Cabbage, like other members of the brassica family – brussels sprouts, cauliflower, broccoli – is extremely healthy food.
Cato the Elder maintained that because of cabbage, ancient Romans were able to live without doctors for six centuries. Convict transports to Australia from England kept scurvy at bay by serving a form of sauerkraut. Cabbage is an excellent source of vitamin C, a good source of dietary fibre and it provides folate. Cabbage juice (enlivened with carrot) is a treatment for ulcers and colon cancer and a poultice of the leaves has been used to treat skin complaints from eczema to shingles.
But cabbage lacks glamour and is rarely seen on restaurant menus. It’s a poor man’s food, a naff vegetable redolent of institutions and a smell wafting around the halls outside grotty bedsits.
Cabbage can be cooked for a long time – red cabbage especially benefits from slow cooking – but for serving as a side vegetable, cook it for less than five minutes and you will avoid the unpleasant smell that comes from sulphur compounds being released.
Heat some olive oil or a knob of butter in a saucepan, add finely shredded cabbage and toss it about. Add only a couple of tablespoons of water, some salt and cook over a high heat for a few minutes only. You could add some caraway seeds, croutons spread with anchovy paste, sesame seeds, nutmeg or a splash of vinegar and brown sugar for extra flavour.
Cabbage also has an affinity with apples, celery, cheese, mustard, curry, bacon, ham, pork, corned beef and most sausages.
Savoy cabbages, with the mini-bubble-wrap surface, are at their best in spring, and they have more than twice the folate as any other variety and the most beta carotene, vitamin C, potassium and iron.
You dress a salad of tender greens at the last moment, because the acid in the vinegar or lemon juice breaks down the vegetable fibres. However, when making a cabbage salad, it is desirable to break down the tough, waxy leaves. Include salt in the dressing, along with vinegar or lemon juice, and toss the salad in it and leave it for a couple of hours, even overnight. If you are adding apples, add them just before serving.
A coleslaw (“kool†meaning cabbage in Dutch, and “sla†meaning salad) need not have a mayonnaise dressing, you can use a vinaigrette, and if you are in a hurry, even heat the dressing and add it to the cold cabbage.
Shred the cabbage as finely as possible with a very sharp knife or V-cutter. Slicing cabbage in a food processor results in lots of little bits and it tastes less pleasant in a salad or cooked, so take the time to shred it by hand.
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