Oh Drama! Oh Glory! Oh Cabbage!

As you may recall, I am experiencing a bit of a cabbage glut. Thanks to mom, who came to the rescue with our family’s traditional cabbage salad, I used up the Wakefield, but the fridge still boasted a red cabbage, a Savoy cabbage, and most of a napa cabbage. And then the baby bok choy arrived…

Mom to the rescue, again! While mom was reading the cabbage salad recipe to me over the phone, she kept noticing other scrumptious-sounding recipes on the same page, and describing them to me in mouth-watering detail, so I had her read them to me, too. When she got to a recipe called “3 Cabbage Stir Fry,” I knew salvation was at hand.

I gathered four friends, and together we shredded the red cabbage, the Savoy cabbage, the napa cabbage, and sliced the baby bok choy. I hauled out the giant wok, made a double recipe of sauce, and we started stir-frying. (We had to do it two batches – that was a LOT of cabbage!) The results were beautiful and delicious and filling. I’m not saying I’d go out of my way to buy three or four different kinds of cabbage to make this, but it was truly just about that good.

Recipe is beyond

Meanwhile…

My new box arrives tomorrow, and the only post I’ve made this week stars a vegetable that arrived a month ago. You may be feeling anxious for me right about now, wondering how I’m going to cope with an influx of new produce that will pile into my already overburdened refrigerator, since I clearly haven’t consumed any of the new arrivals yet. Fear not, gentle reader!, for this is not the case. I simply haven’t made anything worth photographing. So I thought that since this week has been so skimpy on posts I might make one documenting the simpler fates my produce meets throughout the week.

Because I know things are always better with pictures, I provide you with one here. What could be a better emblem of simplicity than my adorable rat, Crunch, nibbling a tender leaf of kale, no more processed than when it came out of the ground?

(For those of you who are grossed out even by pet rats, think of her as that cartoon chef rat in the Disney film Ratatouille. Everyone loved Ratatouille, right?)

The Fate of Box 10:

Lettuce: has gone into many a salad, including a full-meal salad tonight with carrots, thinly sliced daikon, Rome Beauty apple, napa cabbage, Manchego cheese, and hearts of palm, with a bizarre but tasty dressing of walnut oil, lemon olive oil, rice vinegar, and apple cider (I’m working on honing my dressing skills) .
Crocodile Spinach: Sauteed with garlic and then into a frittata with quinoa and port-infused Irish cheddar. Served with tempeh bacon, of course.
Pink Lady Apples: Snacked on straight and as a light lunch with some kind of beer-cheese. (Yes, I went a little cheese-mad at Trader Joe’s)
Satsuma Mandarins: Disappeared almost immediately as they are one of my top three favorite foods of all time.
Broccoli: Straight into the compost – more aphids than green stuff in this batch. So sad!
Kale and Collards: Immediately steamed and packed alongside quinoa and various lentil and chickpea dals from Tasty Bite, for several lovely lunches to-go.

Napa Cabbage in the Mist

I’ve simply given up on the lettuce, but now the abundance of napa cabbage means that it has basically become the new lettuce. (Hear that, trendsetters for ‘08? Napa Cabbage is the New Lettuce!)

But then, just in time for the new year, when no napa cabbage should be left forlorn, I remembered an old recipe that I think will ensure that I’ll be eating as much of that long, tender, elegant cabbage as Eatwell can throw at me. Turning once again to my beloved Asian Vegetables cookbook, I dug out a recipe I haven’t made in years for halibut steamed in packets of napa cabbage. This was the kind of recipe that makes a lasting impression; four or five years later, my mouth can still recall perfectly the incredible taste of the dish. I don’t eat fish anymore, but the part of the dish that stands out so brightly in my memory wasn’t the halibut or even the cabbage, but rather the amazing sauce tucked in the packets alongside the fish. What I ended up with – sans halibut – was so good I went back for thirds. I have definitely found the Official Napa Cabbage Recipe of 2008. Cheers!

Napa Cabbage with Shitake Mushrooms,
Ginger Matchsticks, and Red Miso-Sake Sauce

– 1 head napa cabbage
- 10-12 dried shitake mushrooms, soaked in hot water for 30 minutes
- 2 inches ginger, cut into “matchstick” sized pieces
- 4 T. red miso
- 2 T. mirin (sweet rice cooking wine)
- 4 T. sake (or to taste)
- 2-3 T. sugar (or to taste)
- 1 T. water or broth (or to taste)

Slice napa cabbage across the head into pieces. Unfurl the pieces and place in a steamer basket. Squeeze excess water from mushrooms and slice into thin strips. Put mushrooms and ginger into basket with cabbage, tossing to mix. Steam for ten minutes.

To make the sauce: combine red miso, mirin, sake, sugar, and water, until you have a tasty, sweet, slightly boozy concoction that makes your mouth water with delight. Make sure it’s not too salty or strong from the miso – you can add a bit more water or broth, keeping in mind the sauce will get thinner and more unwieldy the more water you add.

And now for my exciting food-blog-geek news! For my holiday presents this year, Duck tricked me out with all kinds of treats that I’ve been yearning after as I put together In My Box. The gorgeous crackle-glaze bowl in the photos above is from a huge assortment of beautiful dishes he got for me to spice up my food plating, and the FREE-FLOATING PHOTOS (a first here and which you may notice I am A LITTLE EXCITED about) come courtesy of my incredible new D-Flector, a miraculous portable photo studio background thingamajiggy which allows me, at long last, to take pictures of my food floating in the pure mists of empty space. I’m still just barely learning how to use all my new toys (the pics above are a bit more pixelly than I’d like, for example) but I am terribly excited and predict much beautiful food to come, just so I can have the pleasure of taking pictures of it in the mist!

Sweet Potatoes and Cabbages

Yum. Thai red curry with pillowy sushi rice. More winter comfort food, for a California girl raised on pan-Asian comfort food, that is.

Despite repeated okonomiyaki sessions, I still had a ton of napa cabbage. And an untouched Wakefield cabbage on top of that. What would I do with this festival of cabbage that wouldn’t require long periods of fermentation or the application of corned beef?

After mentally combining my many cabbages with what remained of my box – a few sweet potatoes and carrots – plus a tub of tofu and a couple cans of coconut milk from my recent trip to an actual grocery store, the direction dinner was heading in seemed clear.

Napa Cabbage

As the weather gets colder, I find myself with a hole in my belly that can only be filled by some kind of indefinable, completely yummy food. For me this mysterious ultimate craving usually falls into the savory category, and I do know that it should be hot, and have a soft, yielding texture.

I’ve had this huge napa cabbage sitting in my fridge since the previous box, and so I decided to see what my beloved Asian Vegetables cookbook had to offer. In the section for napa cabbage I found a recipe for okonomiyaki, which are Japanese savory pancakes. The recipe might as well have been subtitled “The answer to your winter food longings.”

I sliced up some of that napa cabbage along with a red onion I’d bought (because who can resist that color combo of pale green and lavender?). I mixed a few of my eggs with some broth and flour and tamari, stirred in the veggies, poured it all in a hot oiled pan, and scattered bits of my beloved tempeh bacon on top.

Then I cooked it, quartered and flipped it, let it cook through, and sprinkled it with toasted nori and sesame seeds.

Hot, savory, yielding. Stuffed with sweet, soft napa cabbage and red onions. Full of flavor from the seaweed and sesame. And I haven’t even mentioned the crazy dipping sauce made with ketchup, sake, and dried mustard!

(The recipe for okonomiyaki is beyond the “more”)