Pasta with Brussel Sprouts and Feta

Brussel Sprouts: The Jolly Green Giant's blessing on humanity

So not until my adult life did I experience the pleasure of eating my first brussel sprout. I know some people have these awful flashbacks of crying at the dinner table in front of a heaping pile of boiled, mushy, stinky brussel sprouts as your mom stared sternly at you over her glasses across the table as she repeated just one command every 15 minutes: "Eat." (Resurfacing of suppressed childhood experiences in 3, 2...)

But I did not have the privilege of eating them in childhood because they were just not in mother dearest's price range.


Once I discovered just how good these crisp green globes of bittery deliciousness could be I began cooking them every way possible. Eventually I made my to adding them to pasta which was such a success I wanted to share the recipe.

DISCLAIMER: I am not the measuring type unless I'm baking so I'm going to just list my ingredients. Really I think you should be the one to determine what your taste buds would like and how much you would like of it. I tend to use a lot of onion and garlic in my dishes. Some people don't like that. Anyway here's what I put in the dish:

The ingredients

Brussel Sprouts, sliced
Olive Oil
Onion (red, yellow or white. I used yellow onions in this recipe)
Garlic, coarsely chopped
Lemon zest
Any short pasta--I've used both fusilli and farfalle and they stood up perfectly with the veggies.
Field Roast Smoked Tomato deli slices finely chopped--not shown above (see NOTE below)
Feta cheese--not shown above
Salt and pepper to taste




Boil your pasta according to the package directions and set aside. Save a little of the pasta water too if you can.

In a frying pan, add olive oil and stir fry the onion and garlic until they are just about to caramelize. Then add the Field Roast deli slices and cook until brown (about 2 minutes).

Add the brussel sprouts and stir fry on medium for about 3 minutes. Your sprouts should be a really bright green. Because they're sliced they don't take to long to cook so resist the urge to cook them for a long time.

If you kept some pasta water, add a ladle full in the pan and let the veggies steam for a couple of minutes. If you didn't keep any it's cool. Use regular water or, if you want to get fancy use some vegetable stock or even dry white wine if you have some available.

Once some of the water evaporates turn off the fire and pour your pasta in with the veggies. Add salt, pepper, lemon zest and feta cheese.

NOTE: If you've never heard of the Field Roast products yous should look them up. I will not go into detail about how fantastic (and time-saving) these products are right now so I encourage some googling. You should be able to find the products at Whole Foods. They're good about stuff like that.

The recipe with fusilli instead of farfalle

If you don't like this dish something is seriously wrong. I think I'm going to say that about everything I post though.