Ingredients
Preparation
Bland
Step 1
Try adding any or all of the following three seeds to the cooking water: dill, mustard, and sesame
Discolored
Step 2
Red cabbage sometimes turns purple or blue during cooking. Add 1 tablespoon vinegar to the cooking water and it will turn red again.
Not enough
Step 3
Cold cabbage (slaws and salads) can be filled out with lettuce, shredded carrots, and diced celery, and it combines beautifully with pineapple (top with chopped nuts), apples (dice with the peel on, and add some horseradish to the dressing, starting with 1 teaspoon and tasting), and pears (add 1 teaspoon curry powder for each cup of pears to the dressing and top with a small mound of plumped raisins).
Step 4
Hot cabbage can be sliced up into smaller pieces (assuming it was in wedges) and put into a baking dish. This is a messy job, but don’t worry; it will come out looking all right. Pour cheese sauce or melted cheese over it all. Run it under the broiler until it just begins to brown. Have any bacon crumbles? Too bad; all right, decorate with nuts (such as toasted almonds), sliced olives, or good old paprika. Perhaps a shake or two of caraway seeds.
Old
Step 5
Add a pinch of salt to each cup of the cooking water. This will help elderly cabbage retain what flavor it has left during cooking.
Overcooked
Step 6
Make cabbage soup. You can find a recipe in any general cookbook, or if you’d like life to be incredibly simple, just stir it into a can of cream of something soup made with milk. To make it a bit fancier, top each serving with a piece of cheese toast (like for French onion soup) or just a sprinkling of Parmesan or some toasted almonds.
Step 7
Alternatively, drain the cabbage very well by patting it with paper towels after draining in a colander. If it survives this treatment, it is probably edible as is. Season it with garlic salt and pepper, and toss it with butter in a warmed bowl, if you do that sort of thing.
Smelly
Step 8
The old wives’ remedy to prevent cooking cabbage from stinking up the entire block is to put a piece of bread, especially a thick slice from the end of the loaf, in the pot along with the cabbage. Rye bread seems to work the best, but any sort will have some effect in this antipollution campaign.
Step 9
If the cabbage smell is already everywhere in the house, there is a good way to overcome it, if you like the smell of cloves. The odor of cloves tends to blot out the odor of cabbage. Produce eau de clove by simmering three or four whole cloves in a pan with vinegar in it. If you then decide that the cloves smell worse than the cabbage, you’re out of luck.
Too much
Step 10
For raw cabbage, wrap it well in plastic wrap or aluminum foil. It will keep for a week if it is fresh. So worry about it next Thursday.
