Never, ever, please, say that cabbage is tasteless or boring. Cabbage is gorgeous. Richer in vitamin C than oranges, dirt cheap and so tasty.
I know – there’s an overhang of boiling hammerhead smell still lingering in places. But it really is a clear misuse of the poor vegetable – and it’s so easy to cook it right it’s insane.
First off – buy the right stuff. The new season, loosely packed cabbage is the best, in fact the less on the head, the better. What the supermarkets call spring cabbage will do too. Just shred it – roughly. It needn’t go through the food processor so don’t fret about not having one. Spare the core – that’s not nice. If you have raw cabbage aficionados in the house – and I promise you, many kids will actually happily chomp on a cabbage core if given one saying it’s going to waste – they’ll devour the stalk and all.
Plenty of butter or any other fat for that matter, goose or duck fat does nicely, as do beef drippings. Herbs – cabbage loves dill, and mint, but only stick it in when it’s cooked. Tomatoes – genius. Or ketchup. Melt the fat, turn up the heat, whack in the cabbage, stir it about a few times and it’s ready in under 5 minutes.
Gorgeous with pork, but fish likes it a lot too.