Cabbage’s Sweet Side

[elleng]

CHEFS praise cabbage. They embrace its sweetness. They delight in its crunch in raw slaws and its melting smoothness in cold-weather braises.

More often than not, their customers do not share this love.

“They have eaten overcooked cabbage so often, they begin to hate the mushiness and the smell,” he said.

Cabbage is often an unloved, homely vegetable. It’s smelly. It’s cheap. It’s the food of the poor. But those who can get past this initial aversion know it as one of winter’s quiet overachievers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/12/dining/12vege.html?hpw

[kestrel91316]

1. I love cabbage. Which reminds me, I need to pick up a couple of heads at the

99c store and make a batch of sauerkraut while the weather is cool.

[trud]

2. cabbage sandwiches

What can I say, it keeps, it's sweet and crunchy raw.

[trud]

3. deserves a picture

[The empressof all]

4. I've been eating the jarred red cabbage quite a bit lately

I heat it up with a few or those little clementines and some of the orange flavored dried cranberries that you get at Traders. It's sweet and sour delicioiusness.

[elleng]

5. Mom had recipe for cabbage soup, obtained from Dad's sister,

my Aunt Dot, who'd obtained it from her Dad, my Grandpa whom I never met; he passed shortly after I was born, I think. A WONDERFUL man who raised 5 kids in NYC, over his deli., after his wife, my Grandma, passed as result of THE GREAT flu epidemic.

Grandpa cooked! SO wish I'd have met him.

[Warpy]

6. My Irish mother cooked it to death, unrecognizable.

so I grew up hating it, especially the way it would stink up the whole house for two days afterward.

I was reintroduced to it when people visiting from China taught me Chinese cooking (and I taught them French), cabbage being the true workhorse there and found in various forms in just about everything.

One of my favorites is a Szechuan cabbage with plenty of Szechuan peppercorns and hot peppers, sort of a quick kimchee. A canned, chile pickled cabbage labeled "Szechuan Pickled Vegetable" is an indispensible ingredient in a lot of clear soups, giving them a remarkable kick.

I've also discovered the sweetness it can add to veggie soups.

What I've still never been able to do is cook it the way my mother did, wedged and thrown into a pot and boiled to brown mush. No way in hell.