table talk / By Jada Calypso Brotman

Cabbagey Delights

Shanty Cabbage, East Euro Sarmale Rolls and other cruciferous treats

(June 26, 2008)  So what I want to know is, in terms of food writing at large, what’s this burning obsession with restaurants? I mean, obviously we all like food — have you been to Florida? Those people are huge! My problem with most food writing I’m finding online is it seems so heavily weighted on the side of other people cooking for you. What they’re cooking. How much it is. How the waiter offended you. The lipstick print on the “clean’” glass. Etc. etc. Whiny effete babies! No, not really, but actually, really. Not interesting.

What I find more constructive is actual discussion about cooking itself. That’s my plan, to talk about that from the POV of a semi-experienced but decidedly unprofessional home cook. I live in Brooklyn now, but I was raised in the Arcata Bottoms by a gardening mother and culinary cognoscenti of a father, and cooking and ingredients were constant conversational topics around the home. (Still are, on my visits home.) So, that’s what I intend to focus on: things I like to cook, techniques for cooking them, food experiences I feel are noteworthy for one reason or another and general musings about the qualities of individual ingredients. For example, cabbage. Cabbage? Really? Yes, cabbage.

GALLERY >

Earlier this year my saint of a mother took me to Eastern Europe and Slovenia, where I wrote the following, which should provide an introduction to my thoughts on cabbage, and it may explain why the hell I am even thinking about cabbage. Also, I have been very excited about a new cabbage discovery I made recently, which I’ll get around to further on.

May 13, 2008 - Slovenia is interesting.

We had dinner tonight at what is referred to as a “family farm,” and brother, if you’re thinking this is reminiscent of some sort of Steinbeckian/Commie group of austere buildings by a highway with dour-faced women in aprons furiously baking bread, you’re exactly right. The surroundings, however, are lovely, full of nature and nature’s things: streams, pine trees, pudding-faced children.

So we were served a “family-style” dinner — what does this mean, exactly? Is this or is this not a euphemism for crap? Well, it was fine. Over-cooked but flavorful slices off a pork loin, mashed potatoes and … really good cabbage, cooked down for what must have been 45 minutes or so with water, lard, poppy seeds, salt galore, pepper and I don’t know what else. What spices do Eastern European countries use? There wasn’t paprika. Hmm. Who knows? Anyways, it was cooked down to this unctuous savory mess that was still toothsome. It went so well with pork. It got me thinking about cabbage, which I feel deserves a defense.

I feel quite protective about cabbage. It gets a bad rap in American cooking. Well, fuck off and go bully something deserving, like okra. Cabbage is versatile, nutritious, cheap and super-yum. I realize people’s immediate association is that of a tenement in lower Boston, replete with wet diapers in a tin washtub, screaming red-faced babies and women with work-roughened hands named Mary, but seriously, cabbage is very good.

Here are my relatively inexperienced favorite ways of making it:

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