This could become my favorite meal. I invented this Brussels sprouts salad and I don't care what they say I won't live in a world without...
The success of the Brussels sprouts salad, I must say, because if you lived here you would not have it, would not put up with it, comes from a not-so clean pan.
It would work with a thoroughly clean pan but not as well, just as it will work with a nice clean outside grill even better but not as well as a not so clean outside grill. It is the way of the caveman. The taste and and the scent of fried burnt pork fat where it does not belong in a salad is oddly and arrestingly satisfying, it makes you glad you have it there on the plate, the layers of abuse laid onto the Brussels sprouts, bitter in taste, a bit mean in nature on their own, is beat up and modified and covered with masculine flavors of burnt meat and singed leaves with deep layers of what is termed umami nowadays, perhaps a trendy phrasing, but it hits the nail on the head, the salad is dense and strong and sturdy, with all of that modified appeal to contemporary taste with salt and with aged balsamic vinegar somewhat sweet put on all that char. It is an extraordinary salad. There. I said it.
I recall the moment my brother convinced me eating an onion will not be unpleasant. I was incredulous. Ha! He'd have to do better than that to trick me.
No. It's safe. It changes when it's cooked a long time.
No way.
Yes. No kidding. It changes to sweet.
No it doesn't.
Yes it does. Look. Yum, yum, yum.
I tried it and it was sweet. Onions became almost like candy. Like magical transformation.
And that is what these Brussels sprouts do. Nothing magical about the pan, But I never can bother to get it completely clean, and when I do get it completely completely clean, thoroughly between all the ribs, then it is ruined for that one next time until it gets messed up again and thereafter cleaned only half-heartedly. Or perhaps three quarters-heartedly. Fine! A primitive cast-iron pan cleaned only four fifths-heartedly. That is the success of this salad.
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