Cream-Braised Green Cabbage

I’m a bit scattered these days. If you’ve spoken with me lately, I’ve likely told you about my recent battles with sleeplessness, but what I probably haven’t told you, what I had been waiting to tell you so that I could do so in one swift, confident sentence, instead of one long explanatory paragraph, is this: I’ve been at work on a book proposal for a food memoir—a Bon Appétempt book.

In some ways, I’ve been down this road before and didn’t want to divulge this fact until the proposal had been sold, and I could just make a giant layer cake, throw my hands up and announce the book deal. But, as I keep learning over and over again, getting what you want out of creative endeavors is never as simple as you hope them to be. It always takes five times longer than you’d planned and is ten times harder than you’d anticipated. So, instead of celebratory, self-assured cake, I bring you workaday, hopeful cabbage.

I had been eyeing this cream-braised cabbage recipe that Molly Wizenberg offers up in her book, A Homemade Life, for a while now, but had been waiting for the right cold day to make it. When gray clouds and rain set in about a week ago, I knew it was time. I picked up a small head of green cabbage and heavy cream at the grocery store. Only, the very next day, the day I’d planned to make the dish, in classic Los Angeles fashion, it was shockingly hot and sunny—not exactly cream and cabbage weather. I’d spent the morning and afternoon in a tizzy—the kind when no sooner had I hung up the phone, I was dialing again, afraid to be alone with myself for longer than a few moments, afraid what that might actually feel like.

At around four o’clock, I realized that we had no good ingredients for a decent hot-weather dinner. I started thinking about what else I might make, when something in me told me to stop thinking and just make the cabbage.

I’m so glad I listened. Once I began—once I turned on some music, did the dishes/cleaned the kitchen (yes, I pre-clean, what of it?), and started in on the simple act of washing the cabbage leaves, I could feel the tension leaving my body. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not always this therapeutic in my kitchen, but that day, that moment, I needed a break from the rapid-fire thoughts shooting around in my brain box. I needed to focus on something else, and if that something happened to smell like buttery, nutty, toasty cabbage, I was okay with that.

When I re-made the recipe (so that Matt could take the photos in order to share this miracle cabbage with you), I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts, On Being with Krista Tippett. Ms. Tippett was speaking with the late Irish poet and philosopher, John O'Donohue, who at one point, said the following:

“But for me, philosophically, stress is a perverted relationship to time. So that rather than being a subject of your own time, you have become its target and victim, and time has become routine. So at the end of the day, you probably haven't had a true moment for yourself… to relax in and to just be. Because, you know, the way in this country—there's all the different zones. I think there are these zones within us as well. There's surface time, which is really a rapid-fire Ferrari time.”

Surface time! So what I’ve been doing has a name! Something must have gone off in the host, Krista Tippett, as well, because she chimed in: “Yes, and over-structured.” Exactly, Krista! We fill our days with over-structured, surface-time. I think this is partly why making this heavy-cream-braised cabbage on a hot, sunny day was so good for me. On a practical level, the two didn’t belong together, but on another level, a level that was meant to soothe and restore me, they did. And if I hadn’t listened to that part of me that was begging to just start cooking and stop thinking, I may never have discovered this.

So, if stress is indeed a perverted relationship to time, well then, count me as a total pervert. I take on project after project and then rush to distribute them into the universe. And when things don’t go as quickly or as smoothly as I’d like, I become discouraged and anxious, which leads to sleeplessness, which leads to grumpiness, which has a marked, negative impact on the work and everything else.

Mr. O'Donohue explains how one of his friends does a meditation where he first imagines the surface of the ocean; it’s restless and unsettled. Then, he imagines slipping down deep below the waves “where it's still and where things move slower.” Like all of us, I have many structures in my life, but probably none quite so rigid as my day job and the weekly Bon Appétempt posts. And while I love this latter arrangement, while it gets me through many a week, I also want each and every post to be thoughtful and somehow better than the one before it. And in order to get there, I believe I need to let go of my weekly schedule for just a bit—in order to wander and wonder more, in order to relax and just be—under the sea, if you will.

The good thing about not being able to sleep is that I’ve gotten to do a lot of bonus reading. One of these nights, I picked up A Homemade Life and reread the chapter with the cabbage recipe, curious as to why something so plain had appealed to me so much. Wizenberg writes: “Cabbages may be homely, hard-headed things, but with a little braising, they’re bewitching. Cut into wedges and cooked slowly in a Jacuzzi bath of cream, they wind up completely relaxed, their bitter pungency washed away and replaced with a rich, nutty sweetness.”

Friends, we have quite a few funny cooking videos to shoot, Paris to explore (only one month away!), and beautiful cakes to mess up; I won’t be gone long. I’ll be surprised if I last more than two weeks without you, but when I do return, I hope to be a little more relaxed and a little sweeter, just like this cabbage.

See you soon!

Cream-Braised Green Cabbage via Molly Wizenberg's A Homemade Life
1 small green cabbage (about 1 1/2 pounds)
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/4 teaspoon salt, plus more to taste
2/3 cup heavy cream
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

First, prepare the cabbage. Pull away any bruised leaves and trim its root end to remove any dirt. Cut the cabbage into quarters, and then cut each quarter in half lengthwise, taking care to keep a little bit of the core in each wedge. (The core will help to hold the wedge intact, so that it doesn't fall apart in the pan.) You should wind up with 8 wedges of equal size. (She also notes that if you've chosen a larger cabbage, just be sure that each wedge is no thicker than 2 inches at its outer edge. Otherwise, the cabbage won't cook properly.)

In a large (12-inch) skillet, melt the butter over medium-high heat. Add the cabbage wedges, arranging them in a single crowded layer with one of the cut sides down. Allow them to cook, undisturbed, until the downward facing side is nicely browned, 5 to 8 minutes. She likes hers to get some good color here, so that they have a sweetly caramelized flavor. Then, using a pair of tongs, gently turn the wedges onto their other cut side. When the second side has browned, sprinkle the salt over the wedges, and add the cream. Cover the pan with a tight-fitting lid, and reduce the heat so that the liquid stays at a slow, gentle simmer. Cook for 20 minutes, then remove the lid and gently, using tongs, flip the wedges. Cook for another 20 minutes, or until the cabbage is very tender and yields easily when pierced with a thin, sharp knife. Add the lemon juice, and shake the pan to distribute it evenly.

Simmer, uncovered, for a few minutes more to thicken the cream to a glaze that loosely coats the cabbage. Serve immediately, with additional salt at the table.

Oyster Stew with Mashed Potatoes

This was my first Christmas as an adult with a real tree (and a real tree stand). In November, Matt and I had grand plans to go to one of those farms where you can chop down your own tree, but as December moved onward without our schedules coordinating for such an outing, Matt, my Hanukkah-celebrating husband, decided to take on the task of acquiring and setting up the tree all by himself. In retrospect, as the lone lifetime Christmas celebrator in the family, I should have gone over a few things with him beforehand—like the understood tree-to-room-size ratio, e.g., Times Square gets a giant tree because Times Square is a giant space; an ant gets a tiny pine needle because it’s all that can fit inside the anthill. And then there is the whole tradition of trimming the tree with friends and family along with a glass of eggnog and Christmas music. But I took all of this knowledge for granted, left him to it, and had the wonderful shock of coming home to a completely decorated, towering tree in our living room.

This is Matt and this is one of the many reasons I love him. He tackled the Christmas tree like a challenge and presented it to me in all of its fully-executed glory. It served us quite well. But a few days ago, the tree was looking less-than-healthy and ready to be excused. Against tradition (I have no childhood memories of taking the ornaments off the tree.), we de-trimmed it together. And that’s when I realized that the ball ornaments he’d bought to decorate our first tree were plastic. I don’t know why this surprised me so much except for the fact that growing up, all of our ball ornaments were made of glass. In Matt’s defense: “I don’t know. I had a couple of hours to decorate an enormous tree and Target was selling this giant box of ornaments.”

I wish I had photos of us getting this tree out of the back door of our apartment. Branches were snapping left and right, and when it was finally out, our kitchen had become a spitting image of Sherwood Forest. (I watched Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves recently.) Once it was outside, we were faced with another challenge. What do you do with a Christmas tree when you’re done with it? In the suburbs where my parents live, I faintly remember a “Tree pick-up day” or something like that. Well, sans Googling/knowledge of our community’s tree removal services/policies, we took it to the dumpster where we take our regular trash, which is located in an alley behind our unit’s garages, which serves, along with the alley itself, as a bit of a magnet to members of West Hollywood’s homeless population. Once in the alley, instead of tossing the tree inside one of the dumpsters, we propped it up against the wall on the opposite side of the alley. Please forgive us if this is your Christmas pet peeve. In the morning, it was New Year’s Eve, and I had an 8am spinning class to attend. I opened the garage door and reversed the car to find our large Christmas tree still propped against the wall, only now it was thoughtfully decorated with purple ornaments very similar to the ones Matt had bought. 

I called Matt to tell him, and he divulged that the previous night he had also thrown away some of the excess ornaments, the bulk of which were purple. In Matt’s defense: “There were just so many of them.” And so, we theorized that while we slept, a homeless person went through the dumpster, found the ornaments, and trimmed the tree.

I don’t know why exactly I’m telling you this story. I can’t find a way to tie it into the delicious oyster stew I made. I can’t even tie it into a way of summing up 2011 and wishing you a happy 2012. All I can say is that it seemed like a story worth sharing and is one I keep thinking about. 

*

Okay. I bought 10 oysters for Christmas Day without knowing what I was going to do with them. So, on Christmas Eve, when I opened my Hanukkah gift from my brother and sister-in-law and found Cooking in the Moment, and soon thereafter found Andrea Reusing’s uber simple oyster stew recipe, our Christmas dinner appetizer was born.

Perhaps calling it uber simple isn’t quite fair. There is the process of shucking a lot of oysters and doing it in such a way that you reserve as much of the surrounding oyster liquor as possible. With help from Matt, I managed to do this. I also managed to reserve a lot of shell fragments. (How do the professionals do it without getting all those little shell bits in there? Practice? Magic?)

After this step, things get easier. You simmer some cream, add a pinch of cayenne and a bit of salt and pepper. Next, you add the sea-salty oyster liquor, bring it to a simmer again, and then add the oysters for about 30 seconds. You divide this into warm bowls where a softened tablespoon of butter awaits, and voila, a decadent oyster stew. But wait, I didn’t stop there. While Matt shucked a few oysters, I boiled some potatoes that I had on hand. And while the cream was simmering, I drained and mashed them with just a bit of butter and milk. And then, after I’d eaten the oysters out of my stew and had nothing left but the delicious, creamy, slightly spicy broth, I poured it over the potatoes, and the result was over-the-top amazing. Seriously, if I had a restaurant, mashed potatoes with creamy oyster broth would be on the menu. And the restaurant would be called: Amelia’s Fish Wish. (Kidding about the latter. Very serious about the former.)

As for our alley-based Christmas tree, Matt and I packed up some of our leftovers from our New Year’s Eve dinner (oxtail stew) and placed it under the tree with a note. This morning, we checked and it was gone. I know it’s hardly anything in the great scheme of helping others, but it’s something, which is better than nothing, which is a positive start for the New Year. Wouldn’t you say?

Happy New Year, Friends! Hope it's one filled with hot stews, dear friends, and as much plaid flannel as possible.

Oyster Stew with Mashed Potatoes

serves 2

4-5 small to medium Yukon gold potatoes
10 oysters, freshly shucked, still in the shell with the liquor reserved
1 cup half and half
3 tablespoons butter at room temperature, divided
¼ teaspoon kosher salt + more for the potatoes
Pinch of cayenne
Freshly ground black pepper

Wash and scrub the potatoes, and then place them in a large stockpot. Cover them with water and a pinch of salt. Bring the pot to a boil. Boil the potatoes until fork tender. (I just keep checking on them with a fork after about 10 minutes.) Once they’re tender, drain and return them to the hot pot. Mash the potatoes up with a scant ¼ cup of the half and half, 1 tablespoon of the butter, and salt and pepper to taste. Cover the pot with a lid to keep the potatoes warm while you make the stew.

Scoop out the oysters from the shell over a strainer, making sure to catch the liquor in a bowl underneath. While the oysters are in the strainer, you may also want to check them for any remaining shell fragments before placing them in a prep bowl.

Heat ¾ cup of the half and half in a heavy nonreactive pot to a low simmer over medium heat, careful not to let it scorch. In the meantime, warm two small bowls, perhaps in your toaster oven. Add 1 tablespoon of butter to each bowl, and set them in a warm spot.

Season the cream with the salt, cayenne, and black pepper. Add the oyster liquor and return to a simmer. Add the oysters and cook for 30 seconds to 1 minute, until they are just heated through. Adjust the seasoning, and divide the oysters and sauce among the warm bowls with the butter. Serve alongside two small bowls of the mashed potatoes, spooning the potatoes into the stew or vice versa, whenever it strikes your fancy.