There's nowt like a sprout If anyone has the right to complain about Brussels sprouts, it's not the people eating them but the cook. As vegetables go, they are not the easiest to prepare, even if you dispense with the needless palaver of cross-hatching the bottoms. Each miniature cabbage has to be picked over and carefully trimmed. Broccoli never caused such trouble. But sprouts are worth it. My admiration was strengthened by a recent trip to New York, where they are now the most lauded of all vegetables (with the possible exception of kale). In a city where you can eat anything you like at any time of day, sprouts are a sought-after treat. With bacon, with parmesan or with Asian seasonings, the fried Brussels-sprout "side" is seen as "craveable" and may cost as much as $10. I spoke to one chic professional woman who had set herself the mission of eating all the greatest sprout dishes in Manhattan. She gave up in the end. There were too many. The key to the sprout's new-found popularity among Americans is the discovery of how amazing they taste charred in oil or butter. When roasted in a shimmering-hot pan until black in places, the flavour deepens and it almost tastes meaty. The New York sprout-mania is equivalent to that moment in the late 1980s when people suddenly went mad for roasted red peppers, blackened under a grill. Different cooking methods can make you feel you are eating a brand-new vegetable. It might seem counterintuitive to take something so green and choose to make it brown. For years in Britain we were so traumatised by over-boiled sprouts that we tended to steam them slightly under-done. They are fine like that, particularly served alongside rich things such as game and bread sauce. But crisp sprouts are something else. If you can bring yourself to cook a panful to the edge of darkness, you discover that sprouts can be the focus of a meal, rather than just an adjunct. There are various ways to proceed. Halved, tossed in oil and roasted on a tray for 20 minutes or so works well. Generally, though, I prefer to cook them on the hob, so that I can control the blackening - in other words, sneak mouthfuls as I go. They are irresistible briefly boiled in very salty water, then browned in a single layer in lots of butter (don't turn them too much). Shredded sprouts sautéed with lemon are lovely with fish. Or they can become a comforting pasta sauce, sliced and browned in a mixture of shallots, bacon, rosemary and garlic. The most exciting sprout recipe I've yet come across is from the Korean-American chef David Chang, proprietor of Momofuku. Well-blackened sprouts are tossed in a mouth-tingling mixture of fish sauce, lime juice, chillis, mint and coriander, and, finally, fried puffed rice (aka Rice Krispies). Among all these intense flavours and textures, the sprouts more than hold their own. You wouldn't want this as part of the Christmas meal, when the sprouts mustn't upstage the turkey. But on any other day it makes an excellent lunch with a fried egg or two. Christmas may be only once a year but the British sprout season, happily, continues until April.