creamed brussels sprouts with blue cheese & parsley-panko bread crumbs

01.24.2014

photo by jonathan canlas

cooking vegetables is a passion of mine. strange, i know. wanna hear something even more strange? i married a voracious carnivore. jon loves (and i think NEEDS) meat as much i love (and i know i NEED) vegetables. i've turned it into a sort of a mission of mine to create vegetable recipes that knock his socks off. 

funny thing…our first argument as a married couple was over a meat-free dinner i had prepared. we’ve come a long way since then and now it's one of my greatest pleasures to see him devour a veggie dish from my kitchen. he even inhaled some pan roasted yellow squash with garlic and butter the other night. i almost didn't believe him when he said he liked it. now he loves roasted brussels sprouts with bacon, roasted carrots and cauliflower and broccoli. basically, if i can douse a vegetable with a little olive oil, sprinkle it with some salt and pepper and roast it in the oven, homeboy will eat it. he's a changed man! 

when brainstorming for cookbook recipes, the idea of creamed brussels sprouts popped into my head. later on into testing, i decided the recipe needed some textural contrast and the parsley-panko breadcrumbs were born. i will always remember the look on jon’s face and his sigh of satisfaction when he took his first bite. "v" for victory! and veggies i guess too.

creamed brussels sprouts with blue cheese & parsley-panko breadcrumbs

serves 4-6

ingredients:

1 T plus 1 tsp olive oil

1 tsp butter

¼ cup panko breadcrumbs

2 T parsley, minced fine

1 lb brussels sprouts, cleaned, halved lengthwise and sliced thin

½ cup heavy cream

1 oz blue cheese 

1 tsp salt

½ tsp black pepper

directions:

heat a small skillet on medium high heat. add 1 tsp oil and 1 tsp butter to the pan. when butter is melted add the panko and stir continuously until browned, about 3-4 minutes. remove from the heat and stir in parsley. set aside.

heat a medium dutch oven or large skillet on medium high. add 1 T olive oil to the hot pan along with sliced brussels sprouts, salt and pepper. cook for 3-4 minutes till the edges of the sprouts begin to brown. add cream and blue cheese and stir to combine. let cook and additional 1-2 minutes till cream thickens and the blue cheese is distributed throughout the dish. transfer to serving bowl and top with breadcrumbs.

notes:

choose a kind of blue cheese that you love. i’ve used camembert and gorgonzola both with this recipe. and they each turned out wonderfully. the camembert was considerably understated compared to the gorgonzola and i imagine that a danish blue cheese would be even more pronounced than the gorgonzola.

slicing the brussels sprouts can be a bit of a chore, but it can be done the morning of or even a day ahead and stored in an air tight container to save on time.

and p.s. to receive a couple extra "if i were..." menu ideas and secret recipes every month that i only share via email click here. i'll also be sending out recipes every once in a while for testing and feedback. so fun, yeah?