cabbage

By now, every doctor, food journalist, and TV chef has had the chance to proclaim the virtues of cruciferous veggies (anti-inflammatory, alkaline, high fibre, low-cal, etc). The better known of these include broccoli, cauliflower, horseradish, and the much maligned, oft-cooked-shittily, farty-mc-fart-fart cabbage.

The good news: Pound for pound, it's the cheapest vegetable in any grocery store, it lasts for ages in your crisper, and it's got loads of health benefits. In short, the perfect student vegetable. Save the $10.99/lb fiddleheads for impressing friends (or poisoning enemies -- I'll write an article some time) and take it from someone who's been in school for 21 years: Eat More Cabbage.

Cooked cabbage smells like a gassy dog when it's cooked too slowly or too long. The always awesome Alton Brown devoted a Good Eats episode to this phenomenon, which involves the decomposition of cell walls with heat, which releases mustard gas (yes, that kind of mustard gas, albeit way less concentrated, and not synthesized).

One obvious alternative is raw.
You'll need:

cabbage
apple cider vinegar
dijon mustard
honey
mayo
salt and pepper

It's a basic coleslaw recipe! Shred the cabbage into sizes you'd like to eat. Thinner strips will soak up more dressing, thicker strips will eat like a horse at a feed bag. Whisk a dressing together from a good glug of cider vinegar and a big dollop of mayo, and ease in some honey and mustard to taste. Toss with your shredded cabbage, and salt and pepper to taste.

I could write down some arbitrary quantities, but I never use them. Everything you read will use exact cups and tbsps and all that nonsense, but all these quantities are arbitrary -- all just someone's personal preference -- and there's no reason why mine are any more correct than yours. The best measuring tool is your own sense of taste. The exception to the rule would be baking, which is scientific (literally, in that chemicals and organisms are reacting in exact quantities), but if you can trust in taste and intuition, the universe is your oyster. So for the sake of oysters and the known universe, I'll approximate relative quantities throughout this blog, with only the occasional precision measurement if absolutely necessary.

Cabbage the second.

Cooked cabbage doesn't have to be your grandma's rancid cabbage rolls. The key to cooking cabbage is to be fairly quick and even with your heat. And of course, some help from a few familiar strong flavours doesn't hurt.

You'll need:

cabbage (duh)
salt
sugar
yogurt
an onion
cider vinegar
white vinegar
chicken stock
sherry or other wine
a granny smith apple
chorizo or other tasty sausage
sriracha or other tasty chili sauce

Dice the sausage and fry it up in a bit of veg oil until crispy and pretty brown. Remove and reserve. In the remaining oil/fat, cook some thinly sliced onion on med-low heat until golden. Crank the heat to med-hi, toss in your cabbage, and add a glug each of sherry, cider vinegar, white vinegar, chicken stock, a diced apple, a heavy pinch of salt, and a small handful of sugar. Give it a good stir and lid it for a minute. Then, unlidded, keep stirring until your cabbage is fork tender or done to your liking, and remove from heat. Strain the cabbage and put the liquid into a saucepan to reduce on high heat. Once it gets quite thick -- it should, from the sugar and sherry -- remove from heat and add sriracha/chili to taste, a few dollops of yogurt, and the crispy sausage. Whisk it up, and toss it with your cooked cabbage.

Modest-looking, but totally delicious, I gah-ron-tee.

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on the side...

• Use freshly ground black pepper, or don't even bother. The oils and piperine in black peppercorns begin decomposing as soon as they're exposed to air and light. See for yourself -- buy some pre-ground black pepper and taste a quantity of it about the size of a peppercorn. Then chew an intact peppercorn... if you can take the heat. Pre-ground is absolute shit. Use it to add fake dirt to your dishes and as traction for your icy driveway. Once it's spent, get a good (opaque) grinder with carbon steel teeth -- easily had for less than $20.