Madeleine Roux Moveable feast
Cabbage! That vegetable of fear and loathing, forced-fed to reluctant children and mulish husbands.
But a cabbage is sweet. A fresh leaf, crunched raw, has a zingy taste that floods the mouth with an astringent feel and sugary finish – just like good wine. But no wine leaves you with that squeaky clean taste.
The object in cooking this glorious globe is to preserve its true taste and at least some of its crunch. Away with the water bath! Boiled cabbage is condemned, quite correctly, by every cook who ever had to cope with the dreadful ammonia smell and ghastly water. The vegetable loses every ounce of its charm in hot water and becomes seaweedy and unappetising.
The way to handle cabbage is to see it as a delicious green orb of a vegetable, fragrant and versatile. Fry it; don’t boil. Cut cabbage into slender strips and tip into a large pan with a lump of butter or a dash of olive oil. Push it around until it just wilts. Think crispy; not mushy. Then add some whole cumin or a few crushed juniper berries and a squeeze of lemon juice. Dash in a glassful of dry white wine, a grind of black pepper and salt to taste. There you are: a pan of chopped cabbage transformed into a rightful vegetable dish.
Red cabbage is even nicer than its seagreen sister. Shred two small red cabbages while you fry four rashers of streaky bacon. Peel two apples and slice. Add cabbage and apple to the pan when the bacon is almost crisp and spoon in two tablespoons of butter and a teaspoon of sugar. Push it all around until the cabbage wilts, then flavour with pepper and a small glass of red wine. Cook until wine is almost gone and serve hot with garlic sausages. That’s a Russian favourite.
Now think Greece. Remove six or seven large, fresh leaves from a head of cabbage, blanch them for 30 seconds in chicken stock. Mix two cups of cooked rice with raisins and any old nuts; flavour with chopped parsley, salt, paprika and a few drops of lemon juice. Then wrap a cabbage leaf around spoonfuls of the rice, place these cabbage rolls in an oiled ovenproof dish, pour over a tinful of tomato-onion mix and bake 30 minutes. Call them dolmades and serve with thick Greek yoghurt.