Red vs. purple

Monday, January 15, 2007

My German part of the cookbook shelf is mighty handy on potato day, but is proving useless for rice day. What do they eat in Marrakesh when it snows? OK, maybe not there, but it snows in Tokyo. Maybe I should learn to make sukiyaki, one of my father’s few positive memories of the Korean War.

At any rate, I made red cabbage Monday night. Why we (and the Germans) call it red, I’ll never know. It really is purple, even more so when you cook it. I like the way the red cabbage matches the colored page borders for the vegetable section in my Dr. Oetker Schulkochbuch perfectly.

1 kilo Rotkohl. I chopped my cabbage, without weighing it, since I want to use the whole head. 3 mittelgroße saure Äpfel. Apples here are much bigger, so I grab the wrinkliest one out of the bottom of the bowl and chop it up. 2 mittelgroße Zwiebeln. Again, one hunking American onion will do the trick, and it too submits to the knife. All this chopping is doing me good, as I contemplate how I will get to orchestra rehearsal—can I walk 2 miles with a violin on my back? It’ll make a great story/guilt trip for my grandkids.

50g Schweineschmalz. Sorry, Herr Doktor, the best I can do is bacon. (I love the way this classic vegetable dish has now lost its vegetarian status.) I always start with the onion and bacon so I can get them sizzling while I chop the rest and dig in the cupboard for all the odd things that follow. I’m not kidding, it really is a hodge-podge of things that make you wonder how they ever came to put them all together: 1 Lorbeerblatt (a bay leaf), 3 Gewürznelken (cloves), 3 Wacholderbeeren (juniper berries—I found these in a supermarket in the UK), Salz (salt), frisch gemahlenen Pfeffer (freshly ground pepper), Zucker (sugar), 2 EL Essig (vinegar, I use apple cider vinegar), 3 EL Johannisbeergelee (currant jelly, but I usually use lingonberry), 125 ml Wasser (water) to simmer the whole thing in.

Winter. Kale and roots. Cabbage, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, potatoes, beets, carrots. I’m leaning toward roots—and dreading rice days (think of all the world cuisines that are rice dominant, then think about the sunny factor). Perhaps I’m attracted to roots because underground is a great place to hibernate, and this weather makes me feel like hibernating.