This year the mother-in-law’s coming over for dinner on Christmas day. The main course is fine – we’ve got the goose patiently waiting to be roasted. The desert’s already organised as Chris is the Christmas Pudding wizard of the known world. But what do we do for a starter? It’s Christmas Eve, the shops have shut and all that’s left is what’s in the freezer along with a desperate need for inspiration.
We do have lots of sprouts. And because I keep on thinking we’ve run out of pasta flour and buy more and more until we have a cupboard full of it, fresh pasta’s a distinct possibility. And what could be more festive than Brussels Sprout Ravioli? So, armed only with a pasta maker, a ready supply of alcohol and a daughter bravely taking the triple roles of photographer, glamorous assistant and general dogsbody, it seemed time to break new culinary boundaries.
And just before we started I remembered I’d also got a piece of Zebra fillet lurking somewhere in the freezer waiting for a suitable recipe. A quick search of the web revealed a shameful lack of recipes for either zebra or sprout ravioli. Time for inventive genius to put right the deficiencies of the Internet for the benefit of the gastronomically adventurous…