Cheever Sauce

Brussel Sprouts have a bad rap in my opinion. They tend to stick out as one of those dreaded vegetables you hid under your napkin or fed to your dog as a kid…right next to the broccoli. I can’t pinpoint when exactly my relationship changed with them, but it’s safe to say that New York City restaurants, with their unwavering ability to offer delicious side dishes played an important role. It feels like one day (or at least as of 4 years ago) this once discarded vegetable came in vogue, and all of the sudden brussel sprouts with lemon and pancetta, brussel sprouts with bacon and shallots, brussel sprouts with garlic and parmesan, were offered on the menus of every restaurant north of China Town. I do love my side dishes so I was on board,  I didn’t even care if they were charging me $10 for fancy miniature cabbages on top of my already $35 meal. I was hooked. 

The best of the best (in my opinion) are served at Tartine, and since the restaurant is conveniently located down the street, I found myself falling into an addictive trap. So I decided to whip up my own batch that was heavily inspired by my West Village favorite, and the results were nothing short of perfection. 

Now brussel spouts are delicious just tossed with olive oil, some salt and pepper, and then roasted in the oven until tender, but a tiny bit more effort and a little more ingredients can give you some amazing results. I made these at our Thanksgiving dinner, and nothing is more satisfying for a food blogger than people “Oooh”ing and “Ahhh”ing what you brought to the table. Did you just make a yummy noise? 

The recipe is super easy and very CheeverSauce friendly since it’s the perfect dish for my no measuring philosophy. The sweetness of the dried cranberries offsets the bitterness from the spouts and the almonds offer a nice texture and crunch to the dish. Cooking them in white wine adds a punch of flavor that pulls together all of the ingredients perfectly.

Onto the recipe!

You’re going to be sautéing the spouts halved and faced down on your sauté pan so depending on how many people you are cooking for you want to make sure there is enough room in the pan for the brussel spouts to lay flat without overlapping.

1. After washing your brussel spouts, cut off the bottom stem and then halve. 
2. Lightly coat the bottom of your pan with cooking spray or olive oil and place the spouts face down, and turn on your heat to medium/high. 
3. Let the spouts cook for about 3 minutes. 
4. Add a dry white wine to the pan until it covers about 3/4 of the sprouts. 
5. Let the wine reduce (about 15-20 minutes) until it is almost gone from the pan. 
6. Add vegetable stock to the pan until it covers about 1/4 of the spouts and let simmer and reduce down as well. 
7. Meanwhile soak a two handfuls of dried cranberries in white wine and microwave for two minutes. Spread another two handfuls of sliced almonds on a cookie sheet and toast in your oven at 350 until golden or in a toaster oven. 
8. Once your vegetable stock reduced let the sprouts cook until the bottoms have become browned. Once browned, pour the cranberries into the pan (include any leftover wine from their bowl) and mix into your sprouts. At this point the liquid allows you to stir up your spouts and scrape the browed bits from the bottom of the pan (add a couple slashes of white wine or vegetable stock if you need more liquid to do this)
9. Add your toasted almonds and toss. Allow your cooking liquids to reduce again and then turn off your heat. 
10. Now this next step is a little controversial because it offers every healthy eaters dreaded ingredient - butter. You can avoid this step and still get an amazing dish, but I think it’s well worth it. Take a tiny bit of butter (about a tablespoon or two) and melt it over medium/low heat until it browns…not melted…browned. Click here for a how-to.  Poor your browned butter of the sprouts and enjoy!
11. CheeverSauce side note: On Thanksgiving I added shallots to the mix (add them after you add your spouts to the pan) and it tasted great. According to these pictures - I cooked them sans shallots on the first batch. They are good either way.

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