Archives: Side Dishes

Bacon Brussels Sprouts with Reverend Ben

Want to know the best part of our Sunday church gathering? It’s the potlucks we have in the rectory multi purpose room! We have a wonderful community of folks who prepare all sorts of dishes from around the world. Our pastor, Reverend Ben, recently brought a casserole dish filled with some of the tastiest bacon brussels sprouts I have ever mouthed. I had to find out how he made these delicious green beauties!

Reverend Ben learned this technique during a prayer jubilee in Hungary. While wandering the countryside, he struck up a conversation with a weathered farmer woman he would later learn was known throughout the countryside for her divine abilities with sprouts – she was a sprout whisperer! Preternatural abilities with mini cabbages notwithstanding, Reverend Ben thinks the real secret might be the always welcome ingredient, bacon. (And sacred wine!) Either way, it’s a delicious way to prepare a sprout side dish and it was such a pleasure to be invited into the reverend’s home. We had a lovely time making this dish.

Here’s Reverend Ben’s Hungarian Bacon Brussels sprouts:

The Bacon Brussels Sprouts Recipe:

2 Lbs. Fresh & organic brussels sprouts
1/3 Lb. Uncured bacon
1/4 cup chopped shallots
2 cloves thinly sliced and chopped garlic
3/4 cups wine (or a touch more if the pan gets dry)
2 tsp. Hungarian Paprika
Salt & Pepper to taste

Kimchi recipe

Fermentation makes so many wonderful culinary miracles the world over, and kimchi is certainly one of my secret loves. This traditional Korean dish is one of my wife Kendra’s favorites, and she would probably bathe in the stuff if she could. There are a number of variations when it comes to kimchi recipes, some involving a rice flour and chili paste, others without the flour, and with a whole host of additions and subtractions.

In this video, I learn a deceptively simple version of kimchi from my friend Jennifer. This recipe is fairly adaptable in terms of the kinds of fruit you can include (or leave out if you want to keep things simple) so feel free to experiment a bit! If you’re looking for a good fermenting vessel, here’s a good one you can get through Amazon.

Ok, here’s the fermentation adventure:

Jennifer’s kimchi recipe:

5-6 medium sized heads of Napa Cabbage
Generous amount of sea salt (it should make the cabbage taste salty and release water)
10 trimmed and chopped scallions
1-3 cloves of garlic per head of cabbage (you be the judge!)
Fat, thumb sized piece of ginger
2 organic apples (with their skins)
2 chopped organic lemons with half of their rinds on
2 peeled and sliced blood oranges
Enough Korean Chili powder to turn the cabbage mixture a nice shade of red (we used about 8 heaping tablespoons)
Handful of black sesame seeds
1 Tbsp sugar
1 tsp probiotic powder to speed up fermentation
Handful of dried anchovies