Sweet, Peppery, Cabbagey, Wintry
Cabbage With Apples
~adapted from How to Cook Everything, by Mark Bittman
2 tablespoons butter
one small/medium green cabbage
two apples
dash of cloves
half a cup of stock or white wine
a teaspoon of cherry jam
s & p
fresh lemon juice
Chop the cabbage and the apples into pieces that you like.
Melt the butter, add the cabbage, apples, and cloves; cook, stirring, for several minutes. Add the liquid, cover, and cook, stirring occasionally, for 30 minutes or even longer, until the cabbage is done and the apples fall apart. Stir in the jam, season with salt and pepper and then add the lemon juice, just a sprinkle at a time, until it tastes perfectly balanced.
This is good.
Anna just named some ‘Best of 2008′ foods and vegetables at Produce Stories. I’d like to go out on a limb and nominate, as the ingredient of my year………lemons! 2008 was about a lot of things, but one of the things it was about was me nurturig an appreciation for this sour, taken-for-granted fruit. I started buying them and keeping them on hand always (thanks, store on the corner that sells four for a dollar), and using them in drinks, on greens, in pasta salads, etc. Lemon juice is an all-around flavor brightener, I think—does that make lemons the Prozac of the vegetable world?
I don’t know, but I know that this quick meal always makes me happy:
Quick Meal, Starring Lemons:
1 small to small-medium zucchini squash
half-box to quarter-box of rotini
olive oil
garlic
red pepper flakes
s & p
one lemon
fresh grated parmesan (optional but nice)
You can scale this meal for one or two people, or one person with leftovers. Boil water for the pasta. Wash the zucchini and slice it paper-thin. This is a recipe where it would be great to have a mandoline, but I don’t have one and it’s still okay. Slice the garlic thin, too. Get the pasta water boiling and the pasta in it. Then heat a couple tablespoons of olive oil. Add the red pepper flakes and the garlic, cook till the garlic is not quite browning. Add the zucchini and salt and pepper and cook, keeping things moving, until the squash is soft, but not until it totally disintegrates. Save about a half cup of pasta cooking water, and then drain the pasta when it’s done. Fill the bowl you want to eat from with as much pasta as you want, top with as much of the zucchini mixture as you want, and douse it all with lemon juice—maybe half a lemon for each serving. Add a splash of pasta cooking water if you’d like it to be more juicy/saucy. I like to eat this in a big bowl and, for some reason, to use chopsticks. Add grated parmesan to the top if you have it.
This meal is short on protein, but it’s cheap & easy to make, and totally immersive to eat.
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