Roasted Brussels Sprouts & Cauliflower

Christmas week. The house had been getting ready for it in the small way a quiet house gets ready, and the family began arriving Friday afternoon — David and Karen first, the early shift, then Sarah and Tom on Saturday morning, then the grandchildren in their staggered arrivals through Saturday afternoon, the youngest (Lucy, twenty-seven, driving up from Portland with a friend who would continue on to Stowe) the last to arrive at suppertime. The house went from quiet to full in the span of twenty-four hours and I sat in the living room with my coffee and watched it happen and felt the way I always feel in this transition, which is not happy exactly but something deeper and more complicated, a kind of standing-in-the-river feeling, the water of the family flowing through the house I have stood in for seventy years.

Carol came on Christmas Eve. She is Helen's sister, two years younger, a widow herself now since her husband Don died in 2019, and she lives in St. Albans and has driven down for Christmas Eve every year since Helen died, the gesture being half-mourning and half something else that I have always been a little wary of and have learned to handle politely. She arrived at three with a tin of her own cookies (peanut butter, which I do not particularly like, but I receive them gratefully because she is family and because Helen would have wanted me to) and we had coffee in the kitchen and made the small talk of two people who have known each other for forty-five years and have never been close. After about an hour she asked me a question. She said, Walt, have you given any thought to companionship. I said, I have a dog. She said, you know what I mean. I said, I do, and the answer is the same. She nodded once and looked at her coffee and we did not return to the subject. After a while she stood up and said she was going to lie down before dinner. I said: that is a fine idea. She did not raise it again. She has not raised it since, in the days that have followed, and I am told by David that she is unlikely to. I did not need David to tell me.

Christmas Day proceeded the way Christmas Day proceeds in a full house — the early coffee, the slow unwrap, the grandchildren in their pajamas and the parents in their robes and me in the corner chair with the dog at my feet, the stockings emptied with less ceremony than they were emptied at six and at twelve and the gifts going more horizontally now than vertically, the cousins giving to each other, the parents to me, the grandchildren to each other, the gift economy reorganizing itself around adult relationships. I gave Teddy a Henckels chef's knife I had ordered from a kitchen supply place in Burlington in October. He held it the way a young man holds a real tool for the first time, with a kind of reverence that the older grandchildren had a quiet smile about, and said: thank you, grampy. Two words. From Teddy, that is a speech.

The turkey came out at three-thirty looking exactly the way it should look. The cavity had been checked twice. The giblets were out. We sat down at four. Twelve at the table, plus Carol, plus the dog. I gave the briefest possible blessing — bless this food, bless the people, amen — which is the family standard and which would have made Helen laugh, the way she always laughed at how short my blessings were when she was alive, which is exactly why I keep them short. The food was good. The people were full. The afternoon ended in the living room with cousins playing cards and Sarah and Karen washing dishes and David and Tom arguing genially about a recent state-budget thing that I stayed out of, and Carol falling asleep in the armchair by the tree with a peanut butter cookie in her hand. I did not wake her. The dog watched her, calculating something. Carol slept on. The fire burned down. The day completed itself.

After a dinner like that one — twelve at the table, the turkey out at three-thirty looking exactly the way it should — I am always reminded that the dishes people actually finish are the quiet ones, the ones nobody photographs. We have had roasted Brussels sprouts and cauliflower alongside the bird for several years now, and every year the bowl comes back empty while a third of the stuffing sits untouched. I do not know what that says about the family, but I have made my peace with it, and I keep making this recipe.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 30 min | Total Time: 45 min | Servings: 8

Ingredients

1 1/2 lbs Brussels sprouts, trimmed and halved
1 medium head cauliflower, cut into florets
3 tablespoons olive oil
3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes (optional)
2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese (optional, for finishing)
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

Instructions

Preheat oven. Heat oven to 425°F. Line two large rimmed baking sheets with parchment paper or foil.
Prep the vegetables. Trim the Brussels sprouts and cut them in half through the stem. Break the cauliflower into evenly sized florets, roughly 1 1/2 inches across, so everything roasts at the same rate.
Season. In a large bowl, combine the Brussels sprouts and cauliflower. Drizzle with olive oil and toss to coat. Sprinkle with salt, pepper, garlic powder, and red pepper flakes if using. Toss again until the seasoning is evenly distributed.
Arrange in a single layer. Spread the vegetables cut-side down across the two prepared baking sheets. Do not crowd the pan — crowded vegetables steam instead of roast, and you want the edges to brown.
Roast. Roast for 25–30 minutes, rotating the pans halfway through, until the cut sides are deeply golden and the edges are slightly crisped. The Brussels sprouts should have some char on the flat side.
Finish and serve. Remove from oven. Squeeze fresh lemon juice over the top, then transfer to a serving platter. Sprinkle with Parmesan if desired. Serve immediately.

Nutrition (per serving)

Roasted Brussels Sprouts & Cauliflower — The Sides That Held the Table Together