German Rotkohl: Braised Red Cabbage with Apple and Clove

Wed, 11 Sep 2024 10:41:00 +0000

The first time I made rotkohl properly, rather than tipping a jar of the supermarket version into a pan to heat through, I was shocked at how little it resembled what I’d been eating for years. Real rotkohl isn’t sweet-and-sour cabbage in the takeaway-Chinese sense. It’s deep, faintly spiced, and balanced on a knife-edge between sharp and sweet that a jar simply can’t replicate once the cabbage has been sitting in vinegar brine for months.

Colcannon: Ireland's Mash with Cabbage and Butter

Wed, 10 Jul 2024 08:07:00 +0000

There’s a specific kind of Irish family argument about whether colcannon should have cabbage or kale in it, and I’ve learned not to referee it. What everyone agrees on is the well of melted butter in the middle of the bowl — that part is not negotiable, and if you serve colcannon without it, someone’s granny will notice.

Colcannon is mashed potato that decided it didn’t need to be plain. Fold in tender cabbage and spring onion, loosen the whole thing with warm milk, and finish with more butter than feels reasonable until you’ve tasted it and understood why the quantity is exactly right. It sits at every big Irish family table, from Sunday roasts to Halloween, when it traditionally carried small charms hidden inside for whoever found them — a coin for wealth, a ring for marriage, a thimble for a spinster’s year ahead. The butter deserves its own mention too: Irish butter, Kerrygold being the most widely exported example, tends to carry a noticeably higher butterfat content and a deeper yellow colour than most supermarket butter elsewhere, a direct result of cows grazing on grass for most of the year rather than being fed largely on grain. That extra fat and the beta-carotene from the grass are exactly what make the melted well in the middle of a bowl of colcannon taste as rich as it does — a lower-fat butter will melt into something thinner and less luxurious sitting in that well.

Cabbage - vo.rs

German Rotkohl: Braised Red Cabbage with Apple and Clove

Colcannon: Ireland's Mash with Cabbage and Butter