There’s a new cabbage in town! Kale is so over, kimchi restricted to the fermentation afficionados rather than general public, but anywhere that aspires to be somewhere features hispi cabbage on the menu. Grilled hispi, charred hispi, hispi salad, hispi braise, you ain’t nothing if you don’t have a special hispi dish a la carte. What a wonderful new vegetable!
Except it isn’t, or in name only. For some reason good (and undeniably tasty) old spring cabbage has been rechristened and elevated, with success! I guess if it worked for Lizzie Grant, it would work for spring cabbage.
Giving a fancy name to good old cabbage only confirms my suspicion that it’s all in the name. That cabbage is a less popular brassica and an often forgotten vegetable only because ‘cabbage’ does not exactly sound glamorous.
The word ‘cabbage’ derives from Norman French ‘caboche’ which means ‘head’. That in turn comes from the Latin ‘caput’, also meaning ‘head’. Calling someone a cabbage head is then not only rude, but a tautology. It gets worse - a cabbage insultingly describes a neurodiverse or mentally incapacitated person. It also used to be a slang expression for stealing.
The English language doesn’t hold the vegetable in high esteem; the French redeem it in the ‘mon petit chou’ endearment. The Germans had a chancellor called Kohl so they don’t snigger. And even America respects cabbage – it’s slang for paper money.
So ‘hispi’ is another manoeuvre to avoid the ‘c’ word on the printed menus. Because it really is simply spring cabbage, aka sweetheart cabbage, aka pointed cabbage. And that’s my beef (apologies to those who expected a recipe for delicious steak cooked with cabbage): it’s just so pretentious! Up there with saying ‘pan-roasted’ instead of fried, or ‘poached’ instead of boiled. Humph!
But the cabbage itself of course is innocent, and completely deserving promoting or having a full dedicated weekly post. I guess if I renamed all my cabbage recipes to ‘hispi recipes’ I’d score far more clicks, huh?
It’s looser leafed than winter cabbages or Savoy, tenderer and sweeter than the other two, let alone bitter kale (aka cavolo nero). It is delicious raw or briefly cooked over high heat, hence perfect for stir frying or grilling.
Raw: in spring cabbage salad or in cabbage and prawn salad with Vietnamese dressing. In a crunchy salad or added to spring flavoured coleslaw.
Briefly cooked, as in stir fried cabbage or cabbage with bacon, tomatoes and mushrooms. It can serve as a bed to a lamb shank or to scallops with pancetta.
It’s a great filling vehicle for gyoza, or a garnish for burgers. But I bet you never imagined it would be a great lasagne layer and fabulous in a gratin with potatoes?
You don’t always have to treat it gently and flash-cook it: Swedish kalpudding, a meatloaf layered with cabbage is made by cooking cabbage until it’s deeply caramelised. And you can of course ferment it into kimchi or sauerkraut. Happy spring (aka hispi)!