Sprouts In October?

When I was at school I remember watching cult T.V comedy series Bottom which starred Rik Mayall as Richie and Adrian Edmondson as his housemate Eddie. One of my favourite episodes was set at Halloween and included Rik Mayall's character making Mexican flavoured sprouts. Adrian Edmondson's character questioned this move as it was only October. His character's questioning does have some grounding in traditional best practice however; my gran once told me that sprouts should only be eaten after the first frosts arrive. The reason for this is that the frost makes them sweeter. Although this was historically true advances in farming and harvesting of fruit and vegetables have meant that these days you can have sprouts before the first frosts as they will still taste as sweet.

With this in mind I set about making a sprout and sausage soup last Saturday, despite the weather continuing to be mild. I needed something substantial and warming to help me recover from the effects of consuming some seven per cent anchor steam beer the night before. The soundtrack for preparation of the soup was Rush's excellent 1976 breakthrough album '2112' which is a concept album about mind control. However beyond the weighty subject matter, which makes the album sound like it should only be listened to by professional train spotters with long beards and few social skills, are some extremely catchy melodies, superb playing and a real drive that makes the record accessible for a wide-range of listeners without the need to appreciate to story line.

I first fried a diced white onion with two vegetarian sausages until the onion became translucent and the sausages became a nut brown colour. I then cut one of the sausages in half and kept one half on the side while returning the other to the Le Cresceut dish in which I had been frying it with the other sausage and the onion. I left the onion and sausage on a low light and began to prepare the sprouts. The trick with the sprouts is to peel the first few layers off them so that all the bad bits are removed. Then it is necessary to tail them and cut a cross mark across the bases of each sprout.

Once the sprouts were ready I added them to the onions and sausage together with a pint and a half of chicken stock. I then simmered the contents of the dish for half an hour until the sprouts were soft and added a little black pepper to the mixture while it simmered. I then took the dish off the heat and left it to cool for half an hour.

After half an hour had passed I blended the ingredients, returned them to the Le Cresceut and added three tablespoons of plain, unsweetened soya milk. Some variants on this recipe use sour cream instead of soya milk and chorizo instead of vegetarian sausages however my recipe does ensure that you have a tasty, flavoursome soup that is healthy as well.

After I had warmed the soup through it was ready to serve and I garnished it with some slices of the pre-cooked vegetarian sausage and fresh parsley. The taste was very earthy and the soup was certainly very full-bodied; perfect early Autumn food.

Fresh Parsley on top of the soup helps give a freshness to the otherwise earthy taste.