Sou fassum, the Provençal name, is known in French as chou farci à la Niçoise. It is a specialty of the region around Grasse. Traditionally, the stuffed cabbage leaves are placed in a net made of thick threads called a fassumier that is then lowered into a good chicken broth to be cooked. Although cabbage […]
Stew as the Wife of the Cordoban Farmer Would Make It
February 19, 2018 by 1 Comment
This delicious winter stew from Córdoba in Andalusia is called olla cortijera de Córdoba in Spanish and is long simmered cabbage and chickpea stew. Andalusians are quite fond of cumin as a spice. The plant was brought to Spain from North Africa and entered the cuisine. The famous Spanish Arab agronomist Ibn al-‘Awwam, who flourished […]
Country Soup-Rustic Corsican Soup for Winter
February 22, 2017 by Leave a Comment
This is the most famous of all the Corsican soups. The soup is simply called minestra which in the Corsican culinary pantheon is simple soupe paysanne, country soup. Although it’s called a soup, it’s meant to be so thick you could eat it with a fork. Shepherds would take some leftover with them into the […]
The Trick to One-pot Halloween Dinners
October 20, 2015 by Leave a Comment
Outside of the candy that the kids collect, Halloween may be the only American holiday that is not associated with a particular feast or recipe. In fact, I didn’t know until recently that Halloween wasn’t celebrated in America until the late 19th century when Irish immigrants brought the Oct. 31 celebration to the United States […]
Cabbage Lasagna with Braised Veal for a Cold Evening
March 30, 2015 by Leave a Comment
In the old days when I first started cooking I cooked exclusively from cookbooks and I never looked for “easy” recipes or quick recipes—especially on weekends—as I reveled in the all-day affair of cooking. I would look for a particularly involved recipe and I would test myself by following its intricate instructions. Frankly, that’s a […]
Making Cabbage Cool Again
January 28, 2015 by Leave a Comment
Cabbage is the Rodney Dangerfield of vegetables: It doesn’t get any respect. It gets a bad rap. Cabbage never gets mentioned as one of the hip vegetables like kale. It’s not a super-vegetable like broccoli rabe. It’s not an adorable vegetable like baby Brussels sprouts. It’s not a “cool” vegetable. It’s stodgy and old-fashioned. I […]
Great Simple Dishes Simply
March 10, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Everyone claims to want to cook simple food. As soon as we’re in the kitchen, things aren’t so simple. It’s actually hard to cook simple dishes because we cooks always want to fiddle or add things or just not stand around looking at “simple,” because simple doesn’t require much, that’s why it’s called simple. The […]
Tracking What’s Trending in the Kingdom of Kale
October 7, 2013 by Leave a Comment
How kale went from a cellar-dwelling vegetable to a pennant-winning one is an interesting story full of ups and downs throughout history. When I started cooking decades ago, kale was arguably the least popular vegetable on the American table, beloved only in soul food cookery, which is an expression I haven’t seen in years. Today, […]
Try Griddled Cabbage
July 1, 2013 by Leave a Comment
The vegetable bounty of summer should never leave one searching for recipes or wondering what to make. Keeping it simple often yields the best result. Take for instance a pan-roasted or griddled Savoy cabbage, that crinkly-skinned tender cabbage so popular with Italians. In the southern Italian region of Puglia, cavolo grigliata (griddled cabbage) is an […]
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