As you know, I love to read cookbooks from cover to cover. This all started when I met my friend Beth. I am pretty sure before I met her I owned one, maybe two cookbooks and mostly relied on my mother’s guidance to cook. For this reason, I did not have a huge repertoire of recipes and I pretty much made the same things all the time.
As Beth and I became close friends I noticed all of her cookbooks, she had quite the collection herself, the biggest I had ever seen! When I asked her about them, she said that she reads cookbooks. Being an avid reader myself, it just had never occurred to me to read a cookbook the way I would read a book. She told me has had always loved reading them. You must be a great cook, then, I said, and she laughed.
One Thanksgiving, when Beth was having family and some friends over, she called me frantically an hour before she was going to serve dinner. Apparently, her turkey had not fully cooked and was in fact, rare, although it had been in the oven for a couple of hours. She blamed herself for not being a good enough cook and I calmly explained that there must be something wrong with her oven. I was right, but she never fully recovered from the experience and did not cook for crowds much after that.
That really is how I began my adventures into cooking. While Beth is a good cook, but she doesn’t really enjoy it the way I do. I do benefit from all her knowledge. If I have a question about what substitutes to use, she knows the answer. I am thankful she is always one phone call away because truthfully, she knows so much more about cooking than I do.
This is one recipe you do not have to have fine culinary skills to ace. I chose to prepare it because of its unusual ingredients. There are many ingredients that the author uses that I do not have access to. For example, he uses black garlic in this dish, but I couldn’t find any. Nevertheless, these Brussels sprouts are amazingly tasty! The caraway and pumpkin seeds contrast swimmingly with the tang of the lemon. The tahini sauce is the star of this dish as it adds depth to its flavor and richness to its texture.
This recipe is courtesy of Simple by Ottolenghi and will serve 4-6 people who will be amazed by the variety of flavor this side has to offer.
Ingredients for Brussels Sprouts with Browned Butter and Garlic:
1 pound Brussels Sprouts, trimmed and cut in half lengthwise
1 tablespoon olive oil
Salt
3/4 teaspoon caraway seeds
3/4 ounce black garlic, roughly chopped (I used regular)
2 tablespoons thyme leaves
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
3 tablespoons pumpkin seeds, toasted
1 1/2 teaspoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon tahini
Preheat the oven to 450°F.
Mix the Brussels sprouts with the oil and 1/4 teaspoon of salt.
Spread out on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Roast for 10 minutes until the sprouts are golden brown but still crunchy. (This took longer than 10 minutes for me, more like 15-18.)
Meanwhile, lightly crush the caraway seeds with a pestle and mortar.
Add the garlic and thyme and crush them to form a rough paste.
Put the butter into a large sauté pan and place over medium-high heat.
Cook for 3 minutes, until melted and dark brown.
Add the crushed garlic paste, sprouts, pumpkin seeds, and 1/8 teaspoon of salt.
Stir for 30 seconds, then remove from the heat.
Stir in the lemon juice and transfer to a bowl or individual plates.
Drizzle with the tahini and serve at once.
It’s that simple!
