Praise the Braise

It’s rare that you try to use up that head of green cabbage and wind up with something that you can’t stop eating, something that feels like a treat. But that’s what happened yesterday, so I had to force myself to stop eating it and write down the recipe (a riff on a recipe in Hetty Lui McKinnon’s cookbook, Tenderheart. )

I wanted to braise my cabbage—that was my starting point because of a luscious chicken, cabbage, and apple dish that my friend Ariella made last weekend. So I started looking for braised cabbage recipes—and found McKinnon’s tomato and coconut braised cabbage and lentils. I knew Mack would reject the lentils, so I plowed forward without. I ended up with a soft, savory cabbage dish that has more flavor than it has any right to have.

Ingredients
1/2 cabbage, cut into 4 wedges
1/2 red onion, diced
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon turmeric
1/2 pint cherry tomatoes
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1 1/2 cups stock
1/2 cup coconut milk

Heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a large saute pan. Add cabbage wedges and cook on each side for 4-5 minutes, until charred. Transfer to a plate.

Add 1 tablespoon olive oil to the same pan and cook onions for 5 minutes. Add garlic, cumin, and turmeric, and cook for 30 seconds. Add tomatoes, salt, sugar, and stock and cook, covered for 20 minutes, until tomatoes soften and burst. Add coconut milk and cabbage wedges and cook, covered, for 15 minutes, until cabbage is wilted. Add more stock if necessary.

Serve with chopped cilantro and/or massaged kale.