Recipes

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.

Custard

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Apple Crumble & Custard
apple crumble drowned in custard

I would have been perfectly happy to have cream with our apple crumble, but Andy was not and as I had a brand new milk pan that needed trying out, custard seemed like it was on the cards.

A lot of people seem to think that custard is hard or difficult or scary. Well, it’s not though if you approach anything with that attitude, why then, yes it will be.

This recipe is a James Tanner one that I first discovered in 2006 but the original link no longer works. It is super easy – no separating of eggs or anything. All you need is a heat proof bowl, a pan and a whisk.

Begin by beating 2 eggs with 55g of caster sugar. When this is pale and creamy, heat ½ pint (that’s 285 mL) of milk (full cream, naturally) to just on boiling (this is called ‘scalding’ the milk, if you want to be technical) and then slowly pour the hot milk onto the eggs and sugar, whisking all the time. You need to keep on whisking otherwise the heat of the milk will scramble your eggs.

Return the mix to the pan, on a lower heat, and continue to beat or stir until the custard reaches the right consistency for you. I find this takes about 15 minutes. Two tips here: do make the effort to hang around doing the stirring and most certainly do NOT crank the heat up and wander away. Secondly, ensure that your stirring or whisking gets into the corners of the pan – if you don’t work your way around the pan solidly you’ll end up with lumps of cooked egg in your custard!

If you’re not planning on using your custard straight away, cut a circle of baking paper (a cartouche) and cover the custard with that. You can then gently reheat it when you’re ready.

You’ll note that homemade custard is distinctly paler in colour than anything commercial or made from a packet. Eggs, milk and cream is never going to come out bright yellow.

And, if you wish to jazz your custard up, you can infuse flavour when you scald the milk. Pop in a split vanilla bean, or a crushed cardamom pod or two, for example.

All too easy – and to be honest, not actually that unhealthy either!