Roast Cabbage with Beans and Leek

Give cabbage it's time to shine

Always the bridesmaid, never the bride… the story of an everyday cabbage, but they really do deserve more. While I adore buttered cabbage with garlic, colcannon or simply cooked as a side dish, there is more to this vegetable. Its structure and flavour give scope for a variety of preparations from using the leaves as wrapper to stuff, cooking whole, in segments, over coals, fermented, pickled… the list goes on. 

All members of the cabbage family, and brassicas beyond, share a vegetal sulphurous quality and nutty sweetness. Sadly a bitter pungency, which can be delicious in the appropriate setting, smothers these delicious qualities. So how to get that delicious cabbage flavour to shine? Roasting and charring magnifies the nutty sweetness and softens the sulphurous vibrancy leaving soft voluptuous flavour.

So often around the festive period food can be rich and at time heavy, which is a lot of fun and appropriate for getting together. This leaves me wanting something a little lighter and fresher from time to time, to strike a balance and clear the palate so to speak. This recipe is perfect for just such an occasion, fast, fresh and light. 


Serves 2
Preparation time: 10 minutes
Cooking time: 20 minutes

ngredients:
½ a January King cabbage
Rapeseed oil
A small thumb of butter
1 tsp fennel seeds
½ tsp caraway seeds
A small pinch of chilli flakes
1 onion, finely sliced
1 stick of celery, diced
2 cloves of garlic, sliced
1 x 240g tin of cannellini beans
1 sprig of rosemary, stripped and chopped
2 leeks, roughly sliced
Apple cider vinegar
Sea salt flakes
Fresh ground black pepper
100g vegetable stock or water

Preheat oven to 190°C (or use a hot BBQ)

1. Most of this dish can be prepped as you go, but start by trimming any tough outer leaves of the cabbage (reserving them for a colcannon or similar), then cutting into quarters. Trim any tough stalk if necessary. Heat a small puddle of oil and the butter in a small frying pan over a moderate heat. Once the butter bubbles fry the cabbage on one cut face for 5 minutes or until a deep golden. Then turn onto the other cut face and brown that side too.
2. While the cabbage is cooking, heat a puddle of oil in a saucepan and add the dry spices. Once they begin to release their aroma add the sliced onion and soften with the lid on for a few minutes. 
3. Once soft add the celery to the pan, season with salt and cook with the lid on for another few minutes. Again, once the celery has begun to soften add the garlic and put the lid back on for the vegetables to sweat.
4. By now the cabbage will be nicely browned, so turn it onto its back and season liberally with salt and pepper. Sprinkle a dessert spoon of vinegar into the open leaves and roast in the hot oven for 15 minutes, or alternatively grill over hot coals on the BBQ.
5. While the cabbage is cooking return to the saucepan. Add the cannellini beans and turn the heat up slightly to gently sizzle the beans. At this point add the stock or water and put the lid on for 5 minutes, then add the leeks and rosemary and allow to simmer with the lid on for another 5 minutes. 
6. The cabbage should be soft at its core and crispy at the edges, the beans slightly mushy and the leeks soft but green. Now its time to eat and enjoy! 

Serve with kale pesto and some really crusty sourdough, and perhaps a little cheese if the mood takes you.

Chef Notes:
1. The choice of cabbage isn’t that important. The key is their density, the closer packed the leaves are the longer it will take to roast and the more colour it will take on. January king cabbages are ideal.

Robin Popham
Chef at ‘Create Terroir’ and Sandy Lane Farm veg box customer