Red Cabbage

After mentioning rotkohl yesterday, I actually went home and made some! At least I cooked up a dish in which the main ingredient was red cabbage. The recipe came from the back of The Jungle Effect, by Dr. Daphne Miller. Many of the recipes for cooked red cabbage are very similar: cabbage, vinegar, apple, onion, spice. Mine lacked onion, however as I was reaching in the fridge for the cabbage, I came across some forgotten beets. In they went! Leery as I was at first, using ground cloves in the dish, once I stirred everything and started cooking, all the flavors came together and cloves really were the right thing to do. Here's how it ended up:

1 small head red cabbage, shredded

1 mealy Fuji apple, diced

3 small beets, chopped

1 Cup apple cider

3 Tablespoon apple cider vinegar

1/2 teaspoon cloves

1 Tablespoon butter

Put everything except the butter in a medium to large saucepan, bring to a boil, and simmer for about 45 minutes. Take off the heat and stir in the butter as it melts.

I like things more sour, so next time I'll use a bit more vinegar, or my stronger red wine vinegar. Since my butter was lightly salted, I didn't find any need to add any salt to the dish. I think a little freshly ground pepper on top would also be a great addition. This was an excellent side to my sardine salad and a glass of white wine. Plus it was exceptionally filling! (Though I did find room for a honey-sweetened pumpkin cookie square.)

Started a new knitting project last night: a Noro silk garden scarf. There's a trick you can do, using two balls at once, alternating two rows of each, so two color changes are happening at once. I made something similar for my brother once, in a 1x1 rib, but this one is more of a 2x2 seed stitch, as I want a thin fabric. I'll have to check the layout of the colors--right now I've got two purples going at once--to make sure that I like the contrast.