i remember the first time I walked into a Soviet apartment block. The whole place was filled with the smell of cabbage being slowly tortured to death. They ate a lot of cabbage in the USSR maybe because, a lot of the time, that’s all there was.
It feels a bit like that here at the moment. It’s the time of year when British vegetables get thin on the ground. Apart from a few potatoes, roots, cauliflowers and leeks, the organic stall at my local farmers’ market is wall-to-wall cabbages and kale. The same goes for vegetable delivery boxes. I don’t think that’s what most people had in mind when they said they were going green.
What to do with them all? Well, provided you don’t boil them to oblivion that way lies your own Moscow housing project it can be an adventure. Savoy, January King, purple, green or Russian kale, white or green cabbage and cavolo nero have their own nuances of taste and texture. I’ve been shredding the sweeter ones to make crisp salads, and mixing dark green leaves with anchovy and chilli, or caraway and bacon. I’ve stirred crepy savoy into rugged soups, and blitzed raw kale with olive oil and garlic to make a simple pesto for pasta.
There are no rules, but, to my mind, robust, salty flavours are the way to go. These recipes are just the beginning.