October 14, 2009

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.


8 comments:

  1. Altoon, I've been enjoying my cabbage ever since your first post on the purple cabbage with carrots, etc., so thanks for the nutrition inspiration. Must try some of your other recipes when things slow down, the soup looked irresistable.

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  2. altoon -thanks for this one -love it
    have now gone back found it again a year later --this time i printed it out --james

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  3. This sounds great. Never thought of putting pasta and cabbage together. I only have about 1/4 of a cabbage head left over, so I think I'll add some parsnips, onion and a little shredded carrot for color. Maybe a pinch of red pepper flakes if I can get it by Kate. Hope you don't mind me messing with your recipe!

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  4. john, I don't mind; I love it. Someone on Facebook suggested using some ginger, which sounds good too.

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  5. I am going to try it and I BET it will be wonderful.

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  6. cooking this tonight!!! thanks.

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  7. yup, it was great...I was tempted to put in the ginger but didn't want it to go too Asian (next time) added more garlic and some white wine while it cooked down. It ended up somewhere east of Greece and West of Pakistan ;)

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  8. john, it sounds like the recipe ended up in a nice place. I'm glad it worked for you.

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