Recipe CXXXIV - Caramelised Brussels Sprouts and sauteed Wild Boar Medallions

It's that grey week between Christmas and New Year's Eve when very little happens except finishing up all the food you didn't gluttonously consume during the main feast days and hanging around for that great anticlimactic moment when the numbers on the clock signify that it's 1st January of the following year. But this year is different - the last week of the year of cancelled invitations and postponed bookings due to the great pestilence of 2020 will tick by more slowly than the rest of the year with the tortuous effect of a dripping tap and those leftover vegetables will have no other mouths to enter than your own, so what better way to spend a miserable December night than to make something different with your remaining food? Here's a simple but delightful take on the humble Brussels sprout, the most underestimated Christmas ingredient of them all, plus a splendid little side dish of wild boar.

Ingredients for the sprouts:

500g Brussels sprouts 

Minimum 20 fresh ground peppercorns 

100g butter 

Spoonful of nutmeg 

Some salt

Instructions:

Heat the oven to 200°C. Do the usual removal of the outer leaves, then slice the sprouts in half. Melt the butter on a low flame and pour into a wide baking dish - this is to leave plenty of room so they can sit with the insides on the base. Pour the butter into the baking dish, then cover the sprouts in salt, nutmeg and pepper before placing them flat in the butter.

Cook in the oven for 25 minutes or until soft.

Ingredients for the wild boar medallions:

350g to 500g wild boar fillet cut into slices 

Plenty of ground black peppercorns 

6 mushrooms of your choice 

1 red onion

3 cloves of garlic

A glass of brandy

150ml to 200ml fresh cream

Instructions:

Roll the boar in the pepper and some salt, cut up the mushrooms, onions and garlic. Put some butter in a wide frying pan on a medium-high temperature, fry the medallions until they are sealed, add the garlic, onions and mushrooms, pour over some brandy, let it reduce. Then add the cream and let it thicken.

Done!

I also caramelised some carrots with sugar using the same recipe as the sprouts and they went down very well.