This weekend I FINALLY made the Mushroom and Spinach Strata from my most favourite of vegan cookery books, Veganomicon. However, while I did have spinach, I also had two heads of this huge, lush cabbage, with leaves like an elephant's ears and I couldn't say no. As stratas go, this was lovely; though I think next time I'm going to make it with some sort of squash instead of bread, as I reckon I'd rather it a bit more vegetably.
Until very recently I thought I hated cabbage. I really did. I will pretty much eat any vegetable, but cabbage (and green peppers -- bleugh, patooey) I would pass on if given half a chance. However, when we were in Italy, on our very last day my uncle took Matthew and I out for dinner at a restaurant in Stia and there was cabbage and it... It was like I was eating for the very first time. It was nothing particularly special, just braised cabbage and some onions. But the cabbage had come from the owner's garden and the flavours were vivid and enchanting and completely captured my senses. It was tender and earthy, fresh and open.
When I came home, I was so excited to think I could recreate it, but have you seen the normal supermarket cabbage in this country? Ugh. There may well be 30 billion varieties of cabbage native to these fine shores, but according to most supermarkets there was only one choice: that tightly wrapped insipid plastic-like ball of bland.
So I stormed away, perplexed and outraged that I had been so thwarted. Foolish girl. Had I only waited a few weeks! It turns out cabbage, at least in the UK though I'm quite sure elsewhere too, is one of those foods that bursts onto the scene with a fanfare of seasonal joy twice a year, and then disappears again. The plasticated bland is just cabbage's representative for the rest of the year, and a staple for those whose tastebuds are so exquisitely heightened that anything more robust would kill them off with a single mouthful.
Fortunately, my downstairs neighbour had already decided to try her hand at growing cabbage and so a small forest of giant cabbage stalks, kale and other greens had slowly taken over her garden. And because there was far too much for her and her partner, she was only too happy to scythe off a few leaves for us. She has been suppling us with bags of the stuff ever since. It's wonderful! Real cabbage ranges from petite delicate balls, leaves turning gracefully at the crown to reveal the rich green underneath, to enormous green wings, firm and soft, that cling with a peculiarly tremulous sturdiness to the stalk.
As it steams through, or boils away in a small vat of broth, it transforms. From ruffage green to a bright, tantalising verdant tangle, for my favourite way of cooking it is in long coils, the cabbage takes on a new life. If you add just enough salt, it becomes almost seaweedy -- a slight tang hits the sides of your tongue as you take your first bite and you could be tucked up in a distant cottage, on a cliff overlooking a wild sea. If you add it to gnocchi, letting the oil run freely, and add a quick splash of white wine vinegar, it's like eating a plateful of tiny potato-y dolmas. Roughly chopped, thick stalk and all, and mixed in with caramelised onions and a rustic tofu ricotta, it's perfect for stuffing a plump acorn squash, to be served spilling over onto the plate and caught by a pile of roasties. Or simply braised, with thin slices of mushroom, to be served in broth as a chunky soup or lightly drained as a sidedish.
This year, quite cheekily, I decided to break into one of our Winter Greens soup kits and grow my own. At the start of the second week of October, I planted cabbage and kale seeds, and some cauliflower seeds for good measure and so far the seedlings are soaring. The GYOS kit uses the same seeds as my neighbour, so I know that by early February I will have my very own wee forest. In the meantime, I suspect I shall be a permanent fixture in farmers' markets around the city.
