Fancy Red Cabbage Salad--For Health Reasons

I did not look for a reason to post this recipe but I was almost provoked to do it when I talked to my cousin living in Germany. She is a very good cook, although her cuisine is more of a traditional, country style, often German or Polish. She generally favors fish, lamb, and salads.

In addition to being a good cook she is totally obsessed with healthy food. All she eats has to be organic and ecological and, most importantly, healthy. Just to give you a few examples, she buys only organic food in Germany, brings gallons of organic oil from the Balkans, imports organic apples and jars of organic beet salad from Poland, bakes her own whole-grain organic bread, and she even buys organic tuna, although I am not sure how it can be determined what is organic or not in the deep waters of the ocean.

She knows that I love to cook and my cuisine is on the light and healthy side, but each time we talk, she is very concerned about us in America eating very unhealthy stuff. During our conversation she examined me what we had for dinner. Everything seemed to be fine until I got to arugula salad with nuts and pumpkin seeds. "You are not supposed to eat green salads at winter!" she almost screamed. "They are full of pesticide, artificially grown without sun! You can eat only Belgian endive (as it grows in dark places) and cabbage."

My arguments that I buy only organic salads cultivated in the regions where there is always sun and mild climate, did not convince her. Instead, she gave me a recipe for red cabbage salad with sunflower seeds. But I decided that mine, which in fact I prepare in winter quite often, is more interesting. So, for all the health reasons, which indicate that in winter you should eat mostly cabbage, here is the very wintery red cabbage salad.

Fancy Red Cabbage Salad
(Serves four)

Ingredients:
1/2 medium red cabbage(4-5 cups, if shredded),
2-3 celery sticks,
10-12 dried apricots,
4 tbsp slivered, roasted almonds,
1 tbsp lemon juice,
1 glass of white wine,
1 tsp sugar,
1/2 cup mayonnaise,
1 tsp salt.

Preparation:
1. Shred cabbage finely. Put it in a large bowl. Add salt, mix, and set aside for 30 minutes.
2. Place dried apricots in a medium bowl and cover with wine. Let them soak for 30 minutes.
3. Cut celery into thin slices and add them to cabbage.
4. Drain apricots from wine (but keep the remaining wine) and cut into thin slices. Add to cabbage.
5. In a medium bowl mix the remaining wine with sugar, lemon juice, and mayonnaise. Add to the cabbage and mix all the ingredients. Throw in roasted almond, mix, and set aside for 15 minutes to marinate all the ingredients.

Serve with cold cuts, meats, or just alone with breads.

Red Cabbage Sauté--To the Rescue

In my recipe book there are many recipes that I copied decades ago from different sources but never had a chance to use, until now, when I now continuously look for something new and original, worth sharing.

Yesterday, I reached for one such recipe from Poland, and made a cake that, from looking at all the ingredients, I expected to be delicious. However, half way through the preparation, I started to realize that the dough seemed somewhat heavy. There was nothing I could have done at that moment, so I just finished it and baked it. When ready, the cake looked beautiful on the outside, although it almost did not rise during baking. I took a picture of it, but when I cut a piece I knew that it was inedible. Very dense and almost raw, totally slack-baked, the cake landed in the trash.

Very disappointed, I decided to make something Polish again, but well tried and familiar, that never failed during preparation--red cabbage.

When I lived in Poland, around this time of the year a red cabbage was showing up on our tables, where it was continuously present until early spring. I liked it even more than a regular green cabbage probably because it was more dense and harder and I was always charmed by its purple color and all the shades of it. It depended on the stage at which the cabbage was cooked. Unlike the green one, red cabbage usually is not served as a dish itself, but to accompany meat dishes. We serve it with beef rolls, roasted meats, and obviously a duck (which by the way I do not eat). But because I have not made it in a long time, I enjoyed it so much that I ate it as my lunch.

Red Cabbage Sauté

Ingredients:
1/2 medium red cabbage (about 6 cups shredded),
2 apples (I use Granny Smith or McIntosh)
1 medium onion,
1/2 stick butter (about 50 grams),
3-4 tbsp balsamic vinegar,
1 tsp salt,
1/4 tsp ground Cinnamon, or a small piece of cinnamon stick,
1 tbsp sugar,

Preparation:
1. Shred cabbage into very thin slices.

2. In a large pot, bring to boil about a gallon of water with a tbsp of salt. Put in shredded cabbage, turn off the heat, and let the cabbage blanche in the hot water for about 10 minutes. Drain the water but save about a cup for further cooking.
3. Peel the apples and shred them on a large hole grater.
4. Peel the onion, cut in half, and then into thin half-moons.

5. Melt butter in a large pan. Add onion and fry it for 3-5 minutes, until transparent. Add cabbage to the onion and mix. Add back a couple of tbsp of blanching water to the cabbage and let it simmer for about 5 minutes.
6. Add apples and cinnamon and at this stage cook cabbage until soft--that may take 20-30 minutes. Meanwhile,if the cabbage starts to fry, add a little more water again.
7. When the cabbage turns appropriately soft (I like it a little al dente; please note that red cabbage, because of its texture, will always be somewhat harder than green cabbage), add more salt to taste, sugar, and vinegar. The vinegar will pretty much prevent the cabbage from softening further so you need to try it before adding it. Mix well all the ingredients, and let it all cook for about two more minutes.

Serve warm usually with red meats and all kind of potato dumplings, speatzle, or potato puree.

Red Cabbage Salad--Coleslaw's Polish Cousin

Poland can certainly be called a land of cabbage and potatoes. These two ingredients, together with beets, practically define Polish cuisine. If you visit Polish farmers markets you will be astounded by the mountains of cabbage heads and the great variety and quantity of potatoes being sold. Therefore, while spending the whole month in Poland, I cannot resist introducing my international readers to cabbage.

Whenever any foreigner asks about Polish cuisine or wants to show any knowledge of it, cabbage-based dishes inevitably come up. The most famous is bigos--a long cooked dish (it can take days to cook bigos properly), which is made from sour and fresh cabbage with a generous amount of different meats and sausages, and it is spiced up with dried porcini or prunes. It is very heavy but very tasty and everyone who has been raised in its flavor is nostalgic about it. Foreigners who tried it either fell in love with bigos, or hate forever even the very smell of it.

For those who are even scared to try bigos, we also have much lighter and less odoriferous dishes that are made of cabbage. They are also much easier to prepare. We have many variations of them in our national cuisine and anyone who is willing to try them, will find for sure a dish made of cabbage that is very tasty but also very light.

Unfortunately, as foreign cuisines have become widespread in Poland in recent years and even all the "holes in the walls" now serve exotic food like sushi or Turkish kebab, it is now much harder to find a good traditional dish like a cabbage salad, which used to be so prominent on the Polish daily menu.

Red cabbage was always one of my favorites. It is very healthy as it is particularly rich in vitamins K and C. It can be served in a cooked version, as a side dish to heavier meats like duck or venison, but the one I make at home is a simple salad made of raw red cabbage to preserve all its nutritional values. It can be served to accompany any meat, especially grilled.

Red Cabbage Salad

Ingredients:
1/2 head red cabbage,
1/2 medium sweet onion,
2 tbsp roasted, slivered almonds,
3 tbsp balsamic vinegar,
1 tsp of sugar,
1/4 cup olive oil,
1/3 cup crumbled feta cheese (optional),
salt and pepper to taste.

Preparation:
1. Shred cabbage thinly, salt generously, and set aside for about half an hour.
2. Using hands squeeze cabbage to help soften and macerate in its own juice.
3. Season with sugar, vinegar, and pepper.
4. Add onion and oil and mix well.
5. Sprinkle with almonds and serve.

Useful tips:
This salad can also be served at lunch with bread and cold meat cuts. If you sprinkle it with feta cheese, it would become a rich meal in itself.