Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Cabbage

Cabbage is such an underrated vegetable. How often do you hear that? But it's true.

Today I felt like getting down to my East European roots. I made four latkes (hear that, Sarah! we had latkes!) and then, because I was too lazy to fry the rest, turned what was still in the bowl into a potato kugel. And while I was doing the latkes, I also made fried cabbage. The good way.

When I made fried cabbage for my FIL (who is macrobiotic) he actually didn't believe me when I told him what I'd done. For him, cabbage is a Healthy Food, something that you do not Fry. Frying is for, you know, doughnuts. And other bad stuff. He tasted it, looked shocked, and then asked me how I'd cooked the delicious cabbage. "I fried it," I said. He looked at me, sure he'd misheard. "Well, when you say that, you don't mean you really fried it, do you? You just cooked it?" "I cooked it in oil, yeah. And some butter." Healthy food--> guilty pleasure, right there.

This fried cabbage starts with a little butter--two tablespoons?-- and two very large sliced onions. Cook the onions in the butter on the lowest heat you can for, oh, I don't know, forever or so. Then slice the cabbage (yes, the whole thing) and put it in. Unless you have a really big pot you'll have to add it in stages as it cooks down. Then cook that for, oh, I don't know, forever or so. Add salt and pepper. A little olive oil if you feel like it (this part is not authentic but being Jewish and liking butter on my cabbage I can't use schmaltz. Or, as the non-Jewish Hungarians do, lard.)

Eat. If you have never had this before you will not believe how sweet and intense and delicious it is.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Meanie!

uberimma said...

Mi latke es su latke. Just get in the car.

: )

Anonymous said...

Another Eastern European cabbage treatment I used to have in Youngstown, Ohio, in my youth:
Mix a batch of shredded cabbage, cooked just as you describe, with a batch of buttered, cooked (egg) noodles, sprinkle with poppy seeds and a pinch or two of sugar. It is actually hard to stop eating this stuff.