Cabbage with Pasta

Last night I made one of my favorite cabbage recipes: smothered cabbage with noodles. It's simple and tasty, and healthy too. It does take a while to cook the cabbage, because it has to slow cook till it softens and loses its volume. I don't remember where this recipe came from, but I've been making it for years. It's unlikely that I made it up because I'm good at picking recipes and following them, but I'm not a creative cook.

For two large servings, shred 1 1/2 pounds of cabbage. Chop 1 tablespoon of garlic and cook in a wide skillet in 2 tablespoons of olive oil till it starts to color. Add the cabbage and 1 tablespoon of salt and turn and mix with the oil and garlic. This amount of shredded cabbage will come to the top of a 12 inch frying pan. Cover the pan and cook on very low heat, stirring occasionally, for about an hour.




The cabbage will now look as above, very tender and slightly browned in spots. It becomes wonderfully sweet cooked like this.

I like this dish with a stronger tasting pasta, particularly either a whole wheat spaghetti, as below, or buckwheat noodles, which are a Japanese noodle called Soba. Use about 4 ounces of noodles for the 1 1/2 lbs of cabbage. Cook the pasta, add to the noodles, then add soy sauce to taste. The flavor of the soy sauce seems well suited to the sweet cabbage and enhances the final flavor.