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Food tonight was spaghetti in a carbonara-inspired-but-not-actually-carbonara sauce (egg, cream, cheese, bacon, and mushrooms, and yes it was really rich, but there was more mushrooms than anything else, and a fairly high ratio of pasta to sauce, so), and braised cabbage with apples, one of my experiments with winter vegetables.
Also one of my experiments with thoroughly cooked vegetables. It's funny: one of the first tips one gets when one begins to cook vegetables is 'don't cook them too long.' And lo, it is a good tip, because most vegetables are far more hurt by overcooking than under. Broccoli, for instance -- there's raw, and there's nearly raw, and there's crisp-tender, and there's bright-green and just soft, and then there's... olive drab with the sulfurus smell of overboiled cabbage. I actually like bright-green with just the slightest resistance to the teeth at least as much as crisp-tender, but I rarely do it, because if you aim for crisp-tender and slightly overcook, you're fine... but if you aim for soft, and slightly overcook, you get mush.
But there are other vegetables that actually are well-served by long cooking. I've experimented pretty well with all the barely-cooked variations for the vegetables I eat frequently, and now I'm branching out into trying thorough cooking again.
For instance: carrots. I like carrots steamed to just tender, with a lemon glaze. They're very good. (I also like them raw.) But I also like them cut into chunks, tossed with honey and sesame oil, and cooked just to death, until they're quite soft and starting to caramelize. It's a different kind of taste than still-crisp -- but it's good.
So today: cabbage. The most foolproof way to serve cabbage is to not cook it at all. I often shred it thinly and serve it with a light dressing, coleslaw-fashion. Nearly as foolproof: adding it to a stir-fry at the very last minute, and letting it just barely wilt.
But today I was leafing through my new copy of Bittman's How to Cook Everything, and I saw a 'Braised Cabbage and Caramelized Apples' dish. And I had half a red cabbage, and several apples. (And onions. That was my improvisation.) So I sliced up the onions and softened them in a little butter, sliced up the apples and let them caramelize with the onions and just a tablespoon of brown sugar until everything was very soft and syrupy and the onions were translucent and just golden, and added the thinly-sliced red cabbage. To that, a quarter cup of apple cider vinegar, a half cup of apple cider, two cloves and a small piece of whole mace. And let it simmer. For thirty, forty minutes, until the cider was reduced to a syrup and everything was quite soft, but still had some resistance to the tooth when bitten.
Overly long story short: it came out very well. (It might be a little sweet for someone with less of a sweet tooth than me; you could reduce the brown sugar and/or increase the cider vinegar.) Cooking the cabbage for a good long while might have caused it to lose some of its crunch, but it gained a mellow sweet flavor. I'm not going to be giving up raw dressed cabbage any time soon, but it's nice to have another tool in the toolbox.
Also one of my experiments with thoroughly cooked vegetables. It's funny: one of the first tips one gets when one begins to cook vegetables is 'don't cook them too long.' And lo, it is a good tip, because most vegetables are far more hurt by overcooking than under. Broccoli, for instance -- there's raw, and there's nearly raw, and there's crisp-tender, and there's bright-green and just soft, and then there's... olive drab with the sulfurus smell of overboiled cabbage. I actually like bright-green with just the slightest resistance to the teeth at least as much as crisp-tender, but I rarely do it, because if you aim for crisp-tender and slightly overcook, you're fine... but if you aim for soft, and slightly overcook, you get mush.
But there are other vegetables that actually are well-served by long cooking. I've experimented pretty well with all the barely-cooked variations for the vegetables I eat frequently, and now I'm branching out into trying thorough cooking again.
For instance: carrots. I like carrots steamed to just tender, with a lemon glaze. They're very good. (I also like them raw.) But I also like them cut into chunks, tossed with honey and sesame oil, and cooked just to death, until they're quite soft and starting to caramelize. It's a different kind of taste than still-crisp -- but it's good.
So today: cabbage. The most foolproof way to serve cabbage is to not cook it at all. I often shred it thinly and serve it with a light dressing, coleslaw-fashion. Nearly as foolproof: adding it to a stir-fry at the very last minute, and letting it just barely wilt.
But today I was leafing through my new copy of Bittman's How to Cook Everything, and I saw a 'Braised Cabbage and Caramelized Apples' dish. And I had half a red cabbage, and several apples. (And onions. That was my improvisation.) So I sliced up the onions and softened them in a little butter, sliced up the apples and let them caramelize with the onions and just a tablespoon of brown sugar until everything was very soft and syrupy and the onions were translucent and just golden, and added the thinly-sliced red cabbage. To that, a quarter cup of apple cider vinegar, a half cup of apple cider, two cloves and a small piece of whole mace. And let it simmer. For thirty, forty minutes, until the cider was reduced to a syrup and everything was quite soft, but still had some resistance to the tooth when bitten.
Overly long story short: it came out very well. (It might be a little sweet for someone with less of a sweet tooth than me; you could reduce the brown sugar and/or increase the cider vinegar.) Cooking the cabbage for a good long while might have caused it to lose some of its crunch, but it gained a mellow sweet flavor. I'm not going to be giving up raw dressed cabbage any time soon, but it's nice to have another tool in the toolbox.