Thursday, December 16, 2010

Real Time Ribs and Cabbage 3



This recipe goes back to my mom's mom. It's a classic German preparation. The fancy formatting I think is thanks to some ancient computer recipe program that my brother had--I'm sure that was printed out at least a couple of decades ago. My mom would most often serve this with spareribs, too.




The apples, though wizened, are absolutely fine for a preparation like this. In fact, they've developed a ton of flavor and aroma sitting around getting wrinkled these past few weeks. No cosmetically perfect New Zealand grocery store specimen would even come close.



I used my trusty Benriner, Japanese mandoline, which made short work of the cabbage:



And the apples, which I shredded up skin and all (unusally pristine within, for Bide-A-Wee apples):



One small liberty I took with the recipe was to use some local maple sugar (from near Connorsville, Wisconsin), instead of white sugar. Thinking it would be sweeter than regular sugar, I halved the amount to start with. I can always adjust the sweet/sour balance later. Oh, and of course I used our own apple cider vinegar.



All together in the pot and simmering away now--and I just checked it to find it had run out of water, so I added a bit more, and also more salt. Another 15 minutes should do it. This is not the sort of vegetable dish that you want to cook al dente.

2 comments:

low said...

I just made this as a side to some pasta carbonara, and it went well with the ham I used. The cabbage is bright and sweet. (I added a little lemon juice.)

Thanks!
Low

Trout Caviar said...

Thank you, Low, for the report. I'm delighted that you made my mom's cabbage and enjoyed it. She'll be happy to hear it, too!

Best~ Brett