauce, stuffing, bread sauce, bacon, prunes and roasties? "
That's not Xmas dinner either - green salad, cold potato salad, cold ham, maybe a BBQ'd sausage or steak for those who want something hot, cold beers under the shade of a nice tree in the back yard - that's Xmas dinner.
@AC Sleaford? Now, I used to live near there (well, in the village of Leasingham) and I was having a bit of a nostalge and having a virtual mooch courtesy of Google Street View. I noticed the car showroom that used to have a toyshop above it was gone, then I realised I couldn't recall the name of the place,... it was opposite the now defunct Cinema, near the rail crossing. Last seen by me in '77.
it was opposite the now defunct Cinema, near the rail crossing.
I don't remember the cinema or the toy shop, but there was indeed a chippy right by the train station. It was the standard place to stop off after a hectic day in Lincoln, halfway home to Boston. Maybe it closed due to lack of business after the bypass opened.
"Someone should check what Elite Fish & Chips in Sleaford is offering this year.
I no longer live in the area but their battered mince pies make leaving the area the best idea I ever had."
I believe my grandfather was sent there after WW1 to organise work on one of the signal boxes. It nearly drove him mad, and it took him nearly three years before he got back to civilisation. After several years working on railways in France, often under shelling, Lincolnshire was apparently worse.
To be clear, Sleaford is bad by Lincolnshire standards. It's a small settlement beside a crossroads (now a roundabout) that joins two roads which provide easy access to a handful of military establishments. That's essentially its purpose. It also contains the world's smallest permanent gridlock.
If you do find yourself having to work in Sleaford for any length of time, take your car and stay in Lincoln. Miles better. Though some of the programming jobs at the local bases can be quite cushy if you get the right one. Just don't live in Sleaford.
As for the chippy by the station, if it had a green theme then that's the one I mean.
Their endless tedious gimmick flavours are annoying to start off with, but even without that Walkers' crisps are the antichrist. What would you expect from the people who defy the Lord's way by putting cheese and onion crisps in dark blue bags and salt and vinegar in green?
The First Three Commandments:-
Ready Salted = Red or Medium/Dark Blue
Salt and Vinegar = Lighter or Sky Blue/Cyan
Cheese and Onion = Green
Even Smith's crisps, which was once on the side of light (then mostly killed off in the UK when Pepsico took them over and deprecated them in favour of the Walkers' brand) has now been contaminated due to being under the same ownership. See this Australian abomination for salt and vinegar crisps wearing the bright pink livery of prawn cocktail. WTF?!
Crisp flavours in the wrong-coloured bags, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria...!
Crisp flavours in the wrong-coloured bags, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria...!
Bring back flogging, I say!
What's wrong with plain crisps and a bag of salt to shake over them, hey? Hey?
You young whipper-snappers, you don't know you're born!
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@AC; When I was a kid in the 80s I used to like Smith's Salt 'n' Shake because the blue bag was something of a novelty.
I didn't realise back then- until my parents told me- that this was actually the *old-fashioned* way of doing it, and in fact ready salted crisps were the modern version.
I also vaguely recall they sold crisps with the flavouring in a separate bag at one stage. Nice idea, but IIRC it didn't work very well. (Hard to get them evenly-covered, and from what I've heard since, flavouring goes on much better if you do it when they're still hot, i.e. during manufacturing. I suspect this applies to salting as well.)
I grew up loathing Brussels sprouts. I was forced to eat one every time they were served. I didn't plan on eating them as an adult.
Then I discovered that they can be cooked in bacon. This is a game changer. Now I am the guy who makes them, and they go over pretty well.
"Hell, you can cook Styrofoam in Bacon and it tastes good !!!"
Home from the office at 01:30 after a very long day. The last pizza from the freezer was quickly put in the oven. Took out cooked pizza - to discover I had overlooked its thin polystyrene disc on the bottom. I can't believe that I was so hungry and tired that I scraped the molten plastic off the pizza - and ate the latter.
"Everyone's got their own technique for fisting a turkey.
The first year my newly married sister hosted Xmas dinner - we were there as she prepared the turkey. It had a long flaccid neck skin - which my sister wasn't sure what to do with it. In handling it she was suddenly reduced to infectious giggles - and our mother produced her "disgusted with you" expression.
I fondly remember my Belgian grandmother's Brussels sprouts, steamed then tossed in butter with bacon and chestnuts.
Beautiful cabbagy flavours with a nice salty cultured butter and strongly smoked bacon.
In contrast my mother's were boiled to death, she never learned my nan's cookery skills.
The thing is Brussels sprouts today, due to an extensive selective breeding program, are far sweeter than they were in my youth, often lacking much flavour of any kind.
My wife blanches them, cuts them in half and fries them with bacon, fennel seeds,cumin seeds and finely chopped fresh red chilli. Yum.