Brussels Sprout Christmas Tree, Revisited

And a couple of other recipes, too.

Yes really.

What happened is that a few years ago, the phrase “Brussels sprouts baubles!” popped into my head and I had to do it.

Some of you - especially those who have my Leaf book - might remember this. The idea emerged organically from liking the concept of the nutella puff pastry Christmas tree which was doing the rounds on Instagram and wanting a savoury version. I don’t like Nutella (honestly). My mind of course immediately went to cheese, and then because it was winter, close to Christmas and my focus was leaves, leaves, leaves, I had my Brussels sprouts lightbulb moment.

I had to make it, and it made it into the book, and I have made a version of it every year since, because a) it is fab and b) it always, always cheers people up. Apart from people who don’t like Brussels sprouts of course who would probably prefer a cherry tomato. Fortunately those people don’t live in my house.

Wednesday of this week was Brussels Sprout Christmas Tree™ Day in my house because everyone was fed up and I save it for such occasions. Gloomy, filthy weather, lingering colds, tired of work, tired of school, tired of endless exams and tests, still half the week to get through. So I made this and paired it with one of my other seasonal heavy lifters - the video which always surfaces around now of the Christmas nativity when the little girl sings out of tune so loudly but with such spirit and unselfconscious exuberance that you immediately love her. And feel better as you laugh until you cry.

The other thing I want to talk a bit about in this post besides Brussels Sprout Christmas Trees™ is how organic the process of deciding what to cook can be, and how often one dish flows naturally on from another - or cascades down from one initial dish. You cook one thing and it leads you onto the next thing and the next. I was thinking about this because it is what happened when I made the Christmas tree this time round.

So to make the Brussels Sprout Christmas Tree™ I needed to do some prep – namely par cook some Brussels Sprouts and for this particular version, do a quick pressure cooker soak of some dried cranberries. I did not feel that there was much point in doing a tiny amount of either, so did twice the amount I needed.

That left me with extra par cooked Brussels sprouts and soaked cranberries, so I then remembered that I wanted to do a red cabbage and soaked cranberry thing and decided on a roast red cabbage and smoked duck salad with the cranberries. But as always, when I cut up the red cabbage into wedges, a lot of the leaves come loose which aren’t the best for roasting. So those I cut up and saved for another day to turn into a braise with orange and pomegranate (a really good Christmassy side dish this and landing in your inbox soon). But my pomegranate was really big with too many seeds for this particular braise so I thought about what some other savoury options might be and remembered that I wanted to make the lamb mince and quince tagine again and that the pomegranate seeds would work well in an accompanying couscous and so provide a welcome crunch to an otherwise relatively soft meal.

I still had the Brussels sprouts left and some cranberries, so with those I made a favourite side dish with chestnuts and bacon (you can find the recipe for this in Modern Pressure Cooking, it is also an excellent Christmas side dish).

Finally, (and this is just a sideways move) as my Brussels came from an intact stalk with the sprout tops still attached, I used those for a quick lunch for just me with mushrooms.

This can all depend a bit on batch cooking and so thinking ahead about what you might do with the extra, but it can help you decide what to do with other ingredients you might have available.

You’ll find a recipe for the roast red cabbage salad and the quick sprout tops lunch below. The rest to follow.

Brussels Sprout Christmas Tree

This is a much tweaked version of the recipe which appears in Leaf (and, btw, if you haven’t got Leaf can I gently encourage you take a look? I shouldn’t play favourites with my cookery books, but I think it might be it).

Ingredients:

500g Brussels sprouts (more than you need, you can do 200g if you don’t want leftovers)

50g dried whole cranberries (more than you need, but I wouldn’t recommend doing less)

50ml oloroso or port or anything fortified, really

1 large sheet puff pastry

150g hard cheese, grated

1 shallot or small onion, very finely chopped

2 tbsp wholegrain mustard (optional)

1 egg, for washing

1 tbsp olive oil, for tossing

Trim the Brussels sprouts, keeping any leaves which fall off but which are perfectly edible for cooking another time. Cut in half. Heat a little water in the base of your pressure cooker. Add the Brussels sprouts and bring up to low pressure. Immediately fast release. This will soften them just enough to take off the rawness. The ones on the bottom will be slightly more cooked. If you want to cook them perfectly evenly, put in a steamer basket and bring up to high pressure and immediately fast release. Their colour will be nice and bright – you can plunge in cold water to preserve this, although they will still brown in the oven.

Next cook the cranberries. Put in your pressure cooker and cover with the oloroso or similar. Bring up to high pressure, immediately remove from the heat and leave to drop pressure naturally. The cranberries will be plump and soft and will have absorbed all the liquid. Set aside to cool.

You can now start your assembling. Preheat your oven to 200C. Take your sheet of puff pastry and make sure it is arranged portrait fashion. Mark the centre of the top edge and cut from that point to each of the the bottom corners – the easiest way to do this is with a long ruler and a pizza cutter. You will end up with 3 triangular pieces – one central Christmas tree shaped piece which you will use as the top layer of pastry and two right angled triangles which you need to arrange into one large triangle/Christmas tree on a piece of baking parchment.

Mix the cheese with the onion or shallot. Spread the pastry with the mustard and sprinkle with the cheese. Put the other triangle on top and press down lightly – no need to seal.

Cut horizontal lines at around 3cm intervals down each side of your tree, leaving a central “trunk”. Then twist each of the strips into branches, stretching each one a little as you go.

Brush with egg wash. Toss half the Brussels sprouts in the olive oil and arrange over the tree. Arrange the cranberries over as well. Sprinkle with sesame seeds if you like.

Bake in the oven for 25-30 minutes until the pastry is golden. You can serve this hot – best if you have used a cheese that is remotely stretchy – but it is wonderful cold, in the same way of cold pizza for breakfast.

Roast Red Cabbage and Smoked Duck Salad

This isn’t the most substantial as very low carb, but it is an easy one to add carbs to if you want to fill it out a bit. You could add some diced, fried potatoes, or a grain such as spelt, barley or wild rice. Even some noodles would work.

Microgreens – there are often little palettes of these to be found in the supermarket these days and they are easy to grow on the windowsill, but I buy mixed bags from Westlands who have a stall at my farmers market. £5.50 gets me a mixed bag of often over 20 different leaves and although that sounds a lot, they last very well and a large handful goes far.

The pressure cooker method for this is a fun one – it is fast and furious and one of the few times I fully expect to see a lot of steam.

2 tbsp olive oil

1 medium red cabbage, cut into very slim wedges

A sprinkle of Chinese 5 spice

2 endive, shredded

2 tomatoes, roughly chopped or sliced (I use Iberico winter tomatoes)

A large handful of microgreens (or any herbs/mixed leaves/lettuce)

100g smoked duck, thinly sliced

Leaves from a large sprig of thyme

1 tbsp or so of the oloroso cranberries

2 tbsp hazelnuts, lightly toasted and broken up

For the dressing:

1 tbsp sherry vinegar

1 shallot, finely sliced

2 tbsp olive oil

1 tsp toasted sesame oil

1 tsp Dijon mustard

Zest and juice of ½ orange or 1 mandarin

First start the salad dressing. Cover the shallot with the sherry vinegar and season with salt. Set aside.

Next cook the cabbage. Heat your pressure cooker and when the base is hot, add the olive oil. Swirl it around a bit, then add the red cabbage, well spaced. You may have to do this in more than one batch if you are to avoid crowding the pan. Sear on both cut sides until you get some colour – this should be quite fast. Season with salt and pepper and sprinkle over the 5 spice.

Now for the fun bit. You need to throw in some water – 50ml is plenty - and get the lid on as fast as you can. When you add the water, it will create a lot of sizzle and steam, which you want to trap as quickly as possible as this will help the pressure cooker come up to pressure in a matter of seconds. It takes a bit of practice to do this efficiently. I have a jug of water in one hand, the lid in another, I pour in the water, slam the lid on, put the jug down and lock the lid in place. Cook for 1 minute at high pressure, then fast release. The cabbage should be knife tender at the core and generally al dente. For a softer finish, increase the cooking time by 30 seconds.

Add the remaining dressing ingredients to the shallot and vinegar. Arrange the endive over the base of a serving platter and add the red cabbage and tomato. Sprinkle over the microgreens, arrange the duck over the top and drizzle over the dressing. Toss very gently – you want to break it up a little but not mix thoroughly – then finish with the cranberries, thyme and hazelnuts.

My next post is going to have the braised cabbage recipe, alongside a very fast version of tartiflette because they work so well together. But just to finish off today’s post, this is what I have been cooking in my pressure cooker over the past week:

Thermos lunches:

(Lots of sausage this week as I had a large tray of Cumberlands to get through. No one complains about this).

Sausage and kale pasta

Black bean, sweetcorn, quinoa braise thing with broccoli

Sausage and spinach pasta

Pasta with venison and mushroom ragu

Sausage version of keema peas biryani

And the rest:

Roast red peppers

Black beans

Black Bean and vegetable soup

Venison and mushroom ragu

A kind of potato and fish bourgignon thing

Poached chicken

Roast brussels sprouts

Greens of some sort, every day (see below)

And as a little extra, here is my lunch for one, on a day when I was over indulging on the sweet pastries and needed a counterbalance:

I heated up 1 tbsp olive oil, added a little finely chopped onion, garlic and ginger and a few halved chestnut mushrooms. Quick saute, then the sprout tops went on top along with a splash of water. Lots of steam, lid on as quickly as possible, up to high pressure, cooked for 30 seconds, fast release. Dressed with a little dark soy, orange juice and sesame oil. Eat as is or over rice or noodles.

Please let me know what you have been pressure cooking recently! And as always, do get in touch with any pressure cooking (or just cooking) questions you have.