Roasted Brussels Sprouts, Apples & Bacon

I'm auditioning brussels sprouts for a potential role in my Thanksgiving contribution this year. Brussels sprouts are a relatively uncharted territory for me as I was one of those haters for most of my life. I began my conversion a couple of years ago when I came across a very simple recipe in one of Gwyneth Paltrow's cookbooks. The photograph was delicious and I'd been trying to broaden my veggie horizons by focusing specifically on vegetables that I'd thought I hated (eggplant and squash rounded out the top 3 vegetables I've managed to avoid all my life). The brussels sprouts were pretty darned good. I felt accomplished, adventurous, and virtuous. Then I moved on.

In preparation for the upcoming holidays, I was asked if I'd be up to bringing a home made holiday dish to a staff meeting at the market and talk about how to shop for it and how to prepare it, providing printed copies of the recipe. This is an example of how we live Bi-Rite's mission statement: Creating Community Through Food.

The first thing that came to mind were brussels sprouts. I don't know why, because I've never prepared them since that first time but it seemed like the perfect occasion to revisit.

So, as usual, I embarked on a recipe Google-thon and landed on two recipes that morphed into this:

Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Apples & Bacon
adapted from Michael Symon at cookingchanneltv.com
and backtoherroots.com

1 ½ pounds brussels sprouts-trimmed and halved*

1  large tart apple, such as a Granny Smith or Pippin-cut the same size as the brussels sprouts

8 ounces slab bacon-cut into ¼ “ lardons (cubes)

Olive oil

Salt & pepper

¼ cup balsamic vinegar

2 tablespoons maple syrup

Pre heat the oven to 450 degrees.

In a large bowl, toss the brussels sprouts and apples in 2 tablespoons of olive oil using your fingers to get all of the pieces coated. Transfer onto however many sheet pans you'll need so you can spread the pieces out so they are in one layer and not touching each other. You may need to roast in batches to achieve this. Sprinkle generously with salt and pepper.

When roasting vegetables it’s important not to crowd the pan or else everything will just steam and not brown.

Roast for 20 minutes** or until the vegetables start to blacken. Halfway through the roasting time, remove the pans, toss the vegetables around and switch places on the racks if you have more than one pan going,

Cook the bacon until crispy. Drain onto a paper towel and drain the fat into a small Pyrex type bowl.

Turn the heat back on under your now empty, but brown bottomed bacon skillet and deglaze with balsamic vinegar scraping up that great stuff stuck to the bottom of the pan and let the balsamic cook down a little and thicken. Turn off the heat and whisk in the maple syrup and a couple of tablespoons (or more) of bacon fat. Toss the cooked bacon back into the pan and stir. Add your roasted vegetables and toss those around a bit to coat.

If you want to get fancy you can add toasted nuts or dried cranberries or top with crispy fried onions or shallots.

*I bought bagged brussels sprouts which contained a variety of sizes. To achieve uniformity, cut the large ones in quarters, the medium ones in half and keep the tiny ones whole. You can also buy them loose and choose ones that are uniform in size. I like the variation of crispiness you get from the differences in shapes and sizes. Save the loose leaves and roast those last. They're like kale chips and add another dimension to the dish. Keep an eye on them so they don't burn like mine did.

**cooking time will vary depending on how large your brussels sprouts are.

I'm gonna go all out and do a big batch of these. The leftovers make a great fritatta the next morning and a nice garnish for soup.

Apple Butter

Apple Butter, originally uploaded by michele wynne.

The Big Grey Box has been overwhelmed by apples and pears for weeks now. I've been bringing small piles home thinking about the abundance of applesauce I could be consuming on a daily basis.

This applesauce to be exact, a recipe so super simple and results in the best freakin' applesauce you'll likely ever spoon into your gob. An apple sauce so flavorful it must be the star of this most amazing cake if you've got a little more time and need to come up with a killer Autumn everyday cake. Well, I didn't do either. As usual, my bounty sat in the fridge for a couple of days. I'd opened and closed that crisper drawer so many times, just not ready to cope with the apple peeling. That, and I kept forgetting to buy lemons. I thought about a crumble, but I didn't have any butter. Then the other morning whilst bouncing around the blogosphere (rather than, you know, go to the store) I stumbled across this Slow Cooker Apple Butter.

I have no regrets.

It cooks on low for 12 hours covered and then 2 more hours uncovered. I pureed it in the food to get it super smooth. Somehow I was expecting it to be thicker and more spreadable than it was. I was tempted to cook it down some more on the stove top. I refrained.

I ended up with jars galore...well...5. Enough to share with Sheena and the break room. It got the thumbs up from my market mates. Success!

apple mosaic tart and one sunny afternoon in the city..

apple mosaic tart, originally uploaded by riptideredsf.

The morning I woke up to this on my Smitten Kitchen news feed, I knew this was the next thing the little kitchen would attempt to re-produce. I finally got around to this last week and it was perfectly lovely in spite of my gross mismanagement of the puff pastry. Normally, I don't have much to do with puff pastry as I've always related it to precious hors d'oeuvres or elegant desserts, neither of which have much of a place in my life. But when a certain test kitchen dummy blindsided me with a lobster pot pie challenge, somehow it seemed that pedaling up to the market for puff pastry was on the top of my to-do list. The produce market was ripe with apples and I was ripe to make this pretty tart. I got de-railed by something or other and had to re-freeze the puff pastry. Well, the pastry was in and out of the freezer 3 times before it made it's way into the tart.

Once baked though it was nice and puffy on the sides, the bottom was a little flimsy but brilliant, fresh from the oven. It was also great the next day for breakfast and then crumbled up with ice-cream and chocolate sauce for dessert the next two nights. I managed to consume it all by myself.

That was not the plan.

I was going to share it with my co-workers the next day...but somehow it never made it to the office. I had another idea. I'd bring it with me to the Smitten Kitchen book signing at Omnivore to share it with my friend while waiting in line. I wanted to tell Deb, whilst she was signing my cookbook, all about it. None of those things happened.

A little over a week ago The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook came out and last Sunday, Smitten Kitchen came to town. I'd been anticipating this event since I first read that Omnivore Books was an early stop on the book tour. I even refrained from pre-purchasing the book from Amazon, happy to pay full retail (something I NEVER do) in support of my local independent bookseller and of Deb Perelman, cookbook author and the genius behind Smitten Kitchen. I wanted an autographed copy.

So did everyone else, as it turns out.

On a gorgeously sunny Sunday afternoon in San Francisco, my friend and neighbor Sheena and I showed up around 1:30 for the 2:00 event and the line was already around the block. No surprise. I knew this was gonna be huge. Sheena dropped me off so she could park the car and by the time she met me in line, the line had grown another 1/2 block.

A few minutes later, a gobsmacked bookseller came out to inform the huge line that the 150 copies had already sold out. I had to chuckle, 150 books? There were at least 300 people there and probably even more who showed up and were deterred by the overwhelming crowd. A few minutes later Deb Perelman, with her equally gobsmacked husband Alex, came out to greet the crowd and say hello. She was so sweet and  so humbly overwhelmed at the turnout.
No one seemed deterred by the shortage of books. I saw no exasperation or impatience. I seemed that people were just happy to hang out with others of their ilk.
We were welcome to wait in line to purchase a book that would be mailed to us later. And guess what? we gladly did!