Brussels Sprouts with Pork Belly and Blue Cheese Tweetcipe

It’s officially Fall and after the brutal summer in Austin, I’m relieved to feel the cooler weather. Local garden vegetables didn’t produce in the heat and drought of the summer, but now the cooler nights and days are encouraging what are traditionally summer plants to finally put on tomatoes, okra, and squash. Along with these I am seeing the fall vegetables such as Brussels sprouts and lettuces in my CSA basket and at the grocery store.

I chose Brussels sprouts as the focus of this month’s tweetcipe. They look like baby cabbages and are a good source of Vitamins A and C, folic acid, fiber, potassium and iron. They are not a popular green vegetable, at least not in Texas, but if you try my recipe, you may want to eat them more often!

Brussels Sprouts with Pork Belly and Blue Cheese

Serves 4

1 lb of small Brussels sprouts (the smaller they are, the sweeter they are)
1 T olive oil
salt/pepper
1/3 lb pork belly, bacon or pancetta, diced small
4 oz blue cheese, crumbled

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Bring salted water to a boil in a large saucepan. Trim the sprouts by cutting off the browned stem end and then cut the sprouts in half. Add sprouts to the water, turn down heat to gently boil for 3 minutes. Pour olive oil in an oven proof dish. Using a slotted spoon, drop the sprouts in the dish with the olive oil then salt and pepper to taste. Stir well and place in oven for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, sauté pork belly, bacon or pancetta on the oven until brown and crispy. I like to use pork belly and add smoked salt and pepper. Drain pork. Check the doneness of the sprouts by poking a fork in the stem end. Don’t over cook! Place hot sprouts in a bowl with the cooked pork and blue cheese and gently stir. Serve warm.

Dishing on Heirlooms

What exactly is an heirloom vegetable? There is some confusion out there about what “heirloom” really means. Heirloom vegetables come from seed lines that are genetically unaltered. So what does that mean? Well, first you have to understand why scientists began genetically altering plants in the first place.

Back in the 1950s, food researchers began looking for ways to improve the ability of vegetables to be transported over long distances without bruising or overripening. Consumers were beginning to expect uniformity in their store bought vegetables, so large scale growers wanted to develop a method for these plants to grow the same way no matter where they were planted. To do this scientists began altering fruits and vegetables on the genetic level.

When this started taking place, small scale farmers and gardeners began to preserve the original seed lines of staple fruits and vegetables to ensure they would always be around. They passed them down from generation to generation, which is where we get the term “heirloom” when we talk about these plants.

The seeds for heirloom vegetables come from lines that range from anywhere between 60 to 120 years old. When you eat an heirloom tomato, you are eating the exact same vegetable that people were eating as far back as the late 1800s. You are actually taking a bite out of history! How cool is that?

There are two main benefits to heirloom vegetables compared to their modern counterparts.

• First, you get a much wider variety when you grow these types of veggies. The size, shape and color of the vegetable from a single seed can all be very different.
  
• Second, there are a lot of people who feel that heirloom vegetables are much tastier than the generic types. Personally, I think the taste is also affected by variables such as water, soil and amount of sunshine.

So if heirlooms are so great, why isn’t everyone growing them? Like anything else, with the benefits you also get some drawbacks. The biggest problem with heirloom seeds is that some of them require very specific growing conditions. You just might not be able to grow that variety of heirloom bean that you love if the soil isn’t just right. Gardeners are often willing to sacrifice a little variety and flavor for the peace of mind that they’ll be able to actually grow the veggie in their gardens.

So which type of vegetable should you use in your recipes? Honestly, it’s really up to you. I like to grow and eat heirlooms sometimes just to keep the seed line going, but I don’t see any major difference between heirlooms and regular veggies, as long as they are grown organically.