cabbage recipes?

[ratcreature]

Winter is upon us in the northern hemisphere, which limits the selection of affordable vegetables. Cabbage in several varieties (mostly white, red, savoy and kale) however is still plentiful and reasonably cheap here, so it features somewhat prominently in my current menu choices.

So for variety's sake I thought I'd ask my f-list for your favorite cabbage recipes. Provided the ingredients for them besides cabbage are easily available and also in my price range. I mean, cabbage with truffles and the like may be tasty, but it kind of defeats the whole point of it being an affordable vegetable.

I'm vegetarian, so any dish that absolutely relies on meat is out. Dairy is okay, though the recent soaring prices for milk and its products worked better than my ethical qualms about animal exploitation to turn my diet more vegan, so vegan would be a plus.

Comments

[teneagles.livejournal.com]

Okonomiyaki is always good for using up a large amount of cabbage -- very tasty. It's a sort of cabbage pancake that you cover with toppings. There's a decent recipe here (http://lunchinabox.net/2007/11/19/making-okonomiyaki/).

If you don't have any Asian markets in your area, you might have trouble finding Nagaimo (Chinese yam; it's also available, dried, as Yamaimo powder), but it's optional -- it makes for a more tender texture, but the recipe'll hold up without it. The recipe I linked you to also calls for dashi (bonito stock), but you can use mushroom stock or even plain water instead.

[ratcreature]

Well, the problem isn't so much that there aren't any Asia markets, as that I don't cook in exotic styles often enough to justify buying a bunch of special ingredients and spices. However the idea to use cabbage in pancakes sounds tasty. I've made vegetable pancakes with other grated vegetables, like zucchini before, so maybe I'll just try to do a non-Japanese version of the same basic idea that doesn't require any exotic stuff.

[teneagles.livejournal.com]

The nice thing sbout okonomiyaki is that basically no exotic ingredients are *required*. The yam, though nice, is optional, and none of the required ingredients are exotic. Just flour, baking soda, that sort of thing. Dashi is just fish stock, which I figured you wouldn't want to use, and mushroom stock makes for quite a tasty substitute.

The thing I like about okonomiyaki, that takes it away from being just a pancake, is the toppings -- okonomiyaki is often referred to as 'Japanese pizza'. You add the toppings before you flip and they kind of cook into the top of the pancake. Add mushrooms, sprouts, corn, etc, and it can make for quite a meal.

[maygra.livejournal.com]

I don't eat much cabbage except as slaw or stuffed (With meat, sorry) or in stir fry, but I did find these:

Cabbage Blintzes
http://recipes.epicurean.com/recipe/2884/cabbage-filled-blintzes.html

Cabbage Filled Pierogis
http://recipes.epicurean.com/recipe/1702/pierogi-cabbage-filling.html

Noodles and Sweet Cabbage
http://recipes.epicurean.com/recipe/8100/noodles-and-sweet-cabbage(kapusta-sefleke).html

Braised Red Cabbage
http://recipes.epicurean.com/recipe/13952/braised-red-cabbage.html

Oriental Cabbage Salad (Okay, this one I've had a variation of and kind of love it a lot.)
http://recipes.epicurean.com/recipe/3240/oriental-cabbage-salad.html

And this one: Stuffed Whole Cabbage
http://recipes.epicurean.com/recipe/1067/stuffed-whole-cabbage-(microwave).html. If you don't object to meat soup mixes (and you cold use chicken vegetable instead of beef or just a vegetarian vegetable dry soup mix to flavor the rice), I'm thinking you could increase the amount of rice and stuff the cabbage with that and forget the meat entirely.

Cabbage au Gratin
http://recipes.epicurean.com/recipe/14877/cabbage-au-gratin.html

[ratcreature]

Thanks for the links. I'll check these out.

Usually I also prepare cabbage fairly plain, like in vegetable soup or stew, or as stir fry or salad, or just cooked with potatoes or something, but I'm looking to expand my repertoire for some more variety with it.

[kassrachel.livejournal.com]

misia posted a recipe for a Hungarian cabbage soup a while back, which I quite like; I'll see if I can find it.

Here's one that I make pretty often. It does include an egg and some dairy, but you could probably find a way to avoid using those.

1 cabbage
some mushrooms
a cup or so of vinegar (I use apple cider vinegar)
herbs (dill and parsley; fresh if you can, dried if not)
1 egg
1/3 cup sour cream
1.5 sticks (169 grams) of butter + one spoonful
two cups of flour

Make a galette dough (simple pie crust) by taking the flour, rubbing the butter in, and then adding as little ice water as possible until you can bring the dough together in a ball. Wrap it in plastic and refrigerate it for 15 minutes or longer (I usually try for 2 hours, but anything more than 15 minutes will do.)

Slice the cabbage and mushrooms. Heat a spoonful of butter in a pan and panfry the vegetables until they are beginning to soften. Mince the herbs and add them also. Then add the vinegar, cover the pan, and cook for 20 minutes or until the cabbage is fairly soft.

Meanwhile, hard-boil the egg, peel it, and set it aside. Preheat your oven to 400. When the vegetables are cooked, put them in a bowl; dice the egg and add it; add the sour cream. Add salt and pepper and vinegar to taste. Roll out the galette dough on a galette pan or cookie sheet; pile the vegetables on the dough, and then fold the dough up over them as best you can. Bake for 30 minutes, and enjoy!

[ratcreature]

Oh, this sounds very tasty! I will try this.

[buggery.livejournal.com]

I have a couple for you...

Galumpki soup is something I like to make myself for cold-weather comfort food -- it tastes like my Nana's galumpki but doesn't take three people and all day to make.

olive oil for sauteeing
1 medium onion, diced
2-6 cloves garlic
1 medium cabbage, chopped or shredded to bite-size
1 cup *prepared* TVP or other meat substitute
1 cup uncooked rice
2 28-oz cans crushed tomatoes (I believe that's about 1500g)
equivalent volume of water
salt & spices to taste

In a large stock-pot or stew pan -- at least 5-litre -- saute the onion in the olive oil. You just want it to turn translucent, not brown, before adding the garlic. You can slice, mince or just crush the garlic (or even use garlic powder or prepared minced garlic) depending on how garlicky you like your food. Continue sauteeing onion & garlic together for a minute or two, then stir in your TVP or other meat substitute. (If you haven't cooked with TVP before, it's very easy to reconstitute, but it's also important to season it when you add the water, as otherwise it often doesn't absorb enough of the flavour of what you're cooking it in and can seem bland.) The TVP will absorb some of the excess onion- and garlic-infused oil.

Now add your crushed tomato (tomato puree is fine, I just prefer the texture of crushed, and you could even substitute prepared pasta sauce or tomato soup in a pinch) and water. Stir well to suspend the solids in the broth.

Next you want to add seasonings. Salt moderately; you can add more salt later if it isn't salty enough. I usually season my galumpki soup with pepper, bay leaf, paprika, marjoram and sage, because that's how my family seasons galumpki, but any seasoning combination you like for cabbage rolls or stuffed grape leaves will work. You probably want a total of two to three spoonfuls of dry spices for this volume of soup.

After the seasonings are stirred in and the soup is warmed through, turn down your heat to where it's just simmering, and stir in the cabbage.

Bring the soup back up to simmer, stir well, then add the uncooked rice. Carefully push the rice down to where it's just submerged in the soup; you want it floating on top of the cabbage. Cover the pan and do not stir the rice in for at least 30 minutes.

After 30 minutes, taste the soup and adjust seasonings if necessary. Your rice may take up to an hour to be fully cooked, but once it is, the soup is ready to eat.


My other favourite cabbage comfort food is boorenkool stammpot, a Dutch dish made with mashed potatoes and steamed kale. Everyone makes this one differently, depending on how they like their mashed potatoes (with butter, with fresh milk, with canned milk, with buttermilk, with olive oil, with sour cream, with any or all of the above) so I won't go into the specifics of how to prepare the mashed potatoes. The important thing is to chop your kale into bite-sized pieces and steam it by putting it into your potato-boiling pot when the potatoes are nearly cooked. This way the kale flavour gets infused into the potatoes. Dutch people usually flavour boerenkool stammpot with crisp sauteed bacon and/or sausage and the drippings from the meat, and the crunch and saltiness of the meat does make a nice counterpart to the soft veggies, but you could substitute something like fried onions or toasted nuts. Or, like I usually do (since I don't eat pork) just enjoy the kale and potato flavours and textures on their own.

[ratcreature]

Thanks for these. I've made similar to the first one before, only not as a soup but as cabbage and TVP in tomato sauce (sometimes with added chili) to serve over rice cooked separately, but the soup sounds tasty too and has the added benefit of using one pot less. (*hearts stews and soups*)

I know what you mean about soaking TVP in strongly flavored things, I found that plain vegetable broth often still leaves it too bland for my tastes so I've experimented with various mixtures with added soy sauce, mustard, wine... the latter I like especially in tomato sauces where I'd add some cooking wine anyway, and using it on the TVP beforehand makes that absorb some of the flavor, which domes out okay when it's browned in the oil, but doesn't make it too salty like sometimes happens when I tried to rely too much on soy sauce.

And I'll try that kale recipe. The local kale variation I usually make is cooked kale with fried, slightly caramelized potatoes, but it's tricky to get it tasting right without the usual bacon and sausage that are cooked with the kale by non-vegetarians. I mean, I like plain kale flavor too, but somehow it never quite measures up. My brother makes it with tofu sausages, and some kind of fake-bacon, but I'm not a fan of that kind of fake meat product, as they are fairly pricey and don't even work all that well, at least not for the traditional comfort food dishes that usually call for fatty pork.

[gnatkip.livejournal.com]

These aren't precisely like my recipes, because mine are in my head, but they're close.

Potato kale soup (http://www.recipezaar.com/149098). Kale is one of my favorite things. I don't use turnips or chorizo.

Borscht (http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/recipes/value/v_vegborscht.html). So gorgeous, if you like beets. I use carrots rather than potatoes.

[ratcreature]

Thanks for the links. I like beets as long as they are fresh either cooked or raw and not pickled. As a kid the only kind of beet that was served was pickled beets which are disgusting (IMO), so I thought I just hated beets until I once ate some very tasty shredded red stuff as an adult in a winter salad in a restaurant and found out that it was raw beets afterwards. *g*

I just looked at the Borscht recipe, and I don't have a slow cooker. Does this work when you cook it in a normal pot on the stove too?

[gnatkip.livejournal.com]

Oh, sorry, I didn't read them closely. I just use a normal pot. I do have a slow cooker, but I never use it; I get the sense it's intended for big hunks of meat maybe, I don't know.