White cabbage pie

I meant to publish this yesterday to keep with my blogging schedule, but I had my favourite Sister visiting for the weekend, so I was busy. We had a lovely time celebrating the fact that she finished her final exams for med school last week. We had dinner at the Oak Bistro, which in my opinion is one of the better restaurants in Cambridge, and I also cooked some stuff at home, including a lovely rhubarb and strawberry crumble. We went for a long run, or more correctly Sis did the running and I went along for a bikeride, the only way for me to keep up with her! So when I fell into bed last night blogging was the furthest thing from my mind and I just fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

Today's recipe is another dish I made for our vegetarian week last week. The recipe is based on a recipe from the Finnish baking blog Kinuskikissa, although I have made some modifications to it. It is called Georgian cabbage pie, and I have had similar dishes before back home in Finland which consist of cabbage in a tomato puree sauce with gherkins and they have been called Georgian too. And this is Georgia as in the country, not the US state. I have no idea whether this is just a dish that exists in Finland and has for some reason been christened "Georgian" or whether it actually has some Georgian origin. Be it this way or that, it's really delicious, and cabbage is super cheap as well so this is a great dish to make. 

White cabbage pie (serves 6-8):
1 tbsp olive oil
1/2 head of white cabbage
1 onion
2 cloves of garlic
300 ml sour cream
2 eggs
2 tsp mustard
1 tbsp cider vinegar
3 tbsp tomato puree
1/2-1 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp smoked paprika
1/2 cup chopped gherkins
black pepper (and salt if desired)
100 g mature cheddar
1 shortcrust pastry (I used store bought as I was feeling lazy)

The howto:
Finely chop the onion, garlic and cabbage. In a large saucepan, heat the olive oil and cook the onion for a few minutes. Add the garlic and cabbage, and let cook for a few minutes while stirring. Add about a cup of water and put a lid on the saucepan. Let cook, and stir a bit every few minutes, until cabbage starts to soften, about 10 minutes. 

Preheat oven to 200 degrees C. Line a deep pie tin with the pastry. Mix all the remaining ingredients apart from the cheddar. When the cabbage is done, let cool for a while (about 10-15 minutes), drain and mix with the rest of the filling. Pour onto the pastry. Top with grated cheese. Bake for 40 minutes until the filling has set and the top is golden. 

The verdict:
I know a combination of white cabbage and gherkins sounds really weird, but it actually tastes great. It also works really well as a stew, but here I have encased it all in crumbly shortcrust pastry and topped it with sinful amounts of cheese to make it seem less healthy to the other half of the household who didn't think vegetarian week was the best idea ever. The pie freezes really well, and was great for lunch at work.

Finnish baked cabbage casserole

I am finally online again! A whole week without any access to the Internet. You know you are out in the sticks when there is no 3G... But now New Home is finally online and I can get back to blogging. Although I can't say I had much time to miss the Interwebs, every evening has been so full of unpacking, organising, re-organising and all the other stuff that is needed to get settled in the new place. And admittedly I do spend quite a bit of time just floating around, walking from room to room and around the garden, talking to the trees (as instructed by the previous owners) and marvelling at the garden. I'm still convinced that any day now someone will show up at the door and tell me that I have no right to live here, that it has all been a mistake, the money we paid wasn't good or the bank has withdrawn the mortgage. Every time we pull up to the driveway and I see the house I still cannot believe I actually live here. For good. No-one can make me leave. Me and the Culinary Consultant tell each other every day that we are the luckiest people in the world. But there is so much to do. We have no curtains, hardly any furniture, the Batchelor pad still has several car-loads of stuff in it, not to even mention all the painting and cleaning that needs to be done before it can be let. But we are trying to do a little bit every day, it's just that I would much rather be at home trying to come up with new and exciting ways of using up all the tomatoes from the greenhouse instead of scrubbing walls. But there is a season for everything.

We were supposed to have our first BBQ on Friday. I have said from the start that the first thing I want us to buy for the garden is a BBQ, everything else can wait (although we do have a few pieces of garden furniture as well). So the Culinary Consultant set to putting together the thousand pieces that were supposed to become a BBQ. Which it in fact did. However, after I had already prepared some potato salad and cole slaw, with our chicken, burgers and sausages waiting in the fridge, we realised the firelighters were nowhere to be found, and probably still back at the old place. So we had to admit defeat and pop the burgers and sausages in the oven instead. When we finally had food in front of us I can't say we particularly cared about the fact that it wasn't proper BBQ, we were so hungry. However, this back story about the cole slaw explains why I have loads of cabbage in the fridge, which needed to be used up. So I made kaalilaatikko, a Finnish oven baked cabbage casserole. The recipe is from Pirkka, a very popular website in Finland for recipes. 

Cabbage casserole (kaalilaatikko, serves 5-6):

1 kg (approximately) cabbage (usually white, I used a mix of about 3/4 white and 1/4 red because that was what I happened to have)

2 onions

500 ml (2 cups) water

1 1/2 tsp salt

1 tbsp olive oil

500 g organic mince

2 tsp marjoram

black pepper to taste

3 tbsp syrup (Finnish syrup is dark, and I substitute by 2 tbsp golden syrup and 1 tbsp treacle)

50 ml (about 1/4 cup) risotto rice

2-3 tbsp butter

Before going into the oven

The howto:

Chop the cabbage and onions. Bring water to a boil, add cabbage, onion and salt. Let cook for half an hour. Meanwhile cook the mince in a frying pan in the olive oil. Preheat oven to 200 degrees C (392 F). When cabbage has cooked for half an hour, take it off the heat (don't drain), add spices, syrup and meat and mix. Butter an oven proof dish (I didn't and had no problem getting the food out anyways) and pour rice on the bottom. Spread cabbage and meat mixture (along with the liquid in the pan) on the rice in an even layer, and add a few knobs of butter on top. Bake on the bottom rack of the oven for about 50 minutes. Serve with lingonberry jam.

The verdict:

This is a really cheap and relatively quick and easy meal to make. I pre-pack it into single servings to take with me as lunch to work, or freeze as single servings. I like how the cabbage turns sweet when baked in the oven, obviously aided by the syrup. I am used to a kaalilaatikko having a bit more rice than this recipe, but I guess in times of cutting carbs it is sensible choice. It tasted pretty much just as I remembered. I didn't use to like cabbage foods when I was a kid (although not sure any children do) but now I really like it. Be it cole slaw or casserole, it is really tasty.

Braised cabbage with apple

I should have called my blog Ugly Food. Not only do I not have the time, the patience or the daylight to set up my food nicely for beautiful pictures. I also don't have an eye for aesthetics at all, unfortunately. So I'm guessing you are not reading this blog for the pretty pictures. I have been feeling very guilty about the crappy pictures on the blog. But then I decided I would stop stressing. This is what the food actually looks like in my kitchen. This is what I eat when I desperately need some food, any food, when I get home from the gym and am starving. For beautiful food pictures, there are so many other blogs. And I do appreciate them, oh so very much. But until I live in an apartment where it's at least theoretically possible to take pictures in daylight (and when I have a job which doesn't keep me away from home for all daylight hours and then some), the pictures will be what they are.

Still, even given the horrible quality of the pictures, this food is really not one of the pretty ones. Maybe I should set up a Pinterest board of my most disgustingly looking foods. This sweet potato and lentil stew would be one of the top contenders, as is today's recipe of braised cabbage with apple. But you will have to trust me when I say, whatever all my foods lack in beauty, they most certainly make up for in flavour. Otherwise they would not be here. I have given up so much in the way of food, to try and live a more healthy life. I have (almost completely) given up bread, pasta, rice, cheese, sugar, chocolate, well... pretty much everything good. So one thing I'm not willing to compromise is the flavour of the foods I'm cooking. I'm always browsing Pinterest and food blogs for new flavour combinations I wouldn't think of myself, and this recipe certainly is one of those. I would never think of putting that much cider vinegar into anything I cook. But I had to give it a try, although I was a sceptic. And evidenced by the admittance of this recipe into my blog, you can probably guess that it turned out a winner.

I have talked about food kismet before. That feeling of the world just klicking into place when you happen upon a recipe for something you have all the ingredients for in your kitchen. And I'm on a mission to try and use up as much of my stockpiled food as possible.  I don't want to end up in three years time with a truckload of tins which are out of date. I hate wasting food. That's what I learned at home. Don't throw food away. Ever. Leftovers can always be re-used in some dish or another if you are clever. So I absolutely hate it if I have to throw away anything that has once been edible. It just takes a bit of planning ahead. I feel like I've failed badly in my planning if things go to waste. Obviously, if I had a somewhat bigger freezer, things would be much easier as most food freezes quite well. I like to cook big batches of food, and freeze individual servings, so that they are easy to take away to work for lunch or leave in the fridge in the morning for a quick home-cooked microwave dinner. Anyway, my point, which I almost lost in all that pointless jabber, was that this recipe was really the right recipe at the right time. It seems like a head of white cabbage has lived in my fridge for way too long, and I have been meaning to use it up but never quite found the right thing to cook. Then bang! There it is, in my blog feed. Braised cabbage with apple from Little B Cooks. I even had a left over Granny Smith apple, which also needed to be used up asap. And I had a can of apple cider which has lived in my kitchen so long I almost tend to think it has always been there. I wouldn't dare drink it anymore, but figured it would still do for cooking.

This recipe is copied almost unaltered from Little B Cooks, so please head on over there to see the much prettier picture, and to check out the great blog. The original says this recipe serves four, which maybe it does when it comes to normal human beings, but for me this was only enough for two sides. And also, half of the recipe only contains 170 kcal, so I say, go for it.

Braised cabbage with apple from Little B Cooks (serves 2):
10 g butter
1 big onion
1 big apple (I had a Granny Smith lying around)
1/2 medium head of cabbage (I ended up with 266 g of cabbage in the pan)
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup apple cider
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
Salt and pepper for seasoning

According to my estimate, one serving (half of the recipe) contains 170 kcal (4g fat, 28 g carbs (of which 17 g sugar) and 2.6 g protein).

The howto:
Finely slice onion, apple and cabbage. Heat the butter in a big skillet or saucepan, and cook onion until translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the apple slices, and cook another minute or so. Add the cabbage, and give it a good stir and let cook for minute, and then add the apple cider vinegar and cider. Let cook until cabbage is softening, and almost all of the liquid has evaporated. For me this took about 20 minutes, as I had sliced the cabbage quite fine. To finish, add balsamic vinegar, and season with salt and pepper. Stir to combine, and let cook for a final few minutes. 

The verdict:
I was a bit sceptical about the whole thing when I chucked in the entire quarter of a cup of cider vinegar. I was certain the dish would turn out weird and vinegary and a bit bitter. But I was so very, very wrong. When I had my first taste, I was completely sold. I love the sweet and sour combination, and that was certainly what this dish was all about. The lovely sweetness from the onions, apples and the cider, and the tang from the vinegar. It was really good. If, for some crazy reason, you happen not to be a huge fan of cabbage, I think this is a great recipe to get into cabbage. It doesn't taste very cabbage-y, so it's a bit of a soft start into the world of cabbage. Cabbage is so great, it has beta-carotene, vitamin C and fiber, and it's really cheap and low calorie food. Just remember to cook it properly to avoid problems of the windy persuasion. 

I served the cabbage as a side with fruity pulled pork. And felt very German, eating pork and cabbage. But it is a great combination. And my fruity pork is rather sweet too, as it has pineapple in it. It's a bit like this recipe for fruity pork, but I left out the raisins, and instead of cooking pork cutlets, I used a big chunk of pork loin. Then everything gets to hang out in the crock pot over night, and out comes this amazingly delicious and super tender pork.  I thought the combination was really good, if I say so myself. But I am a big fan of sweet food. And I like it that I can cook lots of sweet dishes without adding any sugar, but just by using the natural sugar from the fruits. This is a dish I will most certainly make again, probably pretty soon as I still have the other half of that cabbage in my fridge...