So one day at the farmer’s market over the summer I decided that it was time to learn how to cook with cabbage. I grabbed a tasty-looking specimen from one of the stalls and came home to find a recipe. The index in Bittman’s How to Cook Everything led me to “White Beans with Cabbage, Pasta, and Ham.” I took a chance on it and was genuinely surprised at how tasty it came out with minimal effort.
It’s now a staple go-to dinner dish because this is one of those recipes where you’ll tend to have most of the core ingredients on hand, but you can easily mix and adjust because it’s built on a core of mild ingredients seasoned with broth, onions, and thyme. As well, I make this as a vegetarian dish with small amounts of various fake meats—which I’ve found is a a great way to inject another jolt of flavor. The resulting portions are hefty and you can easily double or treble them, as cooking just involves two saucepans. I’ll run through the Bittman ingredient list and offer my substitutions:
- 3 cups chopped cabbage, preferably Savoy [Never used Savoy myself, which sounds pricey. Part of the point here is just to use a hunk of cabbage you might have left over from something else. One head goes a long way. I find that it only takes about one quarter of a normal size cabbage to get the 3 cups here.]
- 8 ounces small pasta, like cavatelli or orecchiette [Again, just use whatever you have open and want to finish off. You can also up the amount wildly without risk.]
- 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
- 2 cups chopped leak or onion [Leeks are really good here. Obviously regular onion will do just fine.]
- 1 celery stalk, chopped [I find that getting celery just for this creates a problem because then you have the whole rest of the stalk and, eh, what else are you going to do with celery? I usually use carrots, which help break up the monotone color of the dish anyway.]
- 2 sprigs fresh thyme [The thyme, surprisingly, is really the heart of the dish. I tend to only have dry chopped on hand and gusstimate a substitution—2 teaspoons or so. Again, you can increase that to taste without throwing off the balance. Herb substitutions are 3 fresh units to 1 dried unit according to Google.]
- 1/4 cup chopped prosciutto or 1/2 cup chopped ham [I always make this vegetarian by using fake Italian sausage instead. Trader Joes sells a spectacular house brand imitation Italian sausage and you only need 1/2 of a link chopped small to get a lot of meaty flavor into this dish.]
- 1 cup chicken or other stock [I use 1 cube of vegetable bullion in 1 cup of boiling water—just toss it in the microwave in a Pyrex cup for a few minutes.]
- 3 cups cooked or canned cannellini or other white beans, dried but still moist [That's three cans, which I feel is a little excessive. I'll use as little as 1 can depending on what I have around. Just as good, you can use garbonzoes.]
- Black pepper
- Parmesan or Romano [A crucial garnish. Bear in mind the concentrated stock will be salty, so sometimes a less salty cheese is better.]
Bittman recommends cooking the cabbage first then reserving that water for the pasta. Here are the steps, simplified:
- Boil salted water for the cabbage. Cook until tender, about 3 minutes. Strain but save the water. Reboil the water and cook the pasta al dente—it’s going to cook some more when combined with the rest of the ingredients.
- Heat the oil in a separate saucepan or large skillet that can hold all of the final volume of ingredients. Add the onions and celery/carrots. Soften, then add the thyme, imitation sausage, stock, beans, and cabbage. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Toss that for 5 minutes or so to blend flavors. Bittman reminds you to keep it moist but not soupy.
- Toss the pasta in at the last and then move to your serving vessel. Serve with grated cheese.
Voila! A whole dish based around cabbage that’s not coleslaw. Hearty and just as good as leftovers the next day for lunch.