Cabbage Rolls

Ann has mentioned a few times this winter that she wanted me to make stuffed cabbage rolls, something that I thought I had put behind me several decades ago. In the 1960s, they were something of a staple, a least in my mother's kitchen where she made them in the Central European style stuffed with ground beef and rice and sauced with tomato sauce. I tolerated them, but I did not love them. Hence, I have never ventured to make them, until just now at Ann's request.

Stuffed cabbage rolls are a staple of many cuisines, primarily in Central and Eastern Europe, but there are versions in China, the Levant, and North Africa. Each version has a different filling and a different sauce. For my part, I used my usual meatball mix (ground turkey with herbs and oats to lighten the forcemeat), and I sauced them in a quick marinara. I am not fond of the sweet tomato sauces from Central Europe.

Cabbage Rolls Ready for Sauce

The Finished Cabbage Rolls

After we ate them, we concluded that we did not love the results and the filling is better made into meatballs. With apologies to our Polish friends and family, I doubt that I will ever stuff cabbage again. Ann's itch has been scratched and I never had the itch.

Krautsalat

On two occasions on our trip to Südtirol back in the fall, we had a very simple cabbage salad called Krautsalat as a side dish with our meals. Both versions were of thinly sliced young cabbage dressed simply with oil and vinegar. It was one of those rare dishes that was more than the sum of its parts; we could not believe how good it was.

Roasted Steelhead Trout with Krautsalat

Recently on a rare foray to Trader Joe's, we stumbled across a pile of really young cabbages, really tight and dense and of conical shape. As much as I have wanted to make Krautsalat back here in the US, I was waiting to find just the right young and tender cabbage. Like potatoes, for cabbage, the freshly harvested young variety is far superior to that which is old and harvested months ago, storage cabbage.

Thinly Sliced Cabbage

There are many ways to thinly slice cabbage. When I was a kid, we had dedicated sauerkraut cutters, basically huge, bench-mounted mandolines. Today, a mandoline or a benriner would do the trick, or perhaps even the slicing blade on a food processor, though, to me, that cuts the cabbage too coarsely. I prefer to use a knife, so after quartering the cabbage and cutting out the core, I lay the quarter flat and slice it superfine with my handy-dandy knife.

Kneaded and Dressed Krautsalat

After slicing the cabbage, I sprinkled it with just a little salt, tossed it well to distribute the salt, and left it on the counter for 20 minutes. Then I roughly kneaded the cabbage to yield something approximating a fresh sauerkraut. After draining off the resulting salty liquid, a touch of rice vinegar and a drizzle of olive oil completed the dish.

Ann really loved this version. I preferred the version that we had in Italy in which the cabbage was dressed without salting or squeezing. Both are delicious. It's a shame that we cannot get decent cabbage at the store (not even a pretty looking Savoy). I'm going to have to make another trip to Trader Joe's on the far outskirts of town. It will be worth the hassle of getting there if they have more of these cabbages.

St. Paddy's Day 2024

Ann and I haven't typically celebrated St. Patrick's Day in the past, neither of us being of Irish heritage. My family is, however, of similar Celtic origin from across St. George's Channel in Wales where St. David is the relevant patron saint. Last year, we celebrated with Dyce at our house. We had planned to go to their house, but Rob was sick.

Corned Beef, Cabbage, Carrots, Potatoes, and Soda Bread

This year, the four of us managed to get together at their house where we were able to get our dog fix. I must have thrown the ball for Lola five dozen times; that little dog might fetch a ball all day if someone were to indulge her.

In typical fashion, the guys outdid themselves with puff pastry twists to accompany Irish mules followed by a smoked Wagyu corned beef and all the usual accompaniments: cabbage, carrots, and potatoes.

They also scored a delicious loaf of soda bread from Village Baker, a loaf of a sort that I've never had before. This version was slightly sweet and flavored with caraway and the tiny raisins that people call currants. I think that this sort of Americanized soda bread is unknown in Ireland where mainly I have encountered unflavored wholemeal (whole wheat) bread with no sugar and no fruit.

The Irish mules (Tullamore Dew, lime, and ginger beer) were super refreshing on a quite warm day, our first really warm day of the spring, though it was too chilly to sit outside. We all remarked that we are surely due for a couple more snowstorms before spring truly is here, but the nice weather was a bonus. After the mules, we switched to a wine that we brought.

I was scratching my head about what wine to pair with corned beef and decided, because of the salty nature of said beef, the warm weather, and Dyce's preference for white wines, to go white. A little body and a hint of sweet fruitiness wouldn't hurt the pairing either.

I initially thought a drier Chenin Blanc or a Riesling, but then I remembered that we had some Walla Walla white the cooler. A white Bordeaux style wine, this Semillon and Sauvignon Blanc blend is rather heavier on Semillon than is typical of Bordeaux, lending the wine extra weight and fruitiness to hold up to the salty beef. I liked the pairing.

Irish Cheddar Puff Pastry Twists

Refreshingly Delicious Irish Mules

Whiskey, Lime, and Ginger Beer

Stunning Hyacinths

Rare Moment Where Lola was Almost Still

Village Baker Soda Bread

Thank you to Rob and Dyce for their always wonderful hospitality!

St. Patrick's Day 2023

St. Patrick's Day arrived three weeks after my foot surgery this year and I was in a cast, in pain, and not in a mood to cook anything. [And here I am 7 weeks later, posting, not having been up to even blogging]. Ann and good friends Rob and Dyce conspired to put together a nice meal to cheer me up. It so did cheer me up and I truly appreciated it, having been confined to the house for a month and fully in the midst of going totally stir crazy, not to mention being pissed off at having to sit on the freaking sofa all damn day every day.

St. Paddy's isn't a big event at our house. Ann's full Napoletan on both sides and my family is from Wales and England. But what the hell: everyone is Irish on St. Paddy's Day!

Co-Conspirators

Sadly, the day of St. Patrick's Day, Rob was ill and elected to stay home. We probably would have cancelled the event had Dyce not been up since early morning putting the corned beef brisket on the smoker. In addition to the corned beef, Dyce also brought some Irish cheese, a bottle of Irish malt, a bottle of Chassagne, a loaf of soda bread, and a small lemon curd cake. He went way overboard as he does always.

Irish Cheddar with Porter

My First Irish Single Malt: Pretty Good

We started the evening with a little Irish Cheddar and a shot of Bushmill's single malt. Though I've been to Ireland a couple of times and consumed my fair share of whiskey, it's always been a mild blended whiskey and not a single malt. As a great fan of Scotch, I had never really taken notice of the Irish cousin and was pleasantly surprised. It's not super complex or peaty or smoky, but it is a good dram. Not having had a drop of alcohol in a month, I nursed mine very slowly.

A Seriously Delicious Chassagne

Dyce's Corned Beef, Smoked then Braised

With the beef that Dyce made, we had an unusual wine pairing: Chassagne-Montrachet. I might have picked a light fruity red (Gamay) or even a Riesling or a sparkling white to go with corned beef, but when somebody brings a bottle of Chassagne to my house, all bets are off! That bottle is getting opened!

Italian Girl Cooks Colcannon!

When Ann and Dyce were planning this dinner, you could have knocked me over with a feather when I heard Ann say, "I'll make colcannon!" Really, I had no idea that my Italian bride even knew what colcannon was, let alone would volunteer to make it. I thought cabbage was firmly on her no-no list. Live and learn! Day of, I hobbled over to the counter and seated at a bar stool with a portable cutting board, I finely sliced two leeks and half a cabbage for her. She then browned both of these in leftover bacon grease and added them to her mash of yellow potatoes. Delicious!

Ann Slicing "Irish Soda Bread"

Dyce scored a loaf of soda bread from a local bakery. I've eaten a lot of soda bread in Ireland, made a lot of it, and even have a handwritten recipe from Alice O'Sullivan, my innkeeper and damned fine baker from my final visit to Killarney. Bottom line, what we bought locally doesn't look like pound cake and it sure as hell does not taste like pound cake. Irish soda bread is not sweet, often has a good portion of whole wheat flour in it, and traditionally is shaped as a round loaf with a cross cut into the top. We were fairly put off by this so-called loaf.

Corned Beef, Colcannon, and Soda Bread

Damn Fine Lemon Curd Cake for Dessert

I cannot reiterate what a lifesaver it was for me for Dyce and Ann to put together this dinner. It so elevated my spirits.

Sweet Potatoes

Man, the restaurant life really sapped my enthusiasm for cooking! My love for the kitchen, even to this day, has not recovered and I retired from the business five and a half years ago. I used to think nothing of spending joyful hours in the kitchen, but now there are days when I can barely be bothered to go back in the kitchen for two minutes to throw together a ham sandwich.

Kitchen Mojo: Sweet Potato Cakes, Pork Tenderloin, Cole Slaw, Chipotle Honey

Just after retirement from the restaurant, I had no love for the kitchen. But these days some five-plus years hence, my love of cooking comes and goes. In the last ten days or so, my kitchen mojo is finally on the wax, at least temporarily. That's a good thing in that I have accumulated of a bit of winter fat and I need to eat better. Also, my body is longing for fresh vegetables, something that it quite usual for me in this cold vegetable-challenged season. That longing in part spurs me to action in the kitchen.

Though many vegetables are now available 365 days a year, thanks to a worldwide supply chain, old habits die hard with me. I try to use ingredients only in season, though I have relented a bit from this imperative in recent years. Back in the restaurant days, as a seasonal restaurant supplied by local farmers, we were limited in winter to storage vegetables from the previous growing season, our farmers bringing us only the tiniest amount of fresh produce from their expensive-to-heat greenhouses.

Winter therefore meant sweet potatoes, bushels and bushels of sweet potatoes. Out of necessity, we had to find creative ways to use them so as not to bore ourselves or customers. Fortunately, the sweet potato is as equally useful as a regular potato and therefore lends itself to a myriad of preparations: boiled, mashed, baked, chips, fries, grated for latkes, and even hashed.

Exercising all my creativity, at one point during my restaurant career, I hit upon a sweet potato hash that quickly became a customer favorite when accompanying our Berkshire x Ossabaw pork, wild boar, Moulard duck, or any of the venison that would come and go on the menu throughout the course of the winter: red deer, white tail, caribou, or elk.

The hash at the restaurant would have started in a vast sauté pan with cubes of our slab bacon, or house-cured pancetta if we were between slabs of bacon, cooked just enough to release a bit of fat. Into the sauté pan would go diced onion and cubes of raw sweet potato. Like any hash, it would stay on the flame until the bacon was rendered, the onions browned, and the sweet potato cooked all the way through.

I have never been one to like sweet food (I'm that guy who does not eat dessert) and I have always frowned on sweet sweet potato preparations. Properly cured sweet potatoes have enough natural sweetness on their own that they really don't need any added sugar, except perhaps if they are being served as a dessert course. But I do make a slight exception for my sweet potato hash.

Just as the hash is cooked is where the sweetness comes in, though not via added sugar (at least not raw sugar). At this point, we'd add dried sweetened cranberries (or cherries) and then flambé the whole shebang with a good slug of Bourbon. Ann is not a fan of the sweet woody and vanilla notes that the Bourbon imparts nor has she ever been a fan of fruit in savory dishes. But this hash ticks my boxes: creative, savory, smoky, and oh so tasty.  For more on the hash technique see here and here.

I have finally got enough distance from the restaurant and its sea of winter sweet potatoes to want to prepare sweet potatoes again at home. So, to accompany a roast pork tenderloin, I made this hash again, omitting the bacon to keep the dish a bit healthier. In spite of Ann not being a big fan, every once in a while, I make a dish because I like it. My usual MO is to only cook the things that I know that Ann loves. Mea culpa.

I actually cooked two tenderloins and put the second one in the fridge along with a small amount of leftover hash, the perfect starting point for a leftover-based dish the next evening. But how to change it up so that it would be different enough from the night before? I didn't have enough hash left to serve one person, let alone two, so I thought about ways to stretch it. And it occurred to me that if I roasted a sweet potato, mashed it, and incorporated the leftover hash into the mash, I could make sweet potato cakes.

I find myself using rolled oats instead of bread crumbs or panko to bind things these days: meatloaf, meatballs, potato cakes, and so forth. The results are fantastic and to my mind, at least, the complex carbs in rolled oats are a healthier option than the more simple bread carbs. Although I put a little panko on the surface of the sweet potato cakes to yield a nice crust, I bound the cakes with oats.

Sweet Potato Cakes, Bound with Rolled Oats

Once I had made the sweet potato cakes and put them in the refrigerator to set up, the full dish came together in my mind: sweet potato cakes, thinly sliced pork tenderloin, a bit of my vinegar-based cole slaw that is always in the fridge, and a drizzle of spicy chipotle-honey (chipotle purée, honey, water to thin, and salt to taste).

At least temporarily, my kitchen mojo is back and functioning at a decent level and I'm still making good use of winter storage vegetables: sweet potatoes, onions, cabbage, and carrots. And Ann is going to forgive my use of sweet dried fruit and Bourbon in the sweet potato cakes.

Cole Slaw

It's been a very long time since I made cole slaw. This is most likely because it is something that I made or handled every day at the restaurant. We always served a big pile of tangy slaw with our exceedingly rich crab cakes, as a foil to the fat and as a palate cleanser. More importantly, making slaw daily let us use whatever vegetables our farmers were bringing to us, no matter the season. It always seemed important to give our loyal farmers a market for their fruits and vegetables.

Cole Slaw

My wife was scared of my slaw long ago when we met because she had known slaws only with gloppy mayonnaise-based dressings. I'm not a fan of this creamy slaw myself, so I always dress my slaw quite simply with rice vinegar and granulated sugar, with a bit of salt to taste. I can't give you a recipe for the dressing for I literally scatter a handful of sugar and a bit of salt on the vegetables and pour over a bit of vinegar. I mix it well and taste. If it needs more acidic bite, in goes more vinegar. If it is too acidic, a bit more sugar will balance it.

It's best to make your slaw early in the day to give the dressing time to wilt the vegetables a bit before dinner. Though it is delicious right away, it gets better with age, to a point. It helps to turn a new batch of slaw every couple of hours to redistribute the dressing. Although you can slice your vegetables with a food processor, I always use a knife. It takes work, but the texture is better and you can work on your knife skills at the same time.

While cole slaw derives from words meaning cabbage salad and while cabbage is the principal component, you should not hesitate to be creative with your slaws. Any fruit or vegetable that is firm enough to slice and that is edible raw is fair game. I made this one from white cabbage, cucumber, carrot, radishes, and an apple.

Here is a non-exhaustive list of the things that I remember having put in slaw, each one I made being a function of the season and what was on hand.

Cabbage: white, red, napa, Savoy, brussels sprouts

Firm Leafy Greens: cavolo nero (Tuscan black kale), kale, collards, gai lan (Chinese broccoli), bok choy, choy sum, endive, chicory, Swiss chard

Other Brassicas: broccoli, cauliflower, broccolini, stem broccoli, rapini, stem mustard. Broccoli and cauliflower stems are great in slaw, peeled and thinly sliced.

Root Vegetables: turnips, rutabagas, kohlrabi, carrots, horseradish, radishes (red, breakfast, daikon, Korean), hard winter radishes (watermelon, black, etc), sunchokes, crosnes, beets, celery root, sweet potatoes, parsnips

Other: asparagus, cucumber, cucamelon, fennel, celery, green beans, pole beans, shaved corn, peas, sugar snaps, snow peas, rhubarb, artichoke hearts and stems

Herbs: lovage, parsley, cilantro, chives

Squashes: summer squash, winter squash (butternut slices really well)

Peppers: I don't like the flavor of raw peppers in my slaw, but many people do. They are all fair game, spicy and mild alike.

Onions: yellow, white, red, torpedo, green, cipollini, leeks, green garlic, chives. Onions can dominate, so I only use little bits for complexity, typically red and/or leeks.

Hard Fruits: apples, pears, Asian pears

How off the wall can you get? I once did a slaw including napa cabbage, beets, fennel, and orange segments that I served with fennel pollen-dusted grilled trout. I tend, when using beets, to keep them sliced separately from the rest of the slaw and mix them in just at service, to keep them from turning the slaw entirely beet red, unless I am aiming for a red slaw for presentation purposes.

The things that I avoid for slaw form a much shorter list: tender greens (salad greens, mustards, spinach, etc.) that will not stand up to the dressing, really starchy things that are not great raw (potatoes, eggplant), watery fruits (tomatoes, berries, melons), peppers (out of personal preference, though a bit of habanero in a slaw can be awesome), okra, mushrooms, and shell beans.

Grilled Halibut Tacos

After a week of fairly miserable weather, this week has started off beautifully with a chance to get out and hit the grill. Over coffee Monday morning, Ann suggested fish tacos for dinner. I thought that was splendid idea.

Grilled Halibut Tacos with Curtido and Cilantro

Later in the day, I texted Ann, "slaw or salsa on the tacos?" She decided on slaw and so I made a batch of curtido, the quintessential Salvadoran slaw that always accompanies pupusas. Mine is made from green cabbage, carrot, red onion, salt, oregano, and lime juice. It is crunchy and tangy and the perfect topping for a bit of grilled halibut.

I prefer grilled fish in my tacos, though most restaurants tend to use fried fish. I don't really want batter on the fish if the whole thing is in a tortilla, either corn or wheat. Your mileage and your tacos may vary.

Memorial Day 2016

Thanks to crashing out super early on Sunday after our hike, I woke really early on Monday and having a very rare two-day holiday, I set in right away on yardwork, getting the trumpet vine and the three wisteria pruned and a bunch of other miscellaneous things neatened up before Ann came downstairs. I took a break and joined her on the deck for a cup of coffee, a rare treat for us these days to have coffee together, not having to be somewhere.

After coffee, we set in on a bunch more yardwork including weeding and planting the garden, removing a very invasive lemon balm, digging out a Euonymus that was not sited correctly and not happy where it was sited, planting a dozen roses, and transplanting to new beds a slew of volunteers including purple coneflowers, coreopsis, and even a maple tree.

About 1pm, we had mostly finished all the yardwork we were going to do for the day and set off on a quick 3-mile walk about the neighborhood where a new crop of wildflowers was waiting to be seen. While we were out walking, I noticed that none of the black locust trees are blooming this year. The same frost that killed our wisteria blooms must have done the same to the locusts. Pity.

Deptford Pink

Crown Vetch

Ox-Eye Daisy

Sulfur Cinquefoil

Golden Hawkweed

St. John's Wort

Back at home, we decided to cool down on the patio in the shade of the vines with a bottle of Vinho Verde, our first of the year. Its light green apple flavor is so refreshing.

Vinho Verde on the Patio

My Girl!

Ann wanted to see how good my new camera is at bird photos. Not very. The camera is probably just fine, but my 28-135mm lens doesn't have the speed or the reach to do the birds justice. I'm putting a 70-200mm lens on my wish list, small enough to hike with and handhold, but with considerable more reach than the 135.

Male Cardinal Below the Feeder

Mockingbird Guarding the Native Honeysuckle Berries

At noon, I took a break from gardening to run in and throw these ribs in a slow oven. They're coated in a rub that I make myself. I fancied that I might smoke them and grill them and the whole nine yards, but once it became clear that I was really involved in gardening this Memorial Day, I opted for the easy way out in a slow oven.

Ribs, Ready to Cook

Cabbage and Chinese Broccoli Slaw

Pigging Out!

Just today the scales told me that I have lost 25 pounds since Christmas, a pretty good milestone. I just nibbled at breakfast and skipped lunch in order to be able to feast on ribs and slaw. And two portions of each I did have. I kind of regretted eating so much food, but not really! Damn those ribs were good!

Empanadas

During dinner on Sunday while we were feasting on enchiladas, Ann mentioned something about loving empanadas and how we should (I should) make them some time, so I resolved to make empanadas on Monday night. And to go with them, I made a cabbage slaw called curtido and an avocado and tomatillo salsa verde.

Empanadas, Curtido, Salsa Verde

Ready to Roll

I've been using the same empanada dough recipe for years, even at the restaurant. It's a little finicky and crumbly, but it makes the best empanadas ever. I must have ripped it off from somewhere because it is written in English units of measure, even using cups for flour. The vast majority of recipes that we develop for the restaurant are done in metric units and by weight. I rolled and cut the pastries and Ann filled them. I had a good time poking fun at her for being messy and I think she had a good time being mock offended.

Picadillo Dulce of Pork

You can stuff just about anything inside an empanada. Black beans are among my favorites, but this time I decided to do a sweet and sour ground pork called picadillo dulce. I had to keep it less on the picante side because Ann's mom Mary can't handle the heat. I usually add golden raisins and almonds (both showing the Moorish heritage of this dish) but for this filling, I decided to keep it simple. I cooked the ground pork with finely minced red onion, cilantro stems, garlic, and green olives seasoned with cumin, oregano, cinnamon, and pimentón (smoked paprika). Once this cooked out, I added sherry vinegar and brown sugar to taste to yield a sweet-tart final product.

Ann's Handiwork

I always seal my pastry with egg wash and crimp the edges with a fork, then do a final wash of egg on top. This is how it has always been done in my family. Some people crimp the edges by hand and others roll the crust over on itself to form a lip. They all achieve the same thing: sealing the goodness of the relleno on the inside. After Ann finished sealing all the empanadas, I put them in a moderate oven until they were a light golden brown all over, about 40 minutes.

Curtido Fresco

To go with the empanadas, I wanted to do something light and fresh, so I opted for a quick cabbage slaw that the Salvadorans call curtido, a slaw that is usually fermented like kraut or kimchee. I call this curtido fresco because there is no malolactic fermentation: it's eaten within hours of being made. It is finely shredded white cabbage, red onions, and carrots seasoned with lime juice, rice vinegar, salt, oregano, a splash of olive oil, and a touch of agave syrup to take a bit of edge off the acid. Left on the counter for a few days to ferment, this would be a very fine curtido indeed. Ann said it needs a bit of heat and while I love to put finely slivered hot chiles in curtido, there is no way that my mother-in-law could handle that.

Salsa Verde

I had it in mind to do chimichurri for a dipping sauce for the empanadas, but I was suckered in by an avocado at the market. I ended up making a smooth green sauce of avocado, canned tomatillos, rice vinegar, and cilantro. This sauce is addictively good!