Do you tart up your Christmas veg?

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Inspired by the thread about what veg are served by law in each house, my question is - do you tart up your veg? Eg stir fry sprouts with bacon and chestnuts, create flavoured butters to melt over your carrots and so on? . . . . It tends to be plain boiled the life out of if my DM is cooking in our family

My Grandma always did a platter of peas and carrots...carrots around the outside and peas in the middle...topped with brown butter and cracker crumbs. Do you call them crackers there? For some reason I am thinking there is a cookies/biscuits language barrier involving crackers...

Potatoes roast in goose fat

Carrot and turnip mash with butter, pepper and a bit of nutmeg

Brussels sprouts and possibly some other greens with bacon.

Parsnip and celeriac gratin.

No Crumble, I said goodbye to the snazzy sprout. The sprout that has been buggered about with; stir fried with chestnuts and pancetta or glazed with manuka honey and sesame seeds. I liberated myself from the tyranny and oppression of poncing about with every vegetable on the plate, knowing full well that everything is going to end up with gravy/cranberry sauce and/or bread sauce on it anyway.

Naked sprouts here all the way, because on Christmas Day no one cares if you've spent 10 minutes making your sprouts look like the GoodHousekeeping magazine sprouts.

We do one baking tin with goose fat potatoes and sweet potatoes, one with parsnips,carrots maybe sliced pumpkin with olive oil, they'll both have whole onions and garlic in them and that's it.! Oh apart from the sprouts !

Mashed potato mixed with chopped onion and caraway seeds then baked in the oven for a hour.

roasted carrot, parsnip and sweet potato.

Carrots should be caramelised with honey, butter and tarragon.
Leeks need a plain white sauce.
Sprouts are sliced and fried in butter, have to have chestnuts, at least.

I like the sound of carrots with orange; I need to know how you do that, waitingforgodot pretty please!

Yes I always flavour my veg because DH and I are big on veggies. I really hate boiled veg and will never eat it.

I don't like boiled sprouts but found that by microwaving them for a couple of minutes then finishing them off by tossing for a couple of minutes in foaming butter over a medium heat they became a lot more palatable. Sometimes done with chestnuts or lardons, which make them even better. Even dh, who is a sprout fan, has suggested that they are done like this again this year.

Unfortunately, dmum is very much a traditionalist when it comes to sprouts and likes them plain. No idea if she is coming to my house or not this year so I'll have to see if I end up doing her some extra plain ones... The irony is that for years it has been a running joke that I eat sprouts regularly - one a year with my christmas dinner. But all this time it's because I didn't like the way she served them - and now that I serve them the way that I like them, she doesn't like them!

I have also discovered that if you're doing a load of Mediterranean type roast veg (my usual base mix is onion, mini plum tomatoes, peppers, especially red and sweet potato, plus whatever's around) that popping some sprouts on top works really well. No par boiling or anything - just a rinse and then into the tray, where they would be covered in the oil, herbs and garlic that everything else gets covered too. Obviously won't be serving like this for christmas day, but will during the christmas season!

Overall I do:
roast potatoes
mashed potatoes
roast parsnips
sprouts (half boiled then tossed in butter)
carrots
mashed swede
peas
broccoli
baby sweetcorn

My mother would have done all that, plus braised red cabbage, leeks with white sauce, roast onions and cauliflower cheese.

I do my veg in the microwave as they taste so much better and it works out faster plus less washing up. I recently had a roast meal at my dsis's house and had forgotten quite how watery veg taste when they are cooked (even briefly) in a big saucepan of boiling water. She is a great cook - but it really surprised me (and was a real effort to get the dc to eat their veg as they couldn't understand why they were so watery, plus although she had saved the veg water for the gravy, there was very little flavour in it as there was so much of it).

Sprouts simmered with fresh ginger and honey? I'm wondering if that sounds nice or not.

I'm interested in people's red cabbage recipes.

I usually do Parmesan parsnips but thinking of trying mustard parsnips this year, and do sprouts with chestnuts and pancetta, usually, and red cabbage cooked with vinegar and honey. Along with roast taters and mashed swede, and simple straightforward carrots.

Saw a suggestion upthread for star anise carrots. Is that nice? With Christmas dinner? Interested!

zipzap If you try sprouts off the stalk you will find them lovely, maybe even yr MIL will?

Blue It's true as a pp said that with all the trimmings no one can taste stuff like star anise in carrots and I wouldn't bother at all. There's freshly ground star anise and cloves etc. in my pudding though which is delish.

Yes to sprouts off the stalk, so much nicer. We just steam or microwave ours for Christmas dinner, but at other times we sometimes do a gratin of sprouts with breadcrumbs and blue cheese which is delicious. DMIL complains that my sprouts aren't right because "they should melt in the mouth", she is definitely of the boil to death in lots of salted water tendency.

I really dislike butter on veg, or even worse, sweet glazes. I don't mind spices (although I prefer plain for Christmas dinner) but I would decline anything that had fruit juice or honey added to it. Maybe just eat one to be polite.

OOOh nice to meet someone who knows about sprouts on the stalk WhoKnows

It also said on Gardener's question time that there are different varieties some of which don't have that 'sulphurous' quality that accompanies the sogginess that our parents seem to like

I steam mine because I hate too soft but I also don't like to eat bullets!

We buy sprouts on the stalk and the rabbits eat the stalk.

I thought the title said "christmas vag" for a second.

Anyway sprouts in hazelnut, orange and butter here.

ppeatfruit I always buy my sprouts on a stalk for christmas so they already were just off a stalk (as opposed to buying loose or frozen I assume you meant).

It's one of the few veg preparing jobs that the dc like to help with!

I do a sprouts in cream, garlic and breadcrumbs that has become a family staple for those who don't like sprouts. Very delicious.
Other than that its just roasties, mash and baton carrots (posh).