Lifelong sprout hater recants

I’ve always hated Brussels sprouts – I simply haven’t been able to tolerate their bitter taste. As a child I’d refuse to eat them and my parents would insist that I swallowed just one before being allowed to leave the table. It became a battle of wills. I mean, how much additional nutrition would a single brussel sprout afford anyone?

In desperation I’d try all the usual strategies that children who don’t want to eat their food use – chopping them up, covering them in ketchup to mask the taste, hiding them under other vegetables on my plate – but my parents were resolute.

I remember being made to sit at the dining room table for hours, staring angrily at my plate. Swallowing the little bitter balls actually made me retch. My father was a stubborn man, and he raised a stubborn daughter, so the whole sorry process took hours. It was traumatic.

As an adult I made sure to never eat a brussel sprout again. Until this year.

As a crofter I’ve been growing vegetables enthusiastically for the last few years, and in the spring last year a friend swapped a tray of spare seedlings with me in exchange for some tomato plants. I wasn’t paying enough attention and it was only after she’d left that I noticed she’d slipped four brussel sprout seedlings in with the tray of kale plants.

Not really thinking this through I just dug them into the brassica bed, not wanting to waste them. It seemed rude to give them back. I then forgot about them completely.

As is the way with plants you don’t really want and who receive no love and attention, they grow like wildfire. Soon these four seedlings had muscled past the kale with determination and were towering over the bed like strange green aliens. At this point I did consider digging them out, but again mercy for a living thing stayed my hand.

Around September we noticed that they’d started to change and watched in fascination as the stems started to develop green sproutlets along their length. The kale died back and got eaten, but the sprout plants, now a few feet tall, ungainly creatures, kept going.
We harvested our first sprouts this week. I should have done it sooner and a few rotted on the stalk, but I was really nervous about it and kept putting it off. If I harvested them I’d have to face the trauma of eating them, wouldn’t I?

We harvested them, still covered in snow. I roasted the first batch in the oven last night with lemon zest and parmesan.

They were delicious.