Really good (or addictive) cabbage
and a really wonderful community fundraising effort for LA Wildfire charities
Welcome to To Vegetables, With Love, a celebration of a vegetable life, less ordinary. ‘ Find archived recipes on my recipe index.
My book Tenderheart is available from Books are Magic, Kitchen, Arts and Letters, Book Larder, Bold Fork Books and also here or here.
This week’s recipe is for free for all.
This community is awesome. Really. In last week’s newsletter, I shared that I would be sharing 100% of $$ from new subscriptions that week to support LA Wildfires. I had no idea how much we would raise, but it felt like a good way for my community to show support. Well, we raised $3,513.49 through paid subscriptions in one week! I’m floored. Thank you to everyone who signed up. Since we raised way more than I anticipated, I have spread the funds around - on behalf of you all, I donated $1612.91 to Mutual Aid LA ($1500 plus $112.91 covering fees), $1500 to CORE (I am particularly drawn to the fact they are supporting immigrant communities with multilingual staff), and the remainder in smaller amounts to private GoFundMe campaigns, animal rescues and community initiatives such as this one by baker and cookbook author Rose Wilde.
Thank you to everyone for supporting my newsletter, new and existing. All of you make a huge difference and I’m so happy that we could come together to make a small difference. Vegetable lovers are the best people.
In recent months, I’ve noticed a dish called ‘addictive cabbage’ appearing on many New York menus, usually at Japanese or izakaya restaurants. I’m immediately drawn in, because…it’s cabbage… but also because I love a strong adjective when describing vegetables. The name also states the obvious - yes, cabbage is addictive.
On further investigation, the name addictive cabbage is a translation from its origin dish yamitsuki; in Japanese, yamitsuki means addictive. It’s a humble dish, barely adorned yet impossible not to eat compulsively. Uncooked cabbage is massaged in salt to tenderize it slightly and then dressed in garlic, sesame oil and seeds. The frugal ingredient list cuts no corners – it is all about imparting unequivocal umami to the robust leaves.
For me, the joy in this dish is the fact it is SO savoury, but also clean. It is a palate cleanser, an antidote to heavier foods. This complexity in everyday vegetables always excites me.
There are different recipes online, which vary in the amount of garlic – some use up to 10 cloves of garlic per pound of cabbage!! – and how the sesame seeds are treated – often the seeds are ground or smashed in a mortar and pestle – but the infectious part of this recipe is that it gives us a license to play with umami. There’s no such thing as too savoury.
My recipe has a sneaky teaspoon of vegetable stock paste. I used Better Than Bouillon Vegetable Stock Paste which offers a clean and rich umami. I’ve also used my trusted Vegeta vegetable stock powder, to great results.
I tested with a regular green cabbage. There is a particular joy in creating a dish so spectacular from the most ordinary and accessible version of a vegetable. If you have access to fancier cabbages, flat-topped Tendersweet, Taiwanese flathead, or conical caraflex (also called conehead or arrowhead) would work beautifully. You want a cabbage that will stay crisp to the bite after a little massage. Red/purple cabbage could to too tough? Some recipes, like this New York Times Cooking one, recommend napa/wombok. With such an easy recipe, it’s risk free to experiment.
Monday: Make this new and easy brown rice salad, with pickly celery and red onion, and if you’re lucky, there will be leftovers for a lunch or two.
Tuesday: In Oz, make this Charred Eggplant With Burrata and Fried Capers, or if you need warmth, Butternut Squash Congee With Chile Oil
Wednesday: Hump day needs noodles, specifically these Ginger and scallion oil noodles with baby bok choy
Thursday: Hot off the press, here’s a new sheet pan (baking tray) dinner; it’s a squash (pumpkin) coconut Thai-ish curry with tofu and greens
Friday: Mushroom ragu bianco from my archives, is a ‘white’ pasta sauce which is rich and comforting.
🥦 My cookbook, Tenderheart is for cooking vegetables, all year round. Pick up your copy here. It is also mostly vegan (or vegan-izable) and gluten-free adaptable.
Really good (or addictive) cabbage
© By Hetty Lui McKinnon for To Vegetables, With Love.
This cabbage in the fridge for 5 days, even longer. Bring it out as a snack before dinner (who else snacks before dinner? It is a habit of mine). I have been eating it with a bowl of hot rice – I love the temperature contrast of hot and cold. A fried egg with frizzled, golden edges and a runny yolk (like my mum made for me when I was little) would complete the experience. The cabbage would also go well on top of jook (congee) or savoury oats.
Serves 4
½ small green cabbage (750g / about 1 ½ pounds), core removed, leaves chopped into 5cm / 2-inch chunks
1 teaspoon salt (I used fine sea salt)
2 tablespoons toasted sesame seeds
2 medium garlic cloves, finely grated (I use microplane fine grater)
2 tablespoons toasted sesame oil
1 teaspoon vegetable stock paste or bouillon powder
Place the cabbage into a large bowl and scatter over the salt. Massage the salt into the cabbage, breaking up the chunks as you squeeze. Leave to soften for 5 to 10 minutes.
This is an optional step but I do it to re-energize the aromas of the already toasted sesame seeds. Heat a frying pan / skillet on medium heat for 2 minutes. Add the sesame seeds and toast, moving it around constantly with wooden chopsticks or spoon, until fragrant, 2 to 3 minutes.
Drain off any liquid from the cabbage. Taste it and if it tastes like a good salt level for you, move onto the next step. If it tastes too salty, rinse it, allow to drain and pat dry. How salty it is will depend on what type of salt you use. I used fine sea salt.
To the cabbage, add the garlic, sesame oil, vegetable stock paste or bouillon powder, sesame seeds and toss very well to combine - your hands will be the most effective tool here - until the cabbage is completely coated and the garlic is evenly distributed.
Allow to sit in the refrigerator for 15 minutes to 1 hour to allow the flavors to meld. Serve cold from the fridge for optimal crispness.
Keeps in the fridge, in an airtight container, for 5 to 7 days.
Io Vegetables, With Love is dedicated to vegetables and it is a joy to bring you a new recipe every week. Thank you to everyone who subscribes, especially to paid subscribers who make this work possible.
Yum yum… all the recipes sound delicious, thank you for sharing.congrats on the money raised, what an achievement.
I adore the sound of this! In Sydney (probably via New York restaurants) quite a few restaurants I've eaten at in the past couple of years have served variations on wood-fired cabbage. (Lennox Hastie's Gildas in Surry Hills had some sort soft fresh cheese layered through the leaves ... I wish I'd taken more notice of what it was!). How do you think a tiny bit of miso would work in your recipe in place of the vegetable stock paste or bouillon powder??