While not a dish per-se, this member of the wild cabbage food group is one of the tastiest sides at Maya and leaves nothing to be desired. Roasted brussel sprouts are a joy to eat, but have a much hated stigma behind them. I am sure we all had our fair share of nasty brussel sprouts at one point in our childhood that scarred us for life. SFist, our long lost west coast relative wrote about these devilish sprouts as well:
If you don’t like Brussels sprouts, you’re probably turned off by the bitterness, which is never popular with Western palates. There’s no easy way around it: Brussels sprouts are often bitter. As Harold McGee says in On Food and Cooking, “whether we cook sprouts rapidly to minimize the production of thiocyanates, or slowly to transform all of the glucosinolates, the result is still bitter.” Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Thiocyanates are tricky little devils.
McGee offers one strategy for taming the bitterness: Slice the sprouts in half and cook them in a lot of boiling water. The water leaches the offending compounds out of the center stem of the vegetable, where they tend to congregate. Alice Waters suggests a more time-consuming approach: Cut out the stalk’s core before cooking the sprouts.
Unfortunately our parents must have over cooked them releasing these delicious sulfur smelling/tasting compounds.
Lucky for us, Maya hates sulfur tasting food. A properly roasted brussel sprout should have a nutty, almost hazelnut-like taste. They should never be mushy and should “bite” back a bit when you chew them. The chefs at Maya have given me consistently tasty sprouts on multiple occasions, so I cannot say luck is on their side, skill is definitely in play.
Brussel sprouts go well with pretty much anything on the Maya menu. But if you really want a kick-ass pairing, try it with the trout or vegetarian fried seitan (fake meat….mmmmmm….).
If you fancy a meal that doesn’t have a fancy price (you can get Maya discount cards here), go to the market and get a bag and try out these terrific recipes (just remember to not over-cook them):
Roasted Brussel Sprouts with Chestnuts and Bacon
Baby Brussel Sprouts with Buttered Pecans
Fettuccine with Brussel Sprouts and Pine Nuts
And yes, I do realize this is my second DOTW from Maya. Their food is good enough to come back to.
[pic from biskuit on Flickr]
Related posts:
- Dish of the Week: Cornbread at Maya
- Revisiting Charlottesville’s Maya Restaurant
- Dish of the Week: Spicy Senegalese Peanut Tofu Soup at Revolutionary Soup
Ooh let me correct you Mr. Foodie. It’s BrusselS sprouts. From Brussels, not Brussel.
And btw, Petit Pois and X Lounge also have this side dish on their menu. Perhaps you could have described how the dish was presented and how they were prepared. I know PP blanches theirs, then soaks them in ice water, then cuts them in half sears them in pricey French butter. Mmmm. X blanches them and slices and sautées them in duck fat.
Brussels Sprout farts smell exactly like Brussels Sprouts. I hope your life is in some way improved by this comment.
Nasty, nasty, nasty… I’d rather eat sand than those items….
@3 cuban food smells just like sweat. but it’s so gud.
Maya is good though!
zocalo is having one of their annual bi- yearly specials- duck confit with brussels sprout hash and apricot/vanilla gastrique…
it’s preety delicious.
so is the side at maya.
And Zinc has them too. It’s pretty common around town on menus.
Yeah, FAIL Coco, everyone’s got them. Maybe you should do a Sprout taste-off or something.