Two "C's" : cabbage and chestnuts

When was the last time you ate cabbage, in a form other than coleslaw? Can't remember that, right? Now, why do you think that was? I have some ideas about why.

Let's face it. Cabbage has a reputation. It's "poor people food." It smells. There's no such thing as a small head of cabbage, and you're eating it forever.

All comments have some truth. But none of them is really sufficient to not eat the stuff. Yes, cabbate is poor people food, but there's a very simple reason for that. It's there in the winter, when nothing else is. It stores well, and it's filling. And let's look at some other foods that WERE poor people food: fava beans. Truffles. Foie gras. Yup, truffles were foraged food, and foie gras arose out of the need to use every bit of the animal. Oysters. There was a time when oysters were tossed to the poor. And the fact that food is associated with one economic class or another, does not make it taste better or worse. Get over that.

It smells. Yes, it does if you cook it wrong. Like all members of the cruciferous vegetable family, you have to cook cabbage in tons and tons of water. If you don't, the sulfurs will concentrate, and you will get that smell that you hate. Broccoli, cauliflower, brussel sprouts, are all in that family. You can cook cabbage in plenty of water, and NOT FOR TOO LONG, and you won't have that problem. Trust me.

That actually leads right into the third issue, which is the size of a head of cabbage. Again, this is related to our obsession with "bigger is better." If you go to a farmers' market, you will see cabbages in various sizes. ASK. You can get smaller ones.

To a certain extent, the "head cabbages" are interchangeable: green, red and that lovely crinkly one, called Savoy. I can taste differences. I think savoy is sweeter, and I think red is more "vegetal," and the green one is the blandest one of them all, but these are very small degrees of difference. To a very large degree, they are interchangeable, as they are in this recipe. Later, when I post a recipe for stuffed cabbage, I would stay away from red cabbage, simply because of the tendency of the pigment to bleed.

Onto chestnuts. There was a time when chestnuts were a very , VERY important crop for farmers and foragers. Then, blight struck chestnut trees, and there are almost none left in the United States. For a while, there WERE none. Now, there is a bit of a resurgence, and you CAN buy native, or maybe even local chestnuts . Get them if you can. The stuff you buy on a street corner come from China, for the most part, and they aren't very good. Chestnuts do contain a fair amount of fat, and they go rancid.

Prepping chestnuts is difficult. You will cut your fingers, curse, and spend way more time on it than you want. So, here's a suggestion: buy them already prepped. You can buy them frozen in vacupacks, or you can buy vacuumed jars, or you can buy them in cans, in liquid. For the most part, I find them interchangeable. Many cooks do not agree, and say that the vacupacks are the only way to go. They are also the most expensive. In the recipe that follows, you can use any variety, just make sure you drain those in water really well.

To me , the combination of chestnuts and cabbage is wonderful. I learned this recipe from one of the Chez Panisse cookbooks, and it was for red cabbage. By all means, use that, but I use either savoy or green, and I like it better. One reason is the color contrast. The brown of the chestnuts really disappears against the reddish purple of the red cabbage, and while this may not be a problem with you, I like the contrast of green and golden brown. It really is your call.

There are other points to consider in this recipe, and I'll lead you through it.

You need a pound of chestnuts, before they are prepped. That's probably about 12-13 ounces of prepped chestnuts. You also need a small cabbage, maybe 2 pounds, 2.5 pounds max. Then you need a few tablespoons of butter, or , as Chez Panisse recommends, duck fat.

Do you have duck fat in your fridge right now? Use the butter.

You also need 1/2-3/4 cups of "sweet wine." This does NOT mean dessert wine. What it means is the kind of wine that is just a bit on the sweet side. Some gewurtztraminers are like that, as are rieslings. You probably have a bottle of wine that you dont' want to drink because it's too sweet. That's what you want. If you don't have that around, why don't you take the same amount of white wine, like sauvignon blanc, and combine it with a few tablespoons of sweet sherry or port? You also need salt and pepper to taste, and some vinegar. Now , CP recommends sherry vinegar, and that's fine. For me, I prefer either champagne vinegar, or balsamic vinegar .

Slice up the cabbage into shreds that are about the size you would want for coleslaw. Melt the fat in a pan, and add the cabbage, with some salt. Leave it alone for a few minutes, then start turning it, until the cabbage begins to soften. This is one where you have to make the call on how soft you cook the stuff. The cabbage will cook much more quickly if you cover the pan that you're cooking it in, for a few minutes. Watch how much it shrinks. Taste it, for salt. Then add your wine, with the lid off. You want to cook the liquid down very far, and keep on turning the cabbage to get the nice sweetness of the wine on it.

While this is happening, break up the chestnuts, and saute them in some more fat until they begin to brown. Then add those to the chestnuts. Again, check the salt and pepper. Now is the time to also add some vinegar, to get the "spark" to it. You know what I mean. You recognize that little sting from vinegar in coleslaw. That's what you want. If you want sweetness without more wine, shave an apple into it and just stir it together. Finish everything by cooking until it gets very, very soft.

This goes real well with serious "red" meats like duck and pork or even lamb. Honestly, I like it enough to eat it by itself, just out of a bowl.

Give it a try. You'll find yourself liking something that you may not think you'd like. Betcha you'll make it a second time.