In the 1950s I used to eat the most delicious red cabbage, along with a Wiener Schnitzel and sauté potatoes at a tiny restaurant in Greek Street, Soho, where the owner/cook was a rotund Austrian lady called Madame Maurer. With home-made apple strudel and coffee the bill came to less than ten Shillings (50 pence) Madame kept an elderly cat and dog, both somewhat smelly and dozy – well fed no doubt. She wouldn’t tell me how she cooked it, but a few years later the wonderful food writer, Arabella Boxer, offered one up in “Harper’s Bazaar”. I have cooked something like it ever since, generally using oil rather than beef dripping – but if you want the real Austro-Hungarian flavour go for the dripping. Any way you do it, it’s tasty of a winter’s day, not expensive and it keeps for a few days in the fridge and freezes well, too.
Ingredients for 8 – 10 Servings
1 medium sized red cabbage (about 700g / 1lb 10 oz), cut into quarters and thinly sliced
1 large onion (about 100g / 4 oz), peeled and sliced
1 large apple (about 125g 4½ oz), cored and sliced but NOT peeled
1 – 2 tbsp of sugar
4 tbsp red wine vinegar
2 tbsp olive oil or 50 g of dripping or rendered lamb or beef fat
250 ml of beef stock (water and a stock cube are okay)
Salt and pepper to taste
125 ml of cream (optional)
Method
1. Melt the fat in a large saucepan, or heat the oil; then, over a medium heat, fry the onion until edges are beginning to brown.
2. Add the chopped red cabbage and stir around, ensuring all the pieces have a coating of fat.
3. Add the sugar and stir round.
4. Cover the pan and cook on a low heat for 5 minutes.
5. Now add the chopped apple and vinegar, stir in, cover the pan and leave on low heat for 10 minutes.
6. Pour in the beef stock (stock cubes work very well, but if you use a cube, don’t add salt!), bring to the boil, cover, turn down the heat to very low and simmer for about 1 hour. (If you like “casseroley” flavours, you may put the pot into a medium oven at this stage.)
7. Check liquid from time to time, not letting the cabbage cook dry.
8. As a final optional touch, add a small carton of cream, swirl in and put in a serving dish. Place this in a warm oven for around 15 minutes.
Chefs are often not content with this classic recipe – and add spices, sultanas, lemon and ham, even.
It’s a tolerant recipe, but I like it just the way Roza cooked it. Very good with pork chops, pork fillet, a Wiener Schnitzel, or breaded chicken escalopes. (See my recipe)
Recipe as published in “Coastal Scene”, issue dated 8th. February 2013. Click on: http://www.coastalscene24.co.uk/home
