JOANNA'S FOOD: family cooking, from scratch, every day


Wednesday, January 09, 2008

Sweet/sour marinated white cabbage























This is NOT sauerkraut, nothing like it. This is a lovely sweet spicy salad for anyone who loves coleslaw but has got a bit fed up with eating it through these winter months. That's to say probably everyone in the northern hemisphere who is eating seasonally and beginning to feel the annual yearning for some soft green salad leaves.

It's got other virtues, too: you can make it ahead, in fact it's better if you do. Better to wait 24 hours before eating, so that the flavours can intensify (although this is hard, once you start nibbling at it). Which makes it a good thing to use up the cabbage left over at the end of the week (there's always a little something left when the next veg box comes, the trick is to make sure it's stuff that will keep well in a cool place). So at least one vegetable dish for supper is made before you even start to think about what to eat.


















Sweet/sour marinated white cabbage
to fill one .75l jar

half a white cabbage
200ml cider vinegar
200ml caster sugar
6 tbsp oil
4 tsp fennel seeds
2 tsp yellow mustard seeds
2 tsp black mustard seeds
salt and pepper

Dissolve the sugar in the cider vinegar over a gentle heat. Leave to cool. Finely shred the cabbage and put into a large bowl. Add oil (sunflower is fine, no need to use olive oil), seeds and seasoning to the vinegar. (I gave the seeds a bit of a bashing in a mortar, but it's not strictly necessary.) Mix well and throw over the cabbage, making sure everything is well coated. Press the mixture into a .75l jar, cover and refrigerate for at least several hours.

This should keep for a couple of weeks, but there's not much chance of that in this house.

I should think it would be just as good with Savoy or red cabbage - but, then, I make coleslaw from them, too, which may not be to everyone's taste.


















Related posts

Lady Diana Cooper's spiced cabbage

Kohl slaw

8 comments:

Amanda at Little Foodies said...

I'm definitely going to try this. Thanks Joanna

Cottage Smallholder said...

I'm going to try this with a red cabbage that is lurking in the larder. Thanks for the inspiration.

Erin said...

I am just wild about sweet and sour cabbage. My grandma got me started on it and I never looked back. I have never seen white cabbage before. How unique.

David Hall said...

Delish, I love it, so eay to make too.

Cheers
David

Ed Bruske said...

like this idea lots, Joanna. I will give this a try, always on the lookout for a different way to prepare cabbage. I have a big bucket of sauerkraut brewing as we speak.

Anonymous said...

This sounds good - & we could do with a variation on our white cabbage glut! Thank you!

ladybugpam said...

Dear Joanna, I am similar to you b/c I, too, make everything from scratch! I do it b/c we are really watching our money and it is much less expensive to make your food from scratch, albeit VERY time consuming! Therefore, much of my time is spent planning and cooking meals. I wish I lived in the countryside like you, but I live in the city, a huge city! and we are so broke after the bills are paid, that I have been going to food banks to feed my family. It has been good b/c it has taught me to make so many things I would have just bought ready-made before without even giving it a second thought. Also, I am forced to use ingredients I normally wouldn't buy myself and I have to make the best out of them, so I have discovered many new things. I have fallen in love w/cooking!!! I am not an expert, I am still learning and I make lots of mistakes:*( but I'm a decent cook and I'm sure I'll be getting better w/time&experience.
I happened upon your blog awhile back when I was given alot of cabbage from a food bank. I did not have most of the ingredients at that time, but I was intrigued by your recipe and I never forgot it! I have found myself in possession of alot of cabbage once again, and I am happy to have remembered enough of the recipe to find again using a search engine:D I think I'll write a blog about my cooking "adventures", TOO!
Thanks for all of your inspiration:)
Love,
Pam

Joanna said...

Pam, thank you for this lovely comment. I haven't made this for ages, so thank you for the reminder. And if you have fallen in love with cooking, then it really is a good idea to write down what you are doing, because it's amazing how much you forget even the really good recipes. And if you write it down in a blog, well, you find a lot of interesting people on the way, and sharing your knowledge ends up building a whole community ... so my advice would be to go for it.

Thanks for a lovely start to my day

xJoanna