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.