How I Made Brussels Sprouts Lovable
–
Without Requiring a Vulcan Mind-Meld
Copyright 2017, Victoria C.
Leo
Yeah. Brussels sprouts.
I wanted to pick the most difficult palatability challenge just like I chose
the toughest demographic when I began working on weight loss challenges in my
business nineteen years ago [women 35+
with full-time careers or businesses, kids, cats, parents, poodles, a 21st
century household with 12 different kinds of insurance to fill out forms for,
and cars, appliances and electronics that break, need cleaning or explode at
the least opportune moments; you know, people like YOU!].
I’m going to prove you to you that it’s
just as easy to turn this tough tiger into a sweet pussy-cat as it is to –
well, pet a pussy-cat. All the
vegetables that you “can’t stand”? Bring
‘em on!!
What’s the matter with…
1) Brussels
sprouts
2) Green
beans
3) Peas
4) Spinach
5) Kale
6) Swiss
and red chard
7) Collards
The
problems, if you think about it, fall into one of two categories: either the
greens are bitter, have an “aftertaste,” are tough to chew, etc. or they are just boring. Beans, peas and spinach fall into this latter
category.
How to Make the Boring Exciting
One of the
best things to do with peas (and everything else on the list) is to toss frozen
peas into soup or stew. 101 Healthy Meals in 5 Minutes or Less
has a whole section on soup and stew.
Start with a low-sodium soup and hype it with more fresh or frozen veg,
or start with vegetable or seafood stock and do the same.
But here’s
what so many people forget: you can
radically change the Yum rating of food by adding spices. That’s why Europeans and Middle Easterners
wanted so desperately to find new, faster, cheaper routes to Indonesia, aka The
Spice Islands, and India. And if you’ve
ever eaten traditional English cooking, you’ll wish they’d tried harder,
sigh. In 101 Healthy Meals, I explain
the sweet prices and sharp spices in more detail. The short version is: pepper, garlic and stuff
like that all taste good together; all the sweet spices taste great
together. Don’t fuss over exactly which
one to use. Just throw a moderate (sharp
spices) or generous (sweet spices) amount in the soup/stew. Set the burner to medium, set a timer to 15
minutes and go back to writing your memoirs or paying the bills. Come back and stir it at intervals until you
taste it and it tastes good. It will!
Peas, spinach, that boring white tofu or
anything else that you don’t want to eat because it’s blah – give it the
spice treatment.
Another
option is taking boring veggies and putting
them into a burrito or omelet.
·Turn a pan on
medium heat, spray it liberally with olive oil, and saute (lightly cook) your
spinach, onions or other greens. For the
noxious ones like kale, chop them small, removing the stems. Put a lot of greens in the pan, because
greens are mostly water and the volume will shrivel to 20% of what you started
with.
·When the
shriveling is well along and things are making sizzling noises, turn things
over with a spatula, so the warming is equal on both sides.
·Add eggs or egg
substitute and when the egg mixture has set, add Daiya or similar brand of
non-dairy cheese. The “cheese” is made
of tapioca or something equally innocuous and non-fat, with lots of nice
digestible protein. Keep turning it over
so it doesn’t burn. Add sweet prices!
·Shovel parts of
it into tortillas, and make wraps or burritos, or just plunk it on a plate and
eat it.
The cooking removes the bitterness from the
bitter greens.
Another option, instead of an egg dish, is to add a small amount of pasta sauce and
the non-dairy cheese. This gives you a
“pasta-type” flavor, especially if you add some (not a ton) of parmesan or
romano blend cheese on top.
Bitter Greens
You can
dump them in soup or make egg and other saute-veggies in pasta sauce dishes.
The key to
taming the taste is to chop them up as small as you can, and give them a good
amount of saute time.
For kale and collards: spray with olive oil, put them in a broiler
and get the broiling started. Then pull
them out, throw on some sharp or sweet spices, and finish the broiling. You get a really good “crunch” with this,
although it might not come out perfectly the first time.
Baking is another great way to tame the bitter taste.
·You can make a
“meatloaf” with veggie-substitute for ground round, plus chopped up kale and
collards, and the filler.
·You can bake
fish on a bed of quinoa, brown rice or couscous, with a ton of kale and
collards and chard. [All of these are in
101 Healthy Meals so I assume you
know the basic procedure.]
·You can bake any
form of protein, including beans, with pasta sauce and get your Lasagna fix
with these no-longer-bitter greens.
So now you
can see so many different ways to make really yummy meals and side dishes from
all kinds of leafy greens and peas.
But what
about Brussels sprouts. I DO understand
why it’s not everyone’s fave veg. It
takes more time to cook, yes, it does.
But does it really deserve the horror that my husband treated it to when
we first started cooking together? Nah.
The key to
making the Brussels sprouts yummy is to find a way to apply a lot of heat. Baking works.
You can put it into a baked ensemble and in 30-40 minutes, it is
bubbling in its pasta sauce or light patina of olive oil and it’s as docile as
a – well, not a baby if you have any experience with them; a more willful and
obdurate age doesn’t reoccur until teenagehood – how about docile as you wish
your children, spouse and manager were?
You can
steam it easily with a microwave. Put
some water in a microwave-safe bowl and set it for 6 minutes. Add some of that lovely cheese sub and nuke
it for another 1.5 - 2 minutes.
Yum.
You can
always steam it in an actual steamer if you have one. You can also boil sprouts, and then add a 1
minute nuke with cheese sub or Parmesan.
Finally, you can get them half-cooked in the microwave, and then broil
them. Spray them with olive oil, perhaps
spices or Parmesan.
ALL of
these options are really yummy!
And the
Vulcan mind-meld. If you have spent the
past half-century engrossed exclusively in literary fiction or living in your
underground bunker, and don’t know what that phrase means, a generous
translation would be “without extensive mental manipulation.” In other words, you don’t have to have your
normal thinking reset to love the unlovable veggies; you just have to know how
to cook them and your beliefs will be a natural result of your Yum response!
Enjoy!
Want a copy
of the basic cookbook this references?
Go to Amazon print or e-books, or your local bookseller.
Facebook
group: Healing Minds, Healing Bodies
Blog: soaringdragoninjapan.blogspot.com
