This Pizza Could Make You Love Brussels Sprouts

There's something just plain wrong about the Brussels sprout. They're like the scrotum of Christmas dinner. The bit no one wants to look at, let alone touch, and last of all put in their mouth. Jesus Christ on a penny farthing, they're grotesque.

Thankfully this year, the sprout is under threat from some kind of super pest moth. The diamondback moth (which just sounds like a monster truck, if you ask me) has so far destroyed 60 percent of the Christmas crop. According to farmers, the "popular" sprout stalks have particularly taken a hit.

Sixty percent isn't 100 though, is it? So, it looks like we'll still have to brace ourselves for Brussels sprouts/vom action this Christmas, after all.

Or, we could try and actually cook the bloody vegetables properly—not simply criss-crossing the bottoms and boiling until they're beige and about as appealing an enema performed by a blind chimp.

We could put Brussels sprouts on a pizza.

The Brussels sprout pizza is a real thing. A creation of Four Hundred Rabbits pizzeria in South London, I wanted to see if the pie could cure my long-held fear of sprouts.

"Sprouts are from the same family of vegetables as Savoy cabbage, they have a great brassica flavour, but always suffer from overcooking, especially as their leaves are so densely packed together," founder Daniel Edwards tells me as I arrive. "We all know that they can just be the most foul thing ever when boiled to death, but we thought they deserved better recognition than this, and we wanted to celebrate their flavour."

Amen to that.

The minute Four Hundred rabbits chef, the Italian-born Ambra, pulls out a wad of dough and smacks it on the well-floured surface, I know this pizza means business. This is pizza you rarely get in London.

Taking inspiration from the authentic Italian pizza of Napoli, Ambra uses a sourdough starter made from British rye flour. She mixes this with strong white flour sourced from the Cotswolds and ferments the base for 48 hours straight, before topping and blasting in the wood-fired oven at around 400 degrees Celsius. Let's pray Santa doesn't come down that chimney.

Having taken the dough ball and opened it out to a circle approximately 11 inches in diameter, it's time for the toppings. They don't skimp on the sauce here. It's made from San Marzano DOP tomatoes and rich as hell. They're best tinned tomatoes in the whole world, according to Edwards.

Starting from the centre and using a ladle, I help spoon the pulped tomatoes on the dough and swirl outwards to the sides, making sure I cover the base but leave a 2 centimetre area at the edges for that puffy crust.

I throw on some cubed mozzarella and a handful of Lincolnshire poacher cheese, cubed also. Cubes of cheese. What's not to love?

Before Ambra and I top our pizza with the sprouts, we've got to prep them; trimming the end and giving them a squeeze to loosen the leaves and remove the tougher outer shell. Now we shred. This, I ask Edwards, I'm curious about.

"When sprouts are very thinly shredded, and put under intense heat, they tend to singe a little and as they are not subjected to boiling they don't get that awful sulphuric flavour and smell," he explains. "So, you are left with all that good vibrant green brassica flavour and a little blackened singe which really compliments it. What I would say is that it definitely wouldn't work if you had over-boiled the sprouts first. Always under cook them."

Pizza topped it's time to whack it in the oven. Thankfully, Ambra takes the wheel (last time I used a pizza oven, I nearly lost my monobrow). Pizzas can take as little as 70 seconds at this heat and once ours is done, Ambra lifts it to the roof to bubble the cheese.

Finally, we lay some thinly sliced smoked pig cheeks over the top. But, Edwards says, using a little bacon from leftover pigs in blankets could also work really well. Boom.

How does it taste? The base certainly has a tang to it but, as you'd expect from a Napoli-inspired base, it's as light as air and with a perfect bit of chew to it. The sauce is sweet with a bit of a kick and as for the sprouts—well, shredded and not overcooked, they taste like a kind of cabbage herb. They've got a piquancy and vibrancy you certainly don't get in the average Christmas dinner. And it's all brought back down to earth with a tickle of ash.

Oi, diamondback moths! Get off my sprouts.