Tis the time to start thinking about green beer and
shamrocks! What is better than a nice stout beer with some amazing food? It is incredible that food can be associated
with so many celebrations and cultures. St. Patrick’s Day is no exception.
Corned beef and cabbage is the typical staple for this holiday and all too
often it is a much maligned food. It has the ability to be awesome and it can be
terrible, depending on how you prepare it. While I cannot fix all your problems
this March, I hope to make you appreciate the dense, delicious vegetable a lot
more.
How do Americans eat cabbage?
Boiled, Sautéed, Stuffed, Covered in sickly sweet dressing
as coleslaw… yep that about covers it.
What about the rest
of the world?
Asian cuisines have several varieties of cabbage showing up
in all types of dishes (I even included it in my elk eggrolls a couple of
months back).
Koreans ferment cabbage into Kim-chee. Kim-chee is amazing.
It can be spicy or heady with the ability to make your taste buds dance like
they never have.
Germans/Eastern Europeans also ferment their cabbage into sauerkraut
type dishes that can be spicy, but most of the time they are a delicious tart
sour (hence the name) flavor that is great as a side or of course on an amazing
bratwurst.
I do love a good boiled cabbage with plenty of caraway or
celery seeds, butter and salt. However if not seasoned properly, it can be
bland, tasteless, and even slimy. Then there is the ‘aroma’… boiling cabbage
not only depletes a lot of the cancer fighting properties, but it release the
gases that cause the sometime unpleasant smell.
Yuck… no wonder people turn their nose up at cabbage.
Well, like I said I want to change your mind. Here is a
variation on cooking cabbage that it not only delicious, but very easy as well.
Roasted Cabbage
1 head green cabbage
1 medium white onion
2 tbls olive oil
Salt, pepper, celery seed
Preheat oven to 40 degrees
Wash and peel vegetables. I like to cut the cabbage and
onion in half and then slice about ¾ inch thick.
Arrange on pan and brush with olive oil. Season with salt,
pepper and celery seeds. Bake for 40-45 minutes.
Serve as a side dish or as the main dish.
I thoroughly enjoyed this dish. The onions were sweet and
the cabbage was crispy on the outside and silky on the inside. I will make this
again and again and again…
Now go cook a cabbage!
