note: Rick went hunting on Wednesday. He got 5 ducks! We have been quite enjoying cooking with and eating them, and I have a post planned for next week about what-to-do-with-organ-meat and a wonderful no-brainer roasted whole duck recipe.
I have some things I need to figure out how to say about hunting and meat eating that I’m not sure how to say yet. Still working on the finer points of why I believe hunting is so important, and I want to get it right before I post it. Stay tuned! In the meantime, I bring you a (totally non-threatening) recipe for delicious German Cabbage. Come to think of it, this would go great with duck, too…
I love my winter CSA box.
Yep I do. I might even love it more than its summer counterpart. Something about the delivery of a big box of leafy greens, cruciferous veggies, roots, apples, and citrus that’s fresh and in-season and healthy and ALIVE is incredibly satisfying.
Especially when it shows up unexpectedly at noon on a Tuesday while I’m scouring the pantry for edibles (and loathing the weather for making grocery shopping sans-car such an ordeal). Yes! Score! I can put down the box of easy-mac! There’s REAL FOOD again.
The downside to the winter CSA? It’s a lot of the same things every week. Onions, carrots, lettuce, greens…those I can handle. Oranges? Oh man, I can’t get enough. But somehow every year about this same time I look in the fridge and discover that we have a whole shelf of cabbages. This is OK. Cabbages last forever. But…cabbages? What to COOK with them?
So I get to work. I have an amazing Thai-style sesame soba noodle salad recipe which I got from my friend Alanna – we eat that a lot. I steam big wedges of cabbage up with salt, pepper, garlic powder, paprika, and celery seed – delicious.
But still the cabbages keep coming. They are incessant. I am tiring of coleslaw.
But deep in the recesses of my mind lurks this gem of a recipe. It is so simple. A side dish, really, nothing to be excited about. But once it’s simmering on the stove and the house is filled with the smells of onions, apples, bay, clove, and cider vinegar I always wonder why it takes me so long to remember to make it.
The recipe is originally designed for red cabbage, but is just as tasty (though possibly less pretty) with green. This time I actually chopped up some napa cabbage to add in, which gave it an unexpected kick that I quite liked.
German Cabbage
1 large head of cabbage, roughly sliced (enough to loosely fill your stock pot)
2 tart apples, cored and diced (I used granny smith here)
1 large onion, peeled and sliced into rounds or strips (red or yellow)
3 Tbsp butter
1-2 c water
1 c apple cider vinegar
1/3 c evaporated cane juice (sugar)
salt, to taste
wrap the following in a tea ball or a twist of cheesecloth for easy removal after cooking:
1 bay leaf
7 black peppercorns, lightly crushed
5 whole cloves
Melt 3 Tbsp of butter in a large stock pot with a lid over medium heat. Put all the cabbage into the pot. Add the apples and onions, and about a cup of water. Let this wilt down over medium heat, tossing occasionally, until the cabbage has released much of its moisture and has decreased to about half its volume (this doesn’t take too long). Pour in 1 c apple cider vinegar, as well as the sugar and the spice ball and allow everything to simmer until the apples and cabbage are soft (at least a half hour). Add more water if the mixture starts to dry out.
Season with salt, and serve warm.
This cabbage is an excellent side dish to some beer-poached or fried bratwurst, a thin breaded cutlet of pork or chicken, some fried potatoes with dill (or some leek and potato pancakes with a side of sour cream), or pretty much anything German-inspired. It is also pretty darn good served up in a bowl on its own (as I have done more than a few times).
Yum!
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This looks delicious, I'll have to try it! We love our homemade sauerkraut, it uses up a ton of cabbage, is dead simple to make, and is great for your digestive tract too.
I'm looking forward to hear what you have to say on the topic of hunting, I'll sure you'll nail my feelings exactly.
I support your future post on hunting and I look forward to it. I have thoughts on it too, but I personally support even though I cannot hunt anymore because of physical limitations and no one to go with. Also living in Nebraska, it is highly supported and also support our agriculture and farms with extra income with outsiders coming in.
More thoughts later.
Have a great week.
The meal looks tasty. Sorry I may have missed this on a previous post, but where does your winter CSA come from? I admire farms that do winter CSAs. (We can't because we grow on a seasonal floodplain, so it could be underwater for January and February!)
Thanks for the post.
Our CSA comes from Farm Fresh to You, which is a more corporate CSA as far as these things go (they are based in Capay Valley, but also have a farm in Southern CA, as well as getting some produce from as far as Oregon/Washington).
I like that they have a substantial variety of winter produce, but I'm thinking that this will be my last year of subscribing. Would like to be growing it all myself, and just making do with the farmer's market for special additions.
I'll write my thoughts about CSAs at some point on this blog too. Hunting post(and recipe for roasted wild duck) coming later this afternoon.