Emergency Cabbage!
A crisp, tart, cold salad to enliven you. Plus, a silky roasted side dish to soothe you.
FOOD MEMORIES ARE OFTEN THE WORST KIND OF LIARS. But it’s not their fault. They’re clouded by a special tenderness that our other basic needs—sleep, shelter, water, oxygen—rarely receive.
Only food becomes our rickety old wooden sled. And no matter how far away we get from childhood—how many starred restaurants we eat in, how adept we become at making a soufflé or executing a tricky knife skill, how high our culinary sophistication climbs—human beings will still expect awe from others when they offer up the recipe for their mother’s unbelievable, extraordinary pot roast. Which turns out to be the same pot roast that everyone’s mother made for them, but with more (or fewer) carrots.
And this absolute conviction that we were fed magic as children only gets stronger as the years go by.
For instance, all my siblings and I adored a congealed dessert-like salad my mother made with grape Jell-O, blueberry pie filling, canned pineapple, and a layer of sour cream blended with cream cheese in the middle. And so did a fancy New York City choreographer who came to stay at our house one year while he was working on South Pacific with my mother, who’d helped start a tiny community theatre straight out of Waiting for Guffman. He’d say, “Susan, when are you going to make that purple sh*t,” which is what we all started calling it, and she would make it.
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Decades later, in a fit of nostalgia for my strange, off-kilter childhood, I made a batch, too. I was immediately sure that I’d botched it. Had the quality of Jell-O changed? Were my blueberries bad? Had I left out an ingredient? It had felt fancy and rich and a little psychedelic back then—it was purple! Now it just seemed sweet and weird. A little bleh.
Although my mother was a terrific cook, I realized that this dish was probably never as world-shattering as I’d remembered it—just one in a million Jell-O salads of the sort that were popular in the south back then and which are ridiculed today. But I still love the very thought of it.
Because love and affection, however small or one-sided, makes everything—and everyone—more beautiful. And I’m grateful for the wool it pulls over our eyes, in a world where reality can be ugly and cruel and impossible to accept.
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And I’m also happy that this phenomenon works in reverse. Even if your childhood revulsion button got stuck on chicken liver or eggplant or lima beans, you may very well find yourself absolutely relishing them decades later and wondering how you could ever have been so foolish. How you went so long feeling animosity toward something so delicious.
Human beings have brains and souls elastic enough to become more curious and accepting rather than less so, which allows us the miracle of becoming open to whole new worlds, over and over, in a single lifetime. If that’s not the most extraordinary party trick ever, I don’t know what is.
I bring all of this up because that has been my relationship to cabbage, both raw and cooked. As a kid, I never understood why the lunch counters and drive-in restaurants I grew up on insisted on putting a cup of mayonnaise-coated cabbage next to my food. And the boiled cabbage my mother cooked seriously made me want to run away and join the circus. It didn’t just offend me, it made me despondent.
But today, right now, I can’t believe what a fool I was. It took until I was out of college to learn that smothering cabbage the Italian way (with a mixture of garlic, pancetta and rosemary pounded to a paste, called a battuto) rendered it divine. Or that I could make salads (or slaws, if you insist on that word) with cold raw cabbage that were crisp and invigorating rather than limp and gloppy.
I forgive my inner kid, because, obviously, I didn’t know any better. And I thank the lord that I finally came around to the elegant charms of this beautiful, generous vegetable.
What you’ll notice about both of the cabbage recipes I have for you today is their utter simplicity. You’re roasting cabbage wedges in bouillon, with a splash of cream and a scraping of nutmeg for a warm and soothing side dish. You’re shredding vegetables in your food processor (or by hand) and drenching them in vinegar for a cold, crunchy, sweet-tart salad with a kick.
You’re taking a deep breath; you’re digging in. You are alive in this world, moving forward, toward whatever comes next.
*RECIPE: Cold and Tart Cabbage Salad (Inspired by Atlanta’s OK Cafe)
Serves 4
I recently went with my friend Susan to OK Cafe, which is a wonderful southern-style restaurant in Atlanta. I ordered squash casserole as my side and Susan had Southern Slaw, which I kept stealing bites of. It was actually North Carolina slaw, but it didn’t taste like any I’d had, and I lived there for years. It was cold, crisp, and sweet but not too sweet, a little spicy, and very juicy—the cabbage swam in the dressing. So so good; I just had to replicate it! I think I did a pretty good job, but I did cut back on the sugar and salt a bit. And I’m calling it a salad because it feels like one.
If you have a food processor, this is an especially quick dish. Otherwise, slice the cabbage by hand and do the other vegetables on your mandoline (or slice very thinly by hand, of course)
Regarding the jalapeño: If you love spicy food, you can absolutely add more later, but I strongly advise following the recipe to start, because it will get stronger as the salad chills and marinates.
Regarding the cilantro: 1 tablespoon is plenty. I use almost 2 tablespoons, because I like it, but it’s definitely a big flavor. The salad is also excellent without it.
4 to 5 cups very thinly sliced green cabbage (½ medium cabbage)
⅓ medium jalapeño, seeded and very thinly sliced
¼ medium red onion, very thinly sliced
2 to 3 mini sweet peppers (red or yellow; I used seedless), very thinly sliced
½ cup plus 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
½ cup very cold water (I put my water and my vinegar in the fridge before starting the recipe)
3 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste
1 to 2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh cilantro
In a large bowl, combine the cabbage, jalapeño, red onion, and mini peppers. Sprinkle with the 1 teaspoon of salt and toss well.
In a small bowl, combine the red wine vinegar, water, and sugar; stir until the sugar is dissolved. Pour this over the vegetables and toss again. Refrigerate for at least 45 minutes or overnight. Taste for more salt (I add 1 or 2 pinches at this stage), a bit more sugar, and/or a tablespoon or two more vinegar. This should be very bracing, not well-mannered. Before serving, add the cilantro and toss again.
This should be swimming in dressing. If there is any left in the bowl when the salad is gone, drink it.
*RECIPE: Stock-Roasted Cabbage Wedges with Cream and Nutmeg
Serve 3 to 4 as a side
This dish doesn’t need much cream because the Better than Bouillon does so much work. It imbues the cabbage with flavor and turns it silky; the ruffled tops get frizzled enough to fight you a bit, in the best way. It’s ridiculously delicious for how simple it is, and you’ll make it over and over.
NOTE: The freshly grated nutmeg is essential, and if you’ve never grated your own you’re in for an amazing treat. (Look for Badia spices in the Hispanic section if you can’t find it in your grocer’s main spice aisle. Whenever I can’t find something, Badia has it.)
Use your microplane to finely grate the nutmeg directly over the cabbage; I gave it 5 to 6 firm scrapes the full length of the microplane then banged the microplane with a spoon to dislodge the gratings. It was the perfect amount. You just want people to wonder what that lovely, warm note is in the background. You don’t want it to taste like eggnog or pumpkin pie.
1 small green cabbage
1 cup hot chicken stock made with Better Than Bouillon
⅓ to ½ cup heavy cream
Freshly ground black pepper
Freshly grated nutmeg (about ⅛ teaspoon; see note above)
½ to 1 tablespoon unsalted butter, cut into tiny cubes
Preheat oven to 425°F (218°C)
Trim the cabbage and cut into wedges about 2 inches thick at the outer edge, like a piece of cake, keeping the core intact so the wedges hold together.
In a 9 x 13- inch baking dish, arrange the wedges, flat side down, in a single slightly overlapping layer. Drizzle the stock over the wedges, then drizzle each wedge with some of the cream until you’ve used it all. Season lightly with black pepper and grate the nutmeg directly over the pan.
Roast uncovered until the cabbage is tender and the liquid has reduced and thickened, about 40 to 45 minutes. Dot the cabbage with the butter, return the pan to the oven, and roast until the stock-cream mixture is thick and sticky and the cabbage tops are dark and ruffly, another 10 to 15 minutes.
Let rest for a minute or two before serving, scooping up some of the sauce and drizzling it over each serving.
🥬That’s It! We’re done here! We’ll see you soon with a recipe for authentic Ukrainian pampushky. I’m kidding—it’s going to be salad.
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You’ve reminded me that my childhood exposure to asparagus was of the canned variety. Blech. Blech. Blech. What a revelation fresh asparagus was! And I now appreciate that cabbage in all its forms is divine.
Cabbage lover here. Definitely will try these, especially like a little char on my cabbage wedges. A couple days ago I made this chicken salad with cabbage and fish sauce (Neorm Sach Moan) a Cambodian dish that was delicious that I found at America's Test Kitchen. Something to consider to play around with.