Cabbage | Canalside Community Food

According to Kay Chun, this is inspired by chirashi, Japanese rice and raw fish bowls. Her
version features lightly cooked (rather than raw) fish, but if that is not your thing you can
cook the fish for as long as you like. The dish is built around the vinegary sweet-salty tang of
sushi rice, but instead of first cooking the rice and then mixing it with the sweetened vinegar,
here the rice is simply cooked in vinegar-seasoned water, which is much simpler. The result is
a sticky, delicious sushi rice that makes an excellent base for the richness of the mackerel.
The dish is topped with a gingery, sesame-flavoured coleslaw, sliced avocado, and toasted
nori, the black seaweed that typically surrounds a sushi roll. Think of it as a simple,
deconstructed form of sushi: very tasty, plus you use only one pot.

Chun’s recipe used salmon fillets (and a larger quantity), cut into cubes, so feel free to play
around with the fish. I’d stick to an oily variety, though: you want that richness to contrast
with the sharpness of the sushi rice. Nice with a wheat beer.

Mackerel Sushi Bowls
Serves 4

Ingredients
4 tablespoons + 3 tablespoons rice vinegar
3 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
340ml sushi rice (measured in a jug), rinsed in a sieve under running water until the water
runs clear
500g (or up to 680g if you’re really hungry) skinless mackerel fillets, cut into 2cm-wide
strips
1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil, divided into two portions of ½ teaspoon each.
800g green and/or red cabbage and carrots (combined weight)
6 tablespoons soya sauce
3 tablespoons neutral vegetable oil
3 tablespoons coarsely chopped spring onions (white and light green parts)
3 tablespoons minced fresh ginger
Big handful of fresh coriander, coarsely chopped
1 cucumber, thinly sliced
1 avocado, halved, pitted and thinly sliced
Several toasted nori sheets, torn into bits, for garnish

Method
In a large saucepan, combine 4 tablespoons rice vinegar, sugar and salt; stir to dissolve the
sugar. Add the rice and 400ml water, and mix well. Bring to a boil over high heat, then cover and reduce heat to low. Cook until rice is tender and most of the liquid is absorbed, about 20 minutes.

While the rice is cooking, toss the fish with ¼ teaspoon sesame oil in a small bowl, and set
aside. Shred the cabbage. Peel the carrot and grate coarsely.

Combine the soya sauce, remaining 3 tablespoons of vinegar, oil, spring onions, ginger and
the remaining ¼ teaspoon of sesame oil in a large bowl. Mix well and then add the shredded
cabbage. Using your hands, scrunch up the cabbage as hard as you can, so that it softens a bit
and begins to absorb the dressing. Toss in the carrots and coriander and set aside.

Once rice is tender (after about 20 minutes), arrange the mackerel on top of the rice in an
even layer. Cover and cook over low heat until fish is just barely cooked, about 5 minutes
longer.

Now serve: scoop the rice and fish into individual bowls. Decorate each with some of the
cabbage-carrot-coriander salad, some sliced cucumber, and some sliced avocado. Top with
the toasted nori and enjoy.

Recipe adapted from Kay Chun, New York Times Cooking

Griddled cabbage roasted with a buttery miso sauce and served with sesame-tahini noodles creates a complex set of flavours perfectly highlighted by a garnish of chile oil and spring onions. Thomasina Miers, whose recipe this is, gives a good description: ‘Toss the miso hispi in noodles and drizzle with chilli oil, and you have a deeply satisfying, midweek dish that is rich in grains and vegetables, and as healthy as it is delicious’. Hispi cabbage are those torpedo-shaped hispi cabbages we’re getting from Canalside, which in the shops these are sometimes rather coyly called ‘sweetheart’ cabbages.
The original recipe calls for egg noodles, but it works well with wholewheat linguine or brown rice noodles. I think you can use any noodle you favour.
If you want a particularly delicious menu, finish off with some fresh mango for pudding.

Miso and Butter Roast Hispi with Sesame Noodles

Serves 4

Ingredients
For the Cabbage
40g butter, softened
70g white miso
2 teaspoons honey
1½ tablespoons soya sauce
4 spring onions, roughly sliced, white and green parts separated
2 large hispi (aka sweetheart) cabbages, each cut into 8 wedges through the stem

For the Noodles
500g whole-wheat linguine (or another noodle of your preference)
5 tablespoons tahini
2 tablespoons sesame oil
2 tablespoons rice-wine vinegar
2 teaspoons honey
2 teaspoons toasted sesame seeds, to garnish
Chile oil, to serve

Method
Heat the oven to 240C (220C fan). Heat a griddle pan or, if you don’t have one, the grill.

Prepare the cabbage:
In a small bowl, mix the butter, miso, honey, soya sauce and the whites of the spring onions.
Griddle or grill the cabbage wedges for 10-12 minutes, turning them when lovely griddle marks appear on each side. Transfer to an ovenproof pan with a lid and spoon over the miso butter. Cover and roast, turning the cabbage once, for 15 minutes, until tender.

Prepare the noodles:
While the cabbage is roasting, bring a pan of salted water to a boil and cook the noodles according to the packet instructions. As they cook, whisk the tahini, sesame oil, vinegar and honey to create a thick paste. Taste, then adjust the seasoning with more honey and/or vinegar. Once the noodles are cooked, drain, reserving about 200ml of the cooking liquid. Slowly mix the cooking liquid into the tahini to create a creamy sauce. Pour some (or all) of it onto the noodles, so that they are dressed to your liking.

Pile the noodles onto a serving platter or bowl and lay the cabbage wedges on top. Spoon over any cabbage cooking juices, scatter on the green parts of the spring onions and sesame seeds, and serve with chile oil to drizzle over the top, to taste.

Recipe adapted from Thomasina Miers, Guardian (2021).

This recipe isn’t so Christmassy, but I did enjoy it. I found the liquid took a lot longer than stated to reduce, but in the end I would actually have preferred a bit more sauce when serving. Goes well with mash!

Ingredients
¼ cup double-concentrated tomato paste
3 garlic cloves, finely grated
1½ tsp. ground coriander
1½ tsp. ground cumin
1 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes
1 medium head of green cabbage
½ cup extra-virgin olive oil, divided
Salt
3 Tbsp. chopped dill, parsley, or coriander
Full-fat Greek yogurt or sour cream (for serving)

Method:
Preheat oven to 180°. Mix tomato paste, garlic, coriander, cumin, and red pepper flakes in a small bowl.

Cut cabbage in half through the core. Cut each half through the core into 4 wedges.

Heat ¼ cup oil in a large oven safe frying pan (or similar) over medium-high. Working in batches if needed, add cabbage to the pan cut side down and season with salt. Cook, turning occasionally, until lightly charred, about 4 minutes per side. Transfer cabbage to a plate.

Pour remaining ¼ cup oil into pan. Add spiced tomato paste and cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, until tomato paste begins to split and slightly darken, 2–3 minutes. Pour in enough water to come halfway up sides of pan (about 1½ cups), season with salt, and bring to a simmer. Nestle cabbage wedges back into skillet (they should have shrunk while browning; a bit of overlap is okay).

Transfer cabbage to oven and bake, uncovered and turning wedges halfway through, until very tender, liquid is mostly evaporated, and cabbage is caramelized around the edges, 40–50 minutes.

Scatter dill/other over cabbage. Serve with yogurt alongside.

From BonAppetit.com

Several people have been asking for things to do with kale, pak choi, and other robust greens. Among other things you can make them into excellent salads. In all cases, it’s a good idea to manhandle the greens a bit to soften them up. Shred them fine and, using your hands, scrunch them up as hard as you can for a few minutes. Confronted with this vigorous treatment, they will become much softer and more tender. Pak choi does not need as much scrunching as kale or cabbage, but it will benefit from a bit body English.

Once you’ve scrunched your salad, you need an oomphy dressing to stand up to these greens. I thought I would offer a compilation of some of the salad dressings that I’d recommend to complement these hearty greens. All three are incredibly simple: you just whizz them up in a blender or mix them with a fork. And if you don’t mind doing your scrunching after you’ve dressed the salad, the tenderising effect will be even more noticeable. Once you’ve done that, you can add anything else you like: leftover boiled potatoes, toasted pumpkin seeds, shredded white or black radish, olives, chick peas….

(I was intending to present a fascinating but somewhat weird recipe for a beetroot-based vegan brownie, using a recipe I tore out of an Air France inflight magazine. Extensive testing on my colleagues at work led me to change my mind. The consensus was that the recipe must be part of a plot to denigrate vegans!)

Miso-Tahini Dressing

Serves 2

Ingredients

1 tablespoon miso paste

1 tablespoon tahini

1 tablespoon soya sauce

1 tablespoon cider vinegar

Preparation

Combine the ingredients and blend well, using a fork. Taste to see if it would benefit from a little more vinegar. The mahogany-dark dressing is now ready to use. This makes enough for half a small cabbage, shredded, together with several grated carrots. It is also good on other greens.

Spring Onion and Tahini Blanket

Enough to dress a large 2-person salad

Ingredients

4 spring onions, including the green bits

2 tablespoons tahini

2 tablespoons rapeseed oil

2 tablespoons lemon juice

2 tablespoons water

Salt and pepper, to taste

Preparation

Roughly chop the spring onions.

Place everything in a blender, Nutribullet, or the container for an immersion blender. Blend everything until smooth. Check to see if it needs more salt, pepper, or lemon juice. If it’s too thick for your liking you can add a little more water to thin it out, and then serve either as a salad dressing, or as a dip.

Super Turmeric Sauce

serves 2

Ingredients

2 tablespoons cashew butter

2 teaspoons Dijon mustard

juice of 3 clementines

2 inch piece of fresh turmeric, peeled

5 tbsp olive oil

Preparation

Combine the ingredients in a blender and whizz until smooth.

Gochujang, Korean chile paste, is warm and flavourful without being mouth-numbing. It adds a richness and complexity to roasted carrots and cabbage. The proportions of the two vegetables is not terribly important, and you might even want a bit more of the gochujang-cumin-ginger mixture. You could serve this with almost anything, from roast chicken to a potato pancake. It’s nice topped with yoghurt, too.

Roasted Carrot and Cabbage with Gochujang
Serves 2-4 as a side dish

Ingredients
750g carrots, peeled
750g white cabbage
3 tablespoons rapeseed oil
1.5 tablespoons gochujang paste
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon salt
4 cloves garlic, peeled and grated
3cm fresh ginger, peeled and grated
2 tablespoons more rapeseed oil
1 tablespoon white vinegar (I used rice wine vinegar; the original recipe calls for white wine vinegar)

Preparation
Preheat the oven to 220C. You will need two large baking trays and Meera Sodha recommends lining them with foil.
Cut the carrots lengthwise in half or quarters (depending on the size) to make long batons. Cut the cabbage into 2cm wedges. Place them in a large mixing bowl, or directly onto your two baking trays.
In a small bowl, mix the 3 tablespoons oil, gochujang, cumin, salt, garlic, and ginger. Pour over the vegetables and mix with your hands so that the marinade gets everywhere.
Spread the vegetables across the two trays. Make sure the carrots and cabbage are in a single layer, then bake for 35 to 40 minutes, until the vegetables are tender and blackened at the edges.
Meanwhile, put 2 tablespoons of oil and the vinegar into a large serving bowl. When the carrots and cabbage are roasted, transfer them to the bowl while still hot and toss them in the oil and vinegar and serve.

Recipe adapted from Meera Sodha, East (2019).

Here is an excellent topping for punchy vegetables such as kale. The key ingredient is fresh turmeric root, which you can get at Gaia, on Regent Place in Leamington, and doubtless elsewhere. You whizz up the turmeric with cashew butter, the juice of a few of the clementines you have hanging around from Christmas, and a bit of mustard.

The original recipe (from The First Mess) combined this with raw, shredded Brussels sprouts, toasted sesame seeds, sliced spring onions and fresh dill to make a very good slaw but I think this will go well on top of anything in the brassica family. This recipe is dedicated to the nice person at Canalside just before Christmas who swapped his unwanted kale for my unwanted rosemary.

Super Turmeric Sauce
serves 2

Ingredients
2 tablespoons cashew butter
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
juice of 3 clementines
2 inch piece of fresh turmeric, peeled
5 tbsp olive oil

Preparation
Combine the ingredients in a blender and whizz until smooth.

Recipe adapted from The First Mess, where you can find the recipe for the Brussels sprouts slaw, and also a salty maple-roasted squash and ginger rice which goes very well with it.

Spiky mustard and capers bring a little bite to the smooth, roasted squash, the crispy cabbage and unctuous cheese. A topping of crunch breadcrumbs finishes things off. You’ll feel properly nourished with this one-dish meal.
Anna Jones describes this dish as having ‘simple British flavours’. That set me thinking about the origin of the ingredients. Caraway and mustard seeds have been eaten in Britain since the Middle Ages, but squash didn’t reach these shores until the sixteenth century, when European sailors brought it back from the Americas, together with tomatoes, chile peppers, and much more, including (of course) potatoes. Savoy cabbages—‘Savoy coleworts’ as they were called in one English herbal—probably reached England from Holland around the same time.

Cheesy Roasted Savoy Squash with Crispy Breadcrumbs
Serves 4

Ingredients
For the Veg
About 800g squash or pumpkin
About 400g Savoy or other cabbage
Olive oil
2 teaspoons caraway seeds
50g dry bread (ideally rye)—about 2 thin slices—or use chunky breadcrumbs if you have some to hand
2 tablespoons capers
100g sharp cheese such as cheddar, crumbled

For the Dressing
1 tablespoon wholegrain mustard
1 teaspoon honey
1 tablespoon cider vinegar
3 tablespoons olive or rapeseed oil

Preparation
Preheat the oven to 220C.

Remove the seeds from the squash or pumpkin and slice into 2cm-thick wedges. Peel the slices if that’s what you prefer. Cut the cabbage into 8 chunky wedges.

Place both on a large oven tray and sprinkle with salt, pepper, olive oil and the caraway seeds. Spread them out so they will crisp up in the oven. You don’t want them to steam in a big heap.

Roast for about 35 minutes, until the squash is soft and the cabbage is golden and crisp and charred a little at the edges.

Meanwhile, make the caper breadcrumbs. Wizz the bread in a food processor to reduce to chunky, rough breadcrumbs. You don’t want a fine powder. Place the crumbs on a baking tray, drizzle with oil, and toss with the capers, salt and pepper. Toast in the oven for about 5 minutes or until they look pleasingly crunchy. Watch out that they do not burn. Set aside.

Make the dressing by shaking all the ingredients together in a jar. Season to taste with salt and pepper and set aside.

To serve, tumble the squash, cabbage and cheese on a platter. Drizzle with the dressing and toss. Top with the breadcrumbs and bring to the table.

Recipe adapted from Anna Jones, The Modern Cook’s Year (2017).

This is just the sort of restorative your body is crying out for after the holidays. It’s rich and satisfying without being heavy. You’ll feel good eating it.

You can also add some cooked potatoes, if you happen to have some lying about.

Ads bi Hamud
Serves 6

Ingredients
375g green lentils, soaked for 1 hour
Salt and pepper, to taste
4 tablespoons olive oil
2 onions, cut in half and sliced thin
5 cloves of garlic, peeled and sliced thin
1 tablespoon plain flour
1kg mixed greens (spinach, chard, kale, etc.)
Juice of 1.5 lemons

Preparation
Wash and drain the lentils. Put them in a pan with water to cover and simmer for 30 minutes or until they are very tender. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Meanwhile, heat the oil in another pan and sauté the onions until they are very soft, about 15 minutes. Add the garlic and sauté until you detect a nice, garlicky smell. Add the flour and stir well. Add a teacup of water to the pan and stir to dissolve any tasty browned bits. Cook over a low heat to thicken a bit and then pour the whole thing into the lentils and mix. Heat gently so that the lentils and onions thicken a bit.

Wash the greens and chop coarsely. Add these to the lentils and cook for about 10 minutes.

Add the lemon juice and simmer a bit more, so that the soup is thick and hot.

This is pretty addictive. It delivers a big dose of umami and makes an outstanding dressing for robust vegetables. I’ve been eating it on a salad of finely shredded red or white cabbage, grated carrot, and chopped coriander. It would be good on grilled tofu or fish, or roasted butternut squash. Or use it as a dip for whole potatoes—the little ones we’re getting in our shares—roasted at 200C for 30 minutes.

Miso-Tahini Dressing
Serves 2

Ingredients
1 tablespoon miso paste
1 tablespoon tahini
1 tablespoon soya sauce
1 tablespoon cider vinegar

Preparation
Combine the ingredients and blend well, using a fork. Taste to see if it would benefit from a little more vinegar. The mahogany-dark dressing is now ready to use. This makes enough for half a small cabbage, shredded, together with several grated carrots.

Our resident Recipe Meister, Rebecca Earle, is having a break during July, and so newly joined member Pip Smith has stepped forward to tantalise our tastebuds in Rebecca’s absence. Here’s Pip’s first recipe for us:

Beetroot, cabbage and spring onion in the veg share this week? It can only mean one thing…….slaw! I’ve been looking at lots of coleslaw recipes and it seems to me the general theme is either vinaigrette dressing or creamy mayonnaise/Dijon or horseradish. Pretty much anything can go into a slaw as long as there is a nice bite and balance of flavour in the main ingredients.

I’ve chosen a vinaigrette and will follow the rule of equal oil to vinegar. I’ve chosen not to massage the vinegar into the cabbage though this could be worth experimenting with to break down the fibres and change the texture.

Ingredients:

1 small cabbage
4 baby beets
2 – 4 spring onions
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
Optional 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper

Method:
Cut the cabbage into quarters and remove core, then slice thinly.
Peel the beetroot then grate.
Trim and slice the spring onion
Put the oil, vinegar, mustard if using, salt and pepper into a lidded glass jar and shake.
Put the the slaw mix into a large bowl and toss with the vinaigrette.

For a tasty addition you could toast some seeds and sprinkle on top.