Roasted in maple syrup, pan fried with pancetta or raw grated into salads? However you eat yours, no other festive ingredient generates as much chatter in the run up to Christmas as the humble brussel sprout. With Christmas day just around the corner, I'm sharing how I've been cooking my sprouts this festive season. The sprouts are teamed with butternut squash, lentils, toasted almonds and pomegranate, to make this dish almost a meal in itself. The dressing is beautiful sweet due to the addition of apple syrup and the cinnamon gives a beautiful warmth and brings the flavours of Christmas. Perfect served along side your turkey and ham as an alternative to your usual vegetable sides. The beauty of this dish is that it's just as nice served at room temperature as it is warm.
Serves 4.
Ingredients
2 cups brussel sprouts, trimmed and halved
1/2 butternut squash, cut into bite size pieces
2 tbsp olive oil
1/2 cup green lentils
2 tbsp pomegranate seeds
2 tbsp flaked almonds, toasted
1/4 cup mixed herbs (mint and parsley) finely chopped
For the dressing:
3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 tbsp Highbank orchard apple syrup
Juice of half a lemon
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 tsp cinnamon
Sea salt and black pepper.
Method
Preheat the oven to 190C/Gas 5. To cook the sprouts and squash, place both on a baking tray and drizzle with olive oil and season with cumin, sea salt and black pepper. Place in the oven for 30 minutes or tuntil the vegetables are tender.
While the vegetables are in the oven, cook the lentils by placing them in a medium saucepan with a cup of boiling water. Bring to a boil, cover and reduce the heat to a simmer and cook for 15 minutes or until the lentils are tender. Try to avoid over cooking the lentils resulting in mushy lentils.
To make the dressing, mix all the ingredients together in a small bowl. Once the lentils are cooked, drain them fully and add them to a bowl along with the dressing. Add the roasted vegetables once they are cooked.
To serve, spoon the salad into a serving bowl and top with chopped fresh herbs, pomegranate seeds and toasted almonds.
