novel34

        I don't remember ever having Brussels Sprouts when I was a child.   They just were not a vegetable that was readily available back then. We basically only had peas and carrots and green beans and sometimes corn.  I can remember discovering sprouts as an adult and falling completely and totally in love with them, and with cauliflower and broccoli too.  I am a real brassica lover!        I got a huge bag of sprouts in my Christmas Vegetable Box and of course we did not use them all and so I sat here looking at them the other day and thought to myself, I better use them up before they go off and so I thought I would make a sort of gratin with them.      I did a search on line to see if I could find any suggestions and found what looked a lovely recipe on the BBC food web page by Sophie Grigson.  I like Sophie's recipes and so I thought I would use it as a basis for what I wanted to d...

My friend Elly has the most beautiful recipe for Parsnips that I have been using for many years, Parsnips with Gorgonzola .   It always turns out delicious and it is something which I frequently  served with roast beef when I cooked at the manor.  They loved it.  It's a dish that always goes down really well. It makes a fabulous side dish for dinner parties or the holidays.  I charged it up a little bit this time when I made it by adding some toasted walnuts and using leeks instead of spring onions.  It turned out  to be just gorgeous.   You get the  buttery almost sweet creaminess, with caramlized edges of the parsnips . . . then the sharp herbiness of the leeks, the toasty crunch from the walnuts, and then that rich creamy tang from the gorgonzola cheese.  All making happy noises and feelings in your mouth.  So much tastiness! The only way they could even possibly be any tastier would be if you drizzled them with some hon...