Cabbage and Fermented Foods

 

The beautiful, fresh vegetables are pouring in right now. You can get cabbage, squash, zucchini, potatoes, green onions, lettuce, kale, swiss chard, fresh herbs, cucumbers, and the season's first scrumptious beans. There are always delicious baked goods, canned goods, handmade soaps and lotions, barbecue, and dried herbs. It's almost time for corn and tomatoes. You never know when someone will show up with the first small harvest of those summer gems. Be sure you don't miss out, and drop by every week to check what goodies everyone has!

Fantastic heads of local cabbages are coming out of the fields right now. 

Cabbage is a very familiar vegetable to many people, but that doesn't mean it has to be boring. You can eat it raw, lightly steamed or sautéed, braised, roasted, in casseroles, or fermented, but don't boil or microwave it. Boiling, like with pretty much any other vegetable, boils away many of the water soluble vitamins and nutrients and leaves your cabbage mushy and pallid. Microwaving destroys the healthy enzymes that make cabbage the nutritional powerhouse that it is.

Cabbage contains vitamins K, C, B1 and B6, folate, fiber, potassium, calcium, and manganese. It has cholesterol-lowering nutrients, making it great for maintaining heart health. Cabbage juice is a traditional and effective treatment for peptic (stomach) ulcers, and including cabbage in your diet is a good way to help maintain digestive health. 

One of my very favorite ways to enjoy cabbage is to braise it in the oven with either a dark beer or red wine. You could also stock or even just water as a braising liquid, but I love the rich flavor from using beer or wine. All of the alcohol content is destroyed during cooking. 

For a medium (2 lb) cabbage, quarter and core, then halve the quarters, leaving you with eight wedges. Arrange the quarters in a 9” x 13” baking dish so that they lay flat, barely touching each other. Scatter carrots chopped into 1/4” rounds and sliced onions over the cabbage. Drizzle with some olive oil and pour about a 1/4” of dark beer into the dish. Season with salt and pepper, cover tightly with foil, and bake for about 2 hours at 350 until the veggies are tender. If you use a smaller head or smaller wedges, the cooking time will be reduced. 

About half way through, turn the cabbage wedges. If the liquid is getting low, add more braising liquid. Once everything is tender, turn the heat up to 400, take off the foil, and cook for another 15 minutes or just until the vegetables being to brown. This original recipe can be found at “World's Best Braised Cabbage.”

Sautéing is a quick, easy, healthy way to cook cabbage. The basic recipe is super easy. Quarter and core the cabbage, then slice into 1/2” thick ribbons. Heat a skillet to medium-high heat, add some extra virgin olive oil or coconut oil, and let the oil heat up. Make sure you use a skillet large enough that the cabbage lays in the bottom in just a thin layer. Add the ribboned cabbage and then add about ¼ cup of stock or water. Cover and cook the cabbage for about 5 minutes. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

To dress up the simple sauté, you could add other chopped vegetables, like onions, peppers, or carrots. For a wholesome, meatless but fulling meal serve the dish with quinoa (pronounced “keen-wah”), a fantastic whole grain that cooks quickly and packs a nutritional punch, since it's a perfect protein. You can add exotic seasonings like cumin and coriander and pair it with curried potatoes for a delicious Indian-cuisine inspired dish. 

For a more decadent cabbage dish, try cabbage casserole with bacon and cheese. I usually make this dish with leftover rice. Combine lightly sautéed ribboned cabbage and onions, cooked rice, crumbled bacon, and crumbles of a strong flavored, creamy cheese like Blue cheese or Gorgonzola, with a sparing sprinkle of salt and a couple liberal rounds with freshly cracked pepper. Bake at 350 until the cabbage is tender; timing will depend on the size pan and amount of ingredients stuffed into it. Once the cabbage is tender, crank the heat up to 400 or 425 and lightly brown the top of the casserole.

A really fantastic way to augment of the wide range of nutrients in the whole raw cabbage is to make saurekraut or kimchi by the process of fermentation. Fermentation occurs when the sugars in food are broken down, resulting in lactic acid. The lactic acid lowers the pH (acidity level) of the food below the growth range of dangerous bacteria, preserving the food and all its nutrients without refrigeration.

This food preparation and preservation process can be carried out right in your own kitchen. Essentially all it takes is finely shredding your cabbage and other vegetables and packing them with salt in a ceramic or glass vessel and pressing them to release their juices. The juices mix with the salt to create a brine which covers the vegetables. You let the vessel sit for a few days, a few weeks, even a few months, until it acquires as strong a flavor as you desire. 

Lactic fermentation allows many nutrients to be more easily absorbed during the digestive process. Foods prepared by lactic fermentation add good bacteria to your stomach. That ecosystem of bacteria inside each of us is what is responsible for actually breaking down the food you eat into a form that can be absorbed by your body. Fermented foods also help balance your body's pH. The good bacteria absolutely vital for digestive health cannot thrive in a chronically acidified environment. The standard Westernized diet high in animal proteins, processed fats, and sugars leave our bodies chronically acidified.

Both traditional lore and peer reviewed studies agree that fermented foods are a boon to human health. Properly prepared, they are as delicious as they are nutritious. Local author, Sand Katz, is nationally known for his fermentation skills and knowledge. His book, Wild Fermentation:the flavor, nutrition, and craft of live-culture food is a great introduction to the world of fermenting foods, and it's available at the Liberty Library in the old high school building in Liberty.

Get some fresh, locally grown cabbage at the market this weekend, and delve into the culinary craft of creating your own fermented foods!