YOU can eat Brussels sprouts all your life and never appreciate the ridiculous way in which they grow. At farmers’ markets and even in some supermarkets they are sold attached to their thick green trunks, like little green barnacles clinging to a ship’s rope.

The sprout is much maligned in Britain. It may be because older ones have high levels of sulfuraphane, which makes them smell like rotten eggs when overcooked, or because of the dearth of ideas for their use. Boiling, boiling or boiling does not an exciting vegetable make. The high point of a sprout’s life, it seems, is to be served with bacon and chestnuts at the festive table.

But if we think of fresh young sprouts as charming little cabbage buds, we would be more likely to shred them finely and toss them into hot butter and oil with pancetta and chilli, bake them into tarts with eggs and cheese, stir them into soups and stews or fold them into potato purée.

Imagine if sprouts turned up in an Italian market. Italy’s keen shoppers would take one look and immediately bung them into their next hearty, family-style minestrone soup. We should do the same.

Prep: 15 min
Cook: 60 min
Sprout-haters can swap the sprouts for shredded Savoy cabbage or kale.

Serves 4

2tbsp olive oil or butter
1 onion, finely chopped
2 celery stalks, finely sliced
2 garlic cloves, crushed
½tsp dried oregano
1.5l hot water or chicken stock
1 carrot, finely diced
1 potato, diced
400g tinned chopped tomatoes
2tbsp tomato purée
2 bay leaves
1tsp salt
½tsp ground pepper
500g Brussels sprouts
400g tinned white beans, rinsed
1tbsp flat parsley leaves
2tbsp grated parmesan

METHOD

Melt the oil or butter, add the chopped onion and celery and cook gently for 5 minutes. Add the garlic and dried oregano, stirring well. Pour on the boiling hot water or stock, and bring back to the boil. Skim if necessary. Add carrot, potato, tomatoes, tomato purée, bay leaves, salt and pepper, and simmer, partly covered, for 30 minutes or until the vegetables are tender. Trim the sprouts and shred finely. Add to the pot with the beans, mashing a few of the beans first if you like a thicker soup, and cook for 15 minutes more until the sprouts are tender. Add the parsley leaves and serve in big shallow soup bowls with grated parmesan.

jill.dupleix@thetimes.co.uk

Very Simple Food by Jill Dupleix is published by Quadrille at £20. Order from Times Books First for £16, plus £1.95 p&p. 0870-160 8080

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