Red or Green?

Have you been choosing red or green for your cabbage the past few weeks? And what do you do with your cabbage? It's such a versatile vegetable with SO many different ways to cook. AND it's a very nutritious veggie.

With the size of last weeks green pieces, we've definitely had alot of sauerkraut being pressed in our kitchen of late. Our favourite kraut recipe is the NT Latin American Sauerkraut. We use the 'pressed vegetable' method for fermenting veggies that I posted about last year in 'Culturing Vegetables'. The post gives you the very simple and highly effective method using basic household equipment that we use in our home to create health promoting cultured veggies. The NT Latin American Kraut uses; cabbage, carrots, onions, chilli's (fresh or dried) and oregano. If you have the NT book, you can find the Latin American Kraut recipe on page 93.

Another of our favourite green cabbage recipes comes form NT on page 358-359. Either the spicy or oriental stuffed cabbages. If you don't have NT - basically you can create the recipe by cooking a savory mince or lentil mix, adding a grain (preferably soaked/cooked), steaming some cabbage leaves, rolling a few spoonfuls of the mince into each leaf, lining up in a casserole/baking dish and topping with a sauce. The sauce can be as easy as diced organic tomatoes if you need a quick and easy meal. Bake in a moderate oven for about an hour and the final dish is DELICIOUS!

In this post, I thought I would share with you a family recipe. My German grandmother's red cabbage. It's a favourite dish in our family and one that is requested often during Autumn and Winter. The flavours of the various ingredients compliment each other so beautifully and the taste is just divine!

::German Red Cabbage::

Ingredients;
• 1 small red cabbage (shredded finely)
• 1-2 onion (diced)
• 4-6 rashes bacon (diced) - ours was made with the Free Range bacon Jane sources, which I must say is probably some of the best bacon I have ever tasted! If you are of the preference to avoid meat, then you can easily omit the bacon, but if you do eat meat - the bacon is a key part of the amalgamation of flavours, I find. I can always tell when the bacon is missing in the red cabbage!
• 1 green apple (or red if you have no green) grated
• 1T of rapadura
• 1T butter or coconut oil
• 1C red wine vinegar or apple cider vinegar

• 3 bay leaves
• 1t caraway seeds
• Himalayan salt
• Water if needed

Method;
• Fry onion and bacon in a large saucepan
• Add other ingredients and mix well
• Monitor moisture in pot and add a little water as needed to avoid sticking/burning in pan
• Turn heat mid-low and simmer lightly with lid on for about 20 minutes or until cabbage is cooked through
• Remove bay leaves
• Serve with whatever you please, but optimally served with Chicken Schnitzel, Spätzle and lots of gravy (on the Schnitzel and Spätzle not the red cabbage!)