brussels sprouts

Having long endeavored to get my wife to eat brussels sprouts without success, our meal two weekends ago was a revelation. We visited No. 246 and sat at the "chef's table," which amounts to four stools pulled up to a counter looking across the crowded kitchen. The chefs certainly do serve you, experiment on you, joke with you, and otherwise make you feel like an insider while you watch the merry cacophony of dishwashers, station cooks, sous chef, and executive chef pile about. I thoroughly enjoyed No. 246 and will return, although I will probably insist upon the chef's table yet again. My only complaint was that they fed us too much, a fact they acknowledged frankly, just before continuing to feed us.

But I digress. The point is that they served a beautifully prepared hangar steak along with roasted brussels sprouts. The sprouts were sauteed and then baked, and the chef, when queried, just said "vinegar and oil, that's all it takes." He is a liar, but then again all these chefs are. I missed the preparation somehow, so I could not even report back how long they sauteed, what kind of vinegar they used, or how long they roasted.

So I try it now. Today in fact. I took a couple handfuls of brussels sprouts, washed them, stemmed them, cut an X on the base to facilitate cooking. In the small dutch oven I sauteed them for five minutes in 2 tbsp of butter, then sea salted them and peppered them and stuck them in the oven for fifteen minutes at 350 (preheated, of course).

This approximates Julia Child's preparation method, except that I did not blanch the brussels sprouts first.

The result was passable. The sautee produces chips--leaves of the brussels sprouts that drop off and harden in the oil. More do so during roasting, and I think it worth adding butter during the roasting process, as the butter browns quickly and is absorbed even more quickly. If you pull out the crispy leaves before roasting it, more crispy leaves will form, and they will likely not burn.

Next time we will cut these in half before sauteeing. Otherwise, this is close to being a money dish to go alongside either light or red meat.