Thanks, Brussels

Delicious (and healthy!) ways with the world’s most underrated vegetable.

It's been a poor year for Brussels.

Let's make that appalling. The terrorist attacks by IS. Brexit.

The continuing, downtrodden reputation of the cruciferous vegetable that carries the city's name wherever underrated vegetables are eaten.

Why does everyone turn their nose up at sprouts?

Is it because of that largely British-inspired technique of boil-and-serve many of us endured as kids? It is, after all, a well-known fact that overcooking sprouts - the default position of most mums, once - makes them smell like rotten eggs because of the high levels of sulforaphane they contain.

Well-known now, maybe.

A few chefs fight the good fight - traditional with lardons or chestnuts; modern and raw, using leaves as a salad or shredded in a 'slaw - but on the whole, sprouts remain about as popular as Clive Palmer. It's time for change.

Brussels sprouts are delicious, texturally interesting if cooked the right way, full of good stuff that makes you healthy (and yes, a bit farty) and a fine winter alternative to carb-heavy side dishes.

Two interesting facts. There are apparently more than 110 different varieties of sprouts. Commonly, in Australia, we see Churchill, Napoleon, Napoleon F1, Hastings and Arundel. And I have read that there are more than 9000 documented ways to cook a sprout.

Let's make that more than 9001, shall we?

Given that they appear in dishes going as far back as Roman times, it seems appropriate to give them a kind of Italian roasting. First, get a baking dish large enough to accommodate your new green friends loosely. They need room.

Trim the white bases a little and cut an X across the crowns; this helps heat and flavours to penetrate and aids crisping.

Now, using your own preference for flavour emphasis, finely slice garlic, crumble dried whole chillies and chop anchovy fillets. I find about six anchovy fillets, one organic garlic clove and two small dried chillies for about 400g of sprouts does the trick, but my palate's programmed to a kind of Sicilian/Calabrian in-your-faceness.

You might add some finely sliced onion at this point. Add sprouts and jumble it with olive oil and pepper; don't salt.

Now, it's a two-stage cook. First, with about 100ml of water in the pan, give the sprouts around 25 minutes in the oven on 150°C (fan).

This will steam them through. When the water is fully evaporated, pull the pan out, add some more oil, swish around a bit and hit the throttle. Take your oven up to 11.

Wait until it reaches maximum heat then give the sprouts a serious blast for about 10 minutes. But keep an eye on them, because different ovens do different things.

The point is this: when the extremities are turning brown, crisp and slightly caramelised, they will have a brilliant nutty/sweet flavour.

The outer leaves will be a treat to chew/crunch and the inner sprout soft-ish and fragrant.

And all that salty/garlicky anchovy flavour will be addictive. You could even deglaze the pan at this point, pouring the juices over the veggies. It's more than good.

I don't expect this to make the Belgians feel better about their terrible year. But it should make you feel better about winter.