Kelly Rossiter
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Have you ever spent years thinking you don't like some particular food, only to accidentally have a bite of it and discover you actually love it? So often we form our food opinions as children and never revisit things when we are older. I'm not talking about things that you truly don't like. I'm talking about things you think you don't like that you probably have avoided for years. When I had my big dinner party earlier this year, I served lamb. One of my guests hadn't had it since boarding school some forty years before when it had been overcooked, tough and grey. She was truly surprised at how much she enjoyed the lamb I served and she even had a second helping.
Sometimes it is simply the way a vegetable was prepared and presented to us. My husband and I grew up in the 1960's when canned vegetables were a staple of home cooked meals. He breaks out in a cold sweat if he even thinks about the combination of peas and carrots. I avoided asparagus for years because I remembered the mushy canned stuff that my mother occasionally foisted on us. Maybe the person who cooked your meals boiled the life out of the vegetables, or maybe, like my brother, you simply wouldn't eat anything that wasn't meat or potato.
We know that children model their eating patterns after their parents. If you don't eat vegetables, neither will your children. The world is filled with delicious vegetables and endless ways to prepare them so there's no excuse not to give some of them a try. Set yourself a little challenge and make a recipe using a vegetable you normally wouldn't eat. My husband never liked Brussels sprouts because he had only had them boiled until they were mostly mush. Years ago I cooked them in a pan with butter and he and both of our children loved them. Yesterday we were wandering through a local farmers' market and he spied these little organic sprouts and insisted on buying them despite my burgeoning vegetable crisper. Maybe you'll be lucky enough to be converted by this recipe too.
Brussels Sprouts with Pine Nuts
1 tbsp butter
12 Brussels sprouts
1-2 tbsp pine nuts
pinch of fleur de sel
- Melt butter in a small skillet. Choose sprouts of a uniform size so that they will be cooked at the same time. Cut the ends off the sprouts and remove the hardest outside leaves. Place them in the melted butter, bottom side down. Let them cook in the butter and develop a brown crust before stirring them. If the sprouts are large you may need to put a lid over them for 5 or 10 minutes. Cook until fork tender, about 15 or 20 minutes depending on their size.
- In the meantime toast the pine nuts in a dry skillet over a low heat until they are golden brown. Pine nuts burn quickly, so watch them carefully.
- Pour pine nuts over the sprouts and add a pinch of salt and serve immediately.
Difficulty Level: Easy
Related Recipes:
Throw a Dinner Party: Planning and Organization
Throw a Dinner Party: The Menu
Get Your Kids to Eat Vegetables
Encourage Your Kids to Cook
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