smitten kitchen » Cabbage

mango slaw with cashews and mint

deb — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 17:58:00 +0000

The inspiration for this slaw is a mango salad I order way too often from a local Thai place in hopes to offset the inevitable damage from the pad Thai I order with it. It has strips of mango, slivers of red pepper, red onion and mint, large toasted cashews and a spicy dressing with a lot of lime in it. It’s always a surprise; sometimes the mango is underripe and sour (which I understand to be more traditional) and sometimes it’s sweet and almost overripe. The best part is that the salad tastes good no matter how the mango arrived that day.

Of course, being me, I had to slaw it. Because that’s what I do, you know? Broccoli! Green onion! Better than old-school and dead simple! Tartar sauce slaw, pickled slaw and three more where that came from. I mean, salads are great but crunchy slaws that you pile on a burger or alongside anything grilled are the best heat wave antidote and this is my favorite one in a long time. It manages to be both sweet (my mangoes were very ripe) and sour, packing a little heat in the background and it was an incredibly refreshing change from the creamy dressing hegemony.

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cabbage and lime salad with roasted peanuts

deb — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 03:35:23 +0000

I know that on the surface, peering in from your side of the computer screen, this looks like a pile of shredded cabbage, a poorly lit one (look, it was late, okay?). But from my site, from my seat right here, this is pretty much the best thing ever, a yearly event I like to call First Slaw of the Season.

Yes, friends, rooftop grilling season is back (or it was, er, briefly last Saturday afternoon but not really by Saturday evening, when we shivered around the actual grill; details) and I could not possibly be more excited. That means summer is coming. That means Jacob and I get to go to barbecues as separate human beings this summer (aw). That means that this one, the adult one, gets to have a beer (yay).

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slaw tartare

deb — Thu, 21 May 2009 17:18:24 +0000

I had great plans for our holiday weekends, my friends. We were all going to kick it off by making homemade hamburger buns that we could use right away, or stash in the freezer until the weather cooperates. Really, nothing should have been simpler. Most hamburger buns are an enriched white bread, which is ridiculously simple to make, and rolls are so much quicker to bake than large loaves. Because isn’t it funny how in this day and age where so many of us grind our own meats for our signature burger blends that we’re generally still getting those buns from a bag or bakery?

Well, eight hours of frustrated cooking later, I can tell you that the force was not with us, or at least nowhere within a mile radius of the dud recipe I chose. It took all of the flour (and the patience) I had to (barely) pull it together. It nearly overflowed in the bowl twice. The suggested height of the buns didn’t yield anything you’d want to prop a burger on (but perhaps some falafel, with its pita-like proportions) and the flavor was nothing spectacular. A few hours later, they were already stale (never a good sign). And thus it is with a heavy sigh that I tell you that this will not be the Smitten Kitchen-approved hamburger bun recipe I’d dreamed of. Stay tuned this summer: homemade hamburger buns will be mine. Ours.

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alex’s mom’s stuffed cabbage

deb — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 13:00:22 +0000

I have been promising you my mother-in-law’s recipe for stuffed cabbage or “golubtsy”, which was her mother’s recipe for stuffed cabbage, for ages but do you know what is even sadder about how long it has taken me to get to this? That if I remember correctly, I jotted this recipe down on a page from my planner (a planner! with pages in it! many moons ago, my friends.) while sitting in the back seat as we drove to check out some wedding locations. Alex and I got married in 2005.

And really, I have all sorts of places to blame for how long it has taken me to actually make the recipe at home. The first is Neptune on 1st Avenue, only my favorite place to sit outside for beers in the summertime and if you think that stuffed cabbage can’t taste good after a few Polish beers on a warm night, you obviously haven’t tried it yet. (With a side of kielbasa and pierogis, thank you.) The second is Veselka, also in the East Village — this is where I go for my winter stuffed cabbage fix. (Also cabbage soup. Small hands… smell like cabbage. Nobody else gets that, do they?) And the third is Alex’s mom herself, who often brings us extra that she has made, rendering it completely unnecessary for me to make any effort whatsoever to decipher my four year-old notes.

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crisp black bean tacos with feta and slaw

deb — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 23:24:23 +0000

Let me just get this out of the way before I begin: I’m a little embarrassed by this meal. Not because it took 10 minutes to make, but because it came entirely from things that were already packaged and it tasted… well, not bad, but certainly not like I made any great effort. I bet you can’t wait to sign up, huh?

So why I am telling you about it? Because we’ve all been there, haven’t we? Even in New York City, where you can get anything delivered at any moment’s notice, there are days when one more meal that arrives in plastic-lidded foil containers will send you over the edge. I made this on one of those days. It was 8 p.m., we were both starving and I had one chance to ask Alex to grab something at the store on his way home and I didn’t want to miss it. So I Googled probably one of those most popular searches on the Internet, “10 minute meals” and, well, that pretty much brings us up to today.

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veselka’s cabbage soup

deb — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 04:20:25 +0000

Shuna introduced me to this soup. I think it was July 2007 and she’d gathered a bunch of food bloggers at Veselka, a Ukranian diner in the East Village famous for serving awesome beer-blotting food like borsht, stuffed cabbage and pierogis around the clock. It was hot and humid out, however, so the thought of anything besides a grilled kielbasa, pickles and a cold beer seemed insane, and yet there was our host, ordering cabbage soup.

I thought this Eggbeater was insane. Who eats soup in the summer? But Shuna insisted I try at least a spoonful, and that sip did me in. I spent the rest of July craving move and finally caved in August, sitting in that cafe eating steaming hot soup on a steaming hot day because it was the best thing, ever.

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cabbage, apple and walnut salad

deb — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 04:58:37 +0000

Today might have started off as Pie for Breakfast Day but I think we all know that the day after Thanksgiving is all about detox. Away with the heavy cream! Begone, you cheesy gratins! Skedaddle, you deep, gooey casseroles, sticky-sweet yams topped with charred marshmallows and green beans with fried onions. Please, don’t make me eat that butter and drippings-laden gravy again… at least until tomorrow.

Detox Day deserves its own dish, and though it is a tad late to get this one in for dinner tonight, I would like to offer up this cabbage, apple and walnut salad as the antidote to a meal that sent us back to the store for more butter and heavy cream not once but three times. (Gasp! My arteries!) This salad is perfect–it has all of the flavors of the season, but also a crunchy healthfulness so missing from the week’s main event, oh and also that slice of pie we know you’re having for dessert anyway.

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cabbage and mushroom galette

deb — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 01:17:15 +0000

I don’t think I have ever met a galette I didn’t like. In fact, my only grievance is that I do not have more galette recipes on this site. Two years ago there was a wild mushroom and stilton galette and last year there was a butternut squash and caramelized onion galette but since then? Nada. Let me serve to fix that right now.

Why am I so obsessed with galettes? Halfway between a tart and pizza, I think they’re easier than both. They don’t require any of the eggs or liquid-setting bake of a quiche and there’s less of a volume limitation than you have with pizza, where too many ingredients will send your toppings right onto the oven floor. The galette is perfection, and I am excited to add this one to the collection.

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napa cabbage salad with buttermilk dressing

deb — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 17:22:28 +0000

Stop. No, seriously. Stop everything you’re doing. What are you eating for lunch today? Are you going to one of those delis that will put whatever you want in the salad and mix it with some mysterious, better-not-closely-considered dressing in a squeeze bottle and charge you $10? (Is this a NYC thing, or do they have these everywhere?)(Further, have I waded so far into the NYC bubble that I no longer know what people outside it eat for lunch?) Well, I want you to take a good long look at it and repeat after me: No more deli salads.

Because have you seen this beauty? This should be your lunch tomorrow. This salad dressing is so good. So so so good. Oh, and the salad isn’t half-bad either.

People, I’m in love. Like just about everyone else who bakes, I seem to always have buttermilk left in the fridge, but it’s always too little to make something something frosted and fancy. I had no idea there was such a simple dressing out there that could use it up in half-cup increments, or heck, give you an excuse to buy more because it’s so darn good.

All I’m saying is, don’t say I didn’t warn you, okay?

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dead simple slaw + 6 heat wave reprieves

deb — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 16:05:48 +0000

I have paused before posting because I’m certain that if I tell you about yet another slaw recipe, you’re going to revolt. There’s been my favorite classic, a green onion slaw, an Indian version and then four additional ones (a blue cheese version of my favorite, a pickled slaw, a spicy radicchio slaw and a Asian-inspired napa slaw) in an NPR article. One could say I was just a little bit into coleslaw.

And you’d think with seven slaw recipes logged and blogged, I’d consider the topic of slaw done. Complete. It’s coverage exhausted. And yet, I am in no way capable of ignoring a new way to mix for ribbons of cabbage and dressing, especially since it has fewer ingredients and more punch than my standard, and it was designed to go dreamily on a bun with shredded barbecue.

Alas, you might be aware that we’re experiencing a barely-noticeable rarely-commented-on heat wave in these parts of the country. I find I am only able to discuss it sarcastically: the city smells magnificently, the humidity is totally manageable and, oh, I have cooked dinner every night. I mean, who doesn’t cook when there’s a heat wave?

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