Yes! It’s sprout season again. Please don’t just boil them and leave them alone, there’s so much more to the little farty ball. Like here, a Brussels Sprout gratin baked with potatoes and cream for a great side dish.
There’s a video version of the gratin on my YouTube channel here:
I was chuffed with how everything turned out save for one flaw. To quote Michel Roux Jr “where’s the sauce?!” It needed a meaty gravy just to lend a little more moisture. But beyond that, it was dead good. A sprout is for Winter, not just Christmas.
Want more Brussels Sprout recipes? My Christmas dinner isn’t complete without sprouts and chestnuts, and you must check out my legendary sproutotto.
Get a large pan of water on to boil and preheat the oven to 200C.
Use a food processor to thinly slice the potatoes, and add them to the water with the stock cube. After 5 minutes pass the Brussels through the processor too and add to the water.
Heat a casserole dish over a medium heat. Thinly slice the onion and bacon and fry in a little oil in the dish until starting to colour. After the sprouts and potatoes have had 3 or 4 more minutes drain and add to the casserole dish. Stir well, season, pour in the cream, stir in the mustard and then transfer to the oven to cook uncovered for 15 minutes, until golden on top.
Meanwhile heat a frying pan over a medium heat. Bash the chicken breasts with a rolling pin until thin and season. Dust lightly in flour, roll in beaten egg and then in the parmesan and breadcrumbs. Fry in shallow oil on both sides until golden. To be sure use a probe thermometer checking it reaches at least 65C inside. Serve on top of the gratin.
Sometimes, blog posts I write are to spread the news of some great recipe I found. Other times it’s about crazy experiments. But the aim has always been to be a log of what I cooked, and that’s what this Christmas Day feast is about: to remind myself what worked and what to fix for next time.
Perhaps surprisingly I’d never cooked a whole turkey before: on previous years when hosting someone else provided the turkey on another occasion I went for chicken. So on your maiden voyage into turkey cooking, what technique do you follow to ensure no-one is disappointed (least of all me!) ?
I was initially tempted by Matthew Fort’s method for slow-roasting the bird, especially given my previous success with long roasting times. But I just couldn’t take the risk and instead went for the technique of that doyenne of domesticity, Nigella. I grabbed a copy of Nigella Christmas from the library and swotted up. She favours a brining followed by a hot, quick roasting. I’m a big fan of brining poultry and with trusty meat thermometer in hand I had to follow this one. And I’m so glad I did. It was no bother to prepare as it is done a couple of days beforehand, and by using a foil roasting tray I could chuck it on the recycling pile and not have to scrub the pan after cooking. I had a 5.5kg bird and anticipated a cooking time of 2½ hrs and bang on then it was done. In fact I probably could have removed it 15 minutes earlier as the very outer skin was a little tough and the internal temperature was in the mid 80s, well within the safe range. That aside the flavour was lovely and texture great, so I was very pleased with bowing down to Queen Nigella’s recipe.
So that was the main event. The roast potatoes, well you might recognise that recipe. Sprouts were also cooked to a previous tradition in my house, while carrots were simply steamed – there’s more than enough flavours going on to bother with tweaking these too much. There were also maple-roast parsnips, Jamie Oliver’s “get-ahead” gravy which I’ve made before and is absolutely terrific (a friend of mine commented that it “tastes of everything you put into it”), and on this occasion raised its game with turkey roasting juices and a quick turkey stock.
Other people may raise an eyebrow at packet stuffing, but I grew up on the stuff and a roast poultry dinner just isn’t the same without it. Yes, I know it is little more than a packet of dust mixed with water making it no more sophisticated than a Pot Noodle but I love it.
I can’t remember ever having bread sauce before but read this recipe on Recipe Rifle which, reading between the lines must be a Josceline Dimbleby recipe and therefore failsafe. However after hours of cooking it was watery. The flavour was gorgeous but unfortunately just too wet. I suspect I used rubbish bread which wasn’t in the mood to absorb liquid but I would definitely like to try it again.
Bread sauce apart, all in all a success. Very pleased with the results. Merry Christmas!
(I’ve presented it below as an itinerary as a reminder where I saved time for next year. I aimed for a 2.30pm dinner)
Roast turkey with all my trimmings (serves 7 with leftovers):
For the gravy:
6 chicken pieces (wings, thighs etc)
3 onions, quartered
3 celery sticks, chopped
3 carrots, chopped
2 sprigs rosemary
2 tablespoons flour
1 pint boiling water
Turkey giblets
For the turkey & brine:
5.5kg turkey
10 pints water
125 grams table salt
3 tablespoons black peppercorns
1 cinnamon stick
4 cloves
2 tablespoons juniper berries
4 star anise
2 tablespoons mustard seeds
200g caster sugar
2 onions, quartered
1 piece ginger
4 tablespoons maple syrup
4 tablespoons clear honey
1 orange, quartered
For the bread sauce:
1 large onion, very finely diced
150g wholemeal bread, crusts on
6 cloves
4 cardamom pods
½ a nutmeg
75g butter
900ml milk
300ml double cream
For the yorkshire puddings:
4 eggs
4 heaped tablespoons flour
Milk
Vegetable oil
For the potatoes:
1kg potatoes
200ml goose fat
3 cloves garlic
Peel of 1 orange
1 sprig of rosemary
For the maple parsnips:
6 parsnips, peeled and quartered
2 tablespoons maple syrup
Red wine vinegar
For the brussels sprouts:
500g brussels sprouts
2 rashers bacon, diced
1 vac-pack of chestnuts
Etc:
6 carrots, peeled and sliced
1 packet stuffing
Sausages wrapped in bacon
3 days before: GRAVY – Preheat the oven to 180°C. Chuck the veg and herbs in a roasting dish and top with the chicken pieces. Roast for about an hour then transfer to a hob. Shake over the flour and stir all around until a thick paste forms, then pour over the water. Allow to bubble away for about 45 minutes and then sieve the solids off. The gravy can be frozen until needed.
2 days before: TURKEY – chuck the turkey with all the brine ingredients in a large lidded container and top with water until the bird is covered. Leave in a cold place (I kept mine in the garage).
1 day before: BREAD SAUCE – Preheat the oven to 130°C. Combine all the ingredients in a baking dish, cover with foil and bake for 2 hours. Refrigerate until needed.
1 day before: YORKSHIRE PUDDINGS – Whisk the eggs and flour together with a pinch each of salt and pepper in a measuring jug and add enough milk to make a thin custardy-textured batter. Cover and refrigerate until needed.
1 day before: ROAST POTATOES – peel the potatoes but keep the peelings. I boil the peelings with the potatoes to impart super-earthy flavour, by putting them inside my cheapest (clean) dishcloth tied at the top. Cut the potatoes into golf ball-size chunks. Get a pan of water on to a rolling boil with a hefty hand of salt and boil the potatoes + skins for about 15 mins, or until they are super-tender. Drain and return to the hot pan (off the heat) to steam dry. When cool cover with clingfilm and refrigerate until needed.
9am that day: TURKEY – remove the turkey from the brine, drain and pat with kitchen paper. Leave on a rack over the sink to continually drip-dry and come up to room temperature.
9.30am: GRAVY – put the giblets, neck, any turkey trimmings you have into a pan with a quartered onion and barely cover with water. Leave on a low simmer for a couple of hours.
10am: CARROTS & SPROUTS – put the carrots into a steamer, with the sprouts on the top tier. Halve the sprouts if they are on the large side. You are bonkers if you put crosses into the bases.
10.30am: PARSNIPS – toss the parsnips in a little oil along with the maple syrup, plus a dash of red wine vinegar. Pop them in a roasting dish until needed. Preheat the oven to 200°C.
11am: TURKEY – stick it in the oven. I recommend a disposable roasting dish to avoid dishwash insanity.
1.15pm – 1.30pm: TURKEY – you should be checking this to see whether the bird is done around this time. When ready bring it out and cover with foil and a tea towel. When it comes out, stick the goose fat in a large roasting dish and put in the oven for a couple of minute to get sizzly hot.
1.40pm: POTATOES – put the potatoes into the hot fat.
1.45pm: STUFFING – mix the stuffing mix with boiling water and leave to sit. Put the parsnips in.
2.00pm: LOTS – dot the stuffing with butter and put in the oven. Cover the bases of a yorkie tin with a layer of oil and get in the oven to heat up. Get the gravy and bread sauce into saucepans warming up. Tip the turkey stock into the gravy too. Depending on how salty they are, you might want to add some of the juices from the turkey roasting tray. Bung the sausages in bacon into the oven too. Give the potatoes a quick toss and add the garlic, orange and rosemary.
2.05pm: YORKSHIRES – carefully pour the batter into the sizzling yorkie tin.
2.10pm: VEG – Pop the steamer on for 20 mins.
2.20pm: SPROUTS – get a frying pan over a medium heat and fry off the bacon. When coloured tip in the sprouts and chestnuts, seasoning liberally. After 5 mins take off the heat and add a drizzle of maple syrup.
2.25pm: TURKEY – carve (or better still, get someone else to do it).
I couldn’t help myself with the name. Sorry. But I love Brussels Sprouts and try to make the most of them in their season, so I thought I would pair them with unctuous, creamy risotto. If you pass them through a food processor you get lovely, delicate shreds which can be swirled through your rice.
Sproutotto (serves 4):
1 onion, finely diced
1 sprig rosemary, leaves picked and finely chopped
4 handfuls of risotto rice
Splash of white wine
About 1 litre vegetable stock (I tried Knorr’s herb stock pot for this one, which was very tasty)
300g Brussels Sprouts
Worcestershire sauce
Large handful of grated parmesan
Get the stock simmering gently in a saucepan.
Fry the onion and rosemary gently in a large casserole dish. When softened add the rice, crank up the heat and stir for a minute. Add the wine and let bubble away to nothing. Turn down to a medium heat and start adding the stock a ladleful at a time, allowing it to almost disappear before adding the next.
After about 20 minutes stock reducing, pass the Sprouts through a food processor to finely shred them. Get a separate pan on and add a little oil. Fry the sprouts for a couple of minutes and then shake over a good helping of Worcestershire sauce along with some seasoning.
Once the rice is tender add the sprouts, parmesan and a knob of butter. Give the rice a jolly good beating, then pop a lid on the pot and turn the heat off. Leave for a couple of minutes and check the seasoning before serving.
Sunday lunch is when you want to just go for it. I grew up in one of those lucky houses where my Mum cooked a Sunday roast every week without fail, and recently it’s been nagging at me to do this much more regularly for my own family. But my Mum didn’t have Twitter to distract her. Or Facebook. Or Dave Gorman’s Absolute radio show. But I’m trying.
This is a fairly typical roast for me, and when you do more involved roasts with a few side-dishes, I think you should forgive yourself a few shortcuts. Why not use packet stuffing, or frozen yorkies? We all know you can make them, but the extra timing, oven space and graft is more worthwhile concentrating on getting the big stuff right. So I took a few liberties.
And I know what some of you are thinking. “Yorkies? With chicken?” Yes. They were made to float on gravy of any description. Try and stop me.
The chicken here was excellent, from those fine chaps at Farmers Choice. It gave brittle, savoury skin with plump and flavour-packed meat. A real treat.
If the thought of making a Sunday roast scares you, and just seeing that list of things is too daunting, don’t panic. I bet you could cook all those things on the list individually. So it comes down purely to timing. If it helps, write a list. Start with the thing that takes longest to cook, and count things in from then – see below for a guide. Don’t forget to allow the roast time to rest. But be bold, and always remember that the gravy will heat everything back up again 🙂
Sunday roast chicken with roast potatoes, carrots and brussels sprouts (serves 4 – 6, + leftovers):
1.6kg chicken
1 teaspoon dried marjoram
1 onion, quartered
20g butter
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon parsley, finely chopped
500g white potatoes, peeled and diced into golf ball-sized chunks
1 tablespoon fine polenta
25g butter
2 bay leaves
Dash of red wine vinegar
3 carrots, peeled and sliced
250g brussels sprouts
100g cooked chestnuts
4 rashers back bacon, rind removed and reserved and sliced
1 tablespoon maple syrup
A few hours before, sprinkle the marjoram over the bird. Spread it all over generously with salt and black pepper, then place on a rack over a roasting dish and pop in the the fridge for about 3 hours. This step draws flavours down into the chicken, while at the same time drying out the skin to make it super-crispy.
Pre-heat the oven to 220°C. This temperature will really blast the skin and make it golden.
Get the chicken out of the fridge and add a few more flavourings: put 2 quarters of the onion inside the carcass and the other two on the base of the roasting dish you’re going to use. Mix the butter, parsley and garlic together. Work your fingers under the skin of the chicken to release it from the meat, then slowly push the butter into this little pocket you’ve created. Put into the oven and leave there for 15 minutes, before turning the heat down to 180°C.
Meanwhile, get the potatoes on. Get a large pan of boiling water on and salt generously. Par-boil for 10 or so minutes, until a knife can slide in and out easily (I usually jab a knife into a wedge then suspend it above the water – when it can fall off within a few seconds they’re ready). Drain well and leave to sit in the warm pan without a lid for a few minutes to steam dry. Put the butter with a splash of rapeseed oil into another baking dish and place in the oven to heat up. Toss the potatoes in the polenta and then tip out into the now hot fat. These are going to need about 45 minutes, which will cross over with removing the meat from the oven. When you remove the meat, turn the heat back up to 200°C for the potatoes’ sake.
When the chicken is cooked (look for juices running clear when probed), remove to a wooden board and cover loosely with foil. Pop the roasting dish on a high hob and add a tablespoon of flour, stirring well. After a minute add about 300ml boiling water to cover the bottom of the tray and get scraping to get all that good stuff. Sieve into a jug for serving, and give it a short blast in the microwave to keep the heat up right at the end.
If you’re using packet stuffing like me, you’ll probably need to do the boiling-water-and-stick-in-the-oven thing here. Let the instructions on the box guide you.
When the potatoes have had about 20 minutes, add sea salt, a little white pepper, the bay leaves, red wine vinegar and the bacon rind. Return to the oven.
Get the carrots and sprouts on to cook. When you are cooking multiple veg I recommend a multiple-tier electric steamer. It gets everything going at once and frees up a space on the hob. The carrots will need around 15 minutes.
While the sprouts cook, get a frying pan on medium hot and add a little oil. Throw in the bacon and wait til it colours on one side before adding the part-cooked sprouts and chestnuts. Stir fry well for five minutes.
The potatoes might need a final blast of seasoning, otherwise they’re good to serve. Take the chicken to the table, pouring any spare juice into the gravy jug, and get someone else to carve. You’ve done enough.
If you’re using frozen yorkshire puddings, they’ll need their 2 minutes in the oven now.
When the sprouts are tender, take them off the heat and add the maple syrup. Toss well to coat and serve, and don’t forget the carrots!
