Cabbages for kings

A recipe for Garbure, a French cabbage soup-meal

The cook at our school was a feared and respected personage born in the reign of Queen Victoria named Fanny, after the romantic heroines of her day. Dressed always in a freshly starched, twilight-blue, floor-length dress, steel-stiff white pinny over, with steel-grey bun at her neck and steel-rimmed specs on her nose, she had been anchored in the stone-floored basement kitchen ever since she had left school herself. The day she turned 80, a major British national daily came to interview her. They did it again at her 90th. Only when she turned 93 was she persuaded to retire, the stone steps down to her lair worn by centuries of scraping leather soles being a threat even to the youngest pupils making their way down to the reeking dining room, and to the school's insurance premium.

The stench all through the school was of slowly stewing cabbage. Every Monday and Wednesday, of every year of our drab scholastic lives, Fanny and her team cooked us cabbage, meat and potatoes, pronounced as one word Cabbagemeatandpotatoes. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, we were fed Saladmeatandpotatoes from the left-over meat of Monday and Wednesday. On Fridays - the glowing highlight of the week's school dinners - we had Sausagebeansandpotatoes, with the left-over potatoes of the other days. All of it, even the salad lunches and the sausages, reeked exclusively of stewed cabbage. 

If you’re British, it’s likely you have similar school-lunch memories. It’s odd, because of all the foodstuffs we’re reputed as a nation to abuse, the cabbage is one of the vegetables most easy to cook and, in all other nations’ culinary repertoires - respected and made thoroughly delicious. Think of German sauerkraut or coleslaw, Italian Zuppa d’Aosta, Russian solyanka and cabbage-stuffed pelmeni, crisp Thai pickled cabbage or Chinese stir fries. Given the domesticated cabbage has been around since before 1000BC (relatively late in the history of veg), and that in 2018, world production of the brassica family was 69 million tonnes, you’d think the Brits would have worked out how to cook it by now.

Recently, though, cabbage has been enjoying a culinary renaissance in the UK, particularly the Hispi variety, that pointed heart-shaped cabbage whose Instagram influencers love it cut in quarters and charred on each cut side in a little butter or oil for 3 minutes, then the lid slammed on with the heat turned off, for the cabbage to steam soft for a further few minutes.

It’s as good shredded and blanched for a couple of minutes in salted water then stirred into very buttery mashed potato for the Irish dish Colcannon as it is finely sliced and spiced up by quickly sauteeing it with finely chopped garlic and ginger and seasoning it with soy sauce, then removing it from the heat and folding in a generous tablespoon of a chilli sauce like this crispy Laoganma, which I eat by the teaspoon at the kitchen counter.

Either of these cabbage dishes go well with a grilled fillet of salmon or a pork chop, or the latter version just with steamed brown rice.

The most common cabbage, the white Dutch football, makes a good sweet-and-sour side dish, excellent with just about any meat. Finely shred it. Heat up a tablespoon of vegetable oil in a wok or deep saute pan, throw in the cabbage and toss it quickly to coat it, then pour over 1 teaspoon of salt, 2 tablespoons of sugar and 3 tablespoons of vinegar which you've previously mixed together in a small glass. Toss all this again quickly together - don't overcook. Retain the crunch or you're back at school, then serve.

In South West France, the locals comfort themselves over the approach of winter with a bowl of the renowned Garbure. A rustic meal in a tureen, this gets even better if cooked the day before, allowing its flavours to develop, making it a perfect dish for a supper party. If you want to eat it the most common French way, ladle out the vegetable soup as the first course followed separately by the meats as the next, which you serve with cornichons, mustard, and a green salad. But soup and meats served together are an impressive and substantial one-dish meal.

Photo Klaus Einwanger, The Bruno Cookbook by Martin Walker & Julia Watson

1¾ litres/3 pints water
250g/8oz salt pork belly, chopped into large chunks
250g/8oz white haricot beans (Tarbais are best but any cassoulet bean), soaked overnight
1 duck or goose carcass (optional)
2 large onions, one peeled and stuck with 2 cloves, the other roughly chopped
2 leeks, the white plus 2 ins/5cm green, trimmed and washed
1 tablespoon butter
3 small white turnips, peeled and chopped
1 bouquet garni
Salt and pepper to taste
250g/8oz potatoes, peeled and roughly chopped
175g/6oz Jambon de Campagne with its bone, or other smoked ham
6 pieces of confit de canard
1 small cabbage, shredded
6 thick slices baguette, preferably stale, toasted and rubbed with a clove of garlic

Fill a large pan with the water. Add the pork belly and beans and carcass. Bring to the boil, skimming frequently. Add the onion stuck with cloves, turn down the heat and simmer 1 hour.

In a sauté pan over low heat, soften the leeks and chopped onions in butter. Add to the soup with the turnips, bouquet garni, and salt and pepper to taste. Simmer 45 minutes. Discard the bones, carcass and clove-studded onion. Add the potatoes and Jambon de Campagne. Bring back to the boil over medium heat, then reduce the heat and simmer for 30 minutes. Add the confit and cabbage. Simmer for 20-30 minutes more. 

Put a slice of toast into the bottom of each soup bowl before serving the vegetable soup alone then followed by the meats and vegetables as the main course with cornichons and mustard. Or everything together at once for a hearty one-dish meal.