It might not sound sexy, but cabbage is the greatest of all winter veg, says columnist Debora Robertson. There’s no better time to get creative with it
My cooking year: January
I know you’re busy, but can we take a moment to consider the cabbage? Once synonymous with school dinners, filling the air with a damp fug of sulphur, in recent years it has – at last – been recognised for the winter hero it truly is. They’re versatile and reliably inexpensive, but it’s astonishing we once regarded cabbages as humble when you consider how beautiful they are, from the savoy cabbage (surely the Fortuny frock of the brassica world) to the sculptural and oh-so-fashionable hispi and frilly napa cabbage. There’s one for almost every dish, whether as the main or side. It is possibly the most rehabilitated vegetable of modern times.
I first learned to love cabbage in the early 1990s when I lived in Moscow. In a grey landscape, briefly broken by a golden onion dome or humongous statue of Lenin, my hungry eyes feasted on the halls of the Centralny Rynok (central market) each week, when I walked down the aisles of stalls filled with walnuts and dried fruit, strings of dried mushrooms, baskets of oranges and grapes from Georgia, muddy carrots and potatoes, apples and pears, shelves of rye bread and, yes, endless cabbages ready for shredding, stuffing, pickling.
One of the aisles contained huge barrels of pickled and fermented vegetables of all kinds, their prickly, bracing scent permeating the whole hall. The most popular of these was cabbage, of course, and every week I would fill a plastic bag, hoping it would last the week. It never did.
I used to shop in the company of my housekeeper, Katya. I know that sounds grand, but back in those days, they were obligatory for many foreigner residents. In a country where you treasured every bit of food you got your hands on, Katya taught me how to pick a good cabbage. You want one that feels firm and heavy for its size, with tightly bound leaves that show no sign of discolouration. It should smell fresh, not sulphurous, and the cut end should look recently cut, not dried out and woody. Essentially, you want one that my friend Fi describes as “squeaky fresh”.
Even though one of the simplest and most comforting side dishes of all is lightly cooked cabbage with butter, salt and black pepper, the greatest charm of the cabbage is how accepting it is of all manner of seasoning, from earthy cumin and bright fennel an
