I house-sat once at a chef’s house. I found myself in a kitchen where bones took up most of the freezer, grinders and ice cream makers and food processors lines the tops of the cupboards, and the spice cabinet rivaled my own. The recipe books, however, far surpassed my collection at the time, and one of them drew me in: Hot Sour Salty Sweet by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid. I have since acquired two of their other travelogue/recipe books/tomes, but at the time I remember working my way through several of the recipes in that beautiful kitchen and scribbling down some quick and easy-looking vegetable recipes that Thai kitchen do so well and North American kitchens just don’t. The simplest additions of soy sauce, fermented bean paste, and fish sauce could take a relatively boring vegetable and turn it into something extraordinary. I’d gotten into the habit of using large strands of cabbage as a noodle replacement in a sweet-tasting recipe with snow peas and mushrooms (the recipe’s idea, not mine. I suppose I should say “China’s idea, not mine”), but I’d never made the second recipe I’d scribbled down 3 years ago. It involved shredding a whole head of cabbage and with a small little cheese grater, this was not something I had any desire to do. I did, of course, keep the recipe.
Now I have a mandoline, a very handy kitchen tool that makes quick work of giant heads of cabbage. Cabbage flies everywhere, and I doubt my kitchen will ever be “not purple” again, but this dish was worth the wait and the purple paint job.
Ingredients:
1 small (ooops!) savoy (ooops #2 because those aren’t the purple ones!) cabbage (approximately 1 lb. I even own a kitchen scale, but I figured a little mroe or less cabbage wouldn’t make a difference, and I was right)
1 tbsp peanut oil (or vegetable, but the peanut oil adds a lot…I actually used sesame, which is not the same, but adds something more than vegetable)
4 cloves garlic, minced (or more. Apparently there are some people in the world, however, who don’t like stir-fried garlic as much as I do)
3 dried Thai red chilies (I used 5…)
Three 1/4″ sliced of ginger (don’t even bother removing the skin)
1 star anise, broken into 2 pieces (I don’t think any of star anise are in one piece, so I just threw in a few odds and ends and called it even. Good thing I don’t do a lot of baking with star anise)
1 tsp salt
2 tsp soy sauce (or tamari)
If you don’t have a mandoline or a hand device to grate the cabbage, thinly slice it and then coarsely chop it. It’s really not a huge deal, but the texture is better if the pieces are smaller, and you’ll have a whole lot less chewing to do. Discard any tough bits (again, for texture). You’re supposed to have 4 cups. I had 8…so I just doubled most of the recipe.
If you’ve got a wok, heat it over medium-high. If not, use a very, very large skillet (or two). Add the oil when hot and then toss in the garlic, lower the heat to medium immediately, and fry it to a golden brown (2 minutes).
Add the chilies, ginger, and star anise and cook for 2 more minutes. The chilies should darken slightly. Then raise the heat to high and add the cabbage. If you’ve got two skillets going simultaneously, good for you. If not, you may end up with some leftover raw cabbage, or enough to do another batch of this in a few days time if you somehow eat all of your first batch. Apparently some people live with families and share food with these people, thus is disappears quicker, but if you’re just one person whose friends don’t come often for dinner you’ll have some purple cabbage nights ahead of you. It keeps a good while in the fridge at least.
ANYWAY, you’re not done yet. Stir-fry the cabbage for 1 minute while pressing it against the bottom and sides of the wok or skillet. Add the salt, stir, and cook 5 more minutes, pressing some more. then add the soy and stir one more minute. Test to make sure it’s a nice balance of soft and crunch (to your liking) and serve with rice or some kind of flatbread. It’s supposed to be with rice but it’s Chinese (and the northerners eat a fair bit of flatbread instead of rice). Besides, no one’s looking, especially not the recipe. Don’t eat the chilies, ginger, or star anise. Very important. Very good for digestion to cook with them (especially with difficult-to-digest cabbage) but not so good when you accidentally swallow them. Definitely don’t bite into them, well, maybe the ginger, but definitely not the chilies which will make your lips burn.
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