Perfect White Cabbage Recipe

- Alex 3 Comments

Pork Chops & Cabbage

I can’t grow brassicas to save my life but I love eating them. I don’t think I’ve met a brassica I don’t like. Happily they are also super good for you. I grew up in a household which didn’t eat much cabbage – which means that at least one of my parents doesn’t like it. That’s a shame, because, in addition to being much loved by those enjoying cabbage soup diets, cabbage is rich in all sorts of nutritional goodies, such as beta carotene, vitamin C and, of course, fibre. It will also provide you with a few B group vitamins and plenty of trace minerals.

My cabbage recipe shows you how to turn the humble white cabbage into a tasty side dish (that’s if you don’t like eating it raw, which I do). Having just eaten the leftovers as a snack, I can also vouch for it cold!

White cabbage is also insanely cheap at the moment – I picked up the quarter I used in this dish for just $1.

Begin by heating a small amount of olive oil in a large frying pan – preferably one for which you have a lid. Add two rashers of bacon, chopped into reasonable, yet still bite sized, pieces. Fry the bacon – there’s not much point in letting it get crispy because you are effectively going to steam the cabbage – so just fry it off until it just starts to catch in the pan.

Add a teaspoon of caraway seeds* and fry for 30 seconds or so before adding a quarter of a white cabbage, finely shredded. There will probably be a couple of very thick pieces of cabbage – I take those out (and eat them) because they take just a little too long to soften.

Now add a splash of water, scrape up the bacon (and any tasty brown bits on the pan), turn the cabbage over a couple of times and then cover to allow the cabbage to steam.

Don’t allow it to cook for too long – you don’t want it all mushy and lifeless.

Serve with, well, whatever you fancy really. I’d eat it by itself, most recently we had it pork chops.

* Technically they are fruits. If you haven’t used caraway before, it is quite strongly anise flavoured (and scented) so consider starting with half a teaspoon if that’s not normally your thing.

Chilli Con Carne

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Apologies for yet another Mexican themed post … but this time it’s home cooking, so if you’re not in Adelaide (or you can’t get yourself to one of the many places popping up) you can replicate a bit of Mexico in your own kitchen. Well, it might not be Mexico, but it’s Paul Merrett’s take on Mexico.

What I really liked about this chilli con carne recipe is that it doesn’t feature any hard to track down ingredients. In fact, the chances are that you’ll have most of them in your cupboard so your shopping list will be slim. What’s also novel is that Merrett serves the chilli in tortillas with all the extras. This was something we both really loved and it makes a diverting change from fajitas.

As this dish is based on beef mince, it’s important to choose a time to cook this when you can give it a good, long, slow cook. Any dish like this (think things like Bolognese sauce) needs time to mesh all the flavours together and to make sure that any raw beef or tomato flavours are fully cooked out.

Naturally, I departed from the original recipe a little …

Heat a little oil in a large saucepan, and fry off a finely sliced onion and four cloves of garlic, crushed and chopped. Add 700g (I think I actually had 680g but you get the idea) of minced beef and cook this for a bit. I didn’t bother waiting for it all to start going brown (I would have been there all afternoon) but I did wait for it to start to look a bit cooked. I then added 1 tsp ground coriander, 1 tsp paprika and chilli powder to taste (I used hot ground chillis and used somewhere between ¼ and ½ tsp and it was warmer than I expected). I then added 250mL of open rosé that I had hanging around, a generous splash of Worcestershire sauce, 1 tin of crushed tomatoes, and one concentrated beef stock jelly thing.

At this point, you need to give the pot a stir and judge whether or not you need to add a bit more water.

Rinse (and drain) a tin of red kidney beans and add these, stir everything and leave it to tick over for a good couple of hours. I didn’t need to add any salt but you may wish to adjust the seasoning.

When it comes to serving, spoon some of the chilli onto a warmed tortilla and add some sour cream, grated cheese, shredded lettuce, and some sliced onion and spring onion. Wrap and eat.

Of course, the chilli works perfectly well outside the tortilla (and, indeed, I had leftovers for lunch a couple of times) so you could always serve with whatever you normally have as a Mexican accompaniment.

I loved the fact that this recipe is based around readily available ingredients – the only things I had to buy were the beef and the kidney beans. So often Mexican recipes need 3 different types of chillis that can only be bought at Mexican specialist shops. It was super quick to put together (letting something sit on the stove is not work!) and it was tasty. Having it in tortillas was great, and something that will definitely work over summer, but if you’re making it in the depths of winter, it’s hearty and warming.

Definitely something I’ll be making again.

The Warradale

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date of visit: Sunday 2 September 2012

You’d think it was something of a tradition round ours – going out for a meal on Fathers Day. Last year we ended up at Bareñdoe by accident rather than design. This year, we ended up going out because we were too lazy to do anything at home.

We’d been out and about during the afternoon so we were looking for somewhere to stop off on the way home. As I actually knew it was Fathers Day I rang ahead. The Warradale was happy, and able, to accommodate us at 5:30pm. The Warradale is also the pub I thought I was going to when I dragged some friends out for dinner at the Morphett Arms almost a year ago exactly …

The person I’d spoken to on the phone was very pleasant and it was lovely to turn up and have our table ready to go, complete with requested high chair. We ate in the Bistro, but the Warradale does have other dining options (the Tavern and Garden/Verandah Bars both have separate menus on the website). Décor wise, the Bistro is very Adelaide modern pub although it does have some distinctive black and white angular mural decoration with a kitchen theme.

As it was the very start of service, the staff were all fresh, efficient and friendly. The friendliness seemed genuine, too. Andy was even wished a happy fathers day!

The menu is reasonably stock standard pub stuff – all the pub standards are there as well as the dishes that are fast becoming the new standards (salt and pepper squid, pasta with a prawn or crab and chilli sauce). Daily specials are written up on butcher paper at either end of the large dining room, but if you haven’t spotted them the staff should bring them to your attention. At least, our waitress did.

The salad bar is included with the meals (and the waitress made sure to point out that we just needed to take our side plates up – I like that, too often you’re left wondering if the salad bar is included) and it’s a cut above.  Quinoa, cranberry and pistachio salad, anyone?  There’s good fat black olives, some really smooth feta, a range of salads and sauces and hot vegetables that don’t look like they’ve spent all day having all the goodness boiled out of them.

With an utter lack of imagination we ordered schnitzels. Chicken parmi for me, beef with gravy for Andy. Schnitzels are $19 each, and that includes the basic sauces, but you’ll add $2.50 for parmigiana. Main courses mostly sit in the $20-30 price bracket. The schnitzels were actually pretty good – they had a really crispy, coarse crumb which stayed quite crunchy even under the toppings or gravy.  Neither schnitzel was dry and the Parmigiana topping was tomato, ham and cheese with a very generous layer of ham.

The wine (and beer) list is actually reasonable – shock horror!  There’s a selection of craft beers, five ciders and the number and range of wines available by the glass is impressive.  There’s a good range of premium spirits too – if you want to wrap up with an Armagnac you can indeed do that.

The Warradale is offering standard pub grub in a standard renovated pub setting.  While the salad bar and beverages list get a tick, my usual complaint applies:  at just $21.50 the Parmigiana is just too pricy.

The Tavern Bar does offer $9 schnitzels on a Tuesday and $12 schnitzels on a Wednesday.  I think that would be the way to go – perhaps followed by a glass of something in the Garden Bar …

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