There you are thinking joyfully of a delicious new season, contemplating blazing bonfires of orange and gold leaves, crisp chilly mornings with August like blue skies and blinding sunshine, walks in the woods to hunt for the first mushrooms and gather chestnuts, planning that first juniper spiced venison stew of the season when WAP! your throat feels like you swallowed a kitchen roll sized sheet of sandpaper and your head turns fuzzy....yes Autumn has arrived with a bang and my first cold of the season.
Thank goodness that on Saturday past I was very industrious and made a huge batch of my wellness inducing vegetable soup with a stock made from a turkey leg....although a chicken stock is delicious I do recommend giving a turkey stock a go! you can find my recipe for this awesome and life giving vegetable soup by clicking HERE!
It's at times like these that I refer to my abundance.....a very harvesty sort of word for the season that's in it....of recipes and meal ideas. Although I may not have the time to blog as regularly as I would like, owing to the fact that one has to work to earn ones money...I don't flog on my blog!.....I do cook daily and try to photograph as much of it as I possibly can...admittedly though there's not much point in taking yet another picture of a casserole, or a roast dinner....been there, done that so to speak.
Anyone who knows me will tell you that another of my loves in life, besides cooking, is reading, and not just every cookery book I can get my hands on, but also a good novel or two, or twenty!
Having re-read Colm Toibins' 2009 novel 'Brooklyn' for the umpteenth time....now there's a man I would like as a guest at my dinner party to end all dinner parties!......and having recently witnessed the movie version, I got to thinking about the way Irish people have emigrated around the world and brought their influence to bear on many different cultures.
Wherever we Irish turn up, we are noted for our friendliness, our craic, and our ability to hold copious amount of alcoholic beverages whilst performing our rendition of River Dance on a bar top somewhere in Manhattan or Melbourne....which a friend of mine actually did!...however, we have never really been known in times gone by for our food. These days though that is all changing and Irish exports of our wonderful produce are now literally world wide.
But back to the Irish and our ceaseless need to wander...the area of Brooklyn in New York is synonymous with not only Irish immigrants but with Italians, and what better way to bring these two cultures together than by fusing our different tastes and using them to our advantage.
This is the simplest of dishes but with maximum flavour as we blend that Irish staple cabbage, with another Italian staple, Prosciutto. Prosciutto is basically ham which has been preserved by curing in salt for a couple of months and then hanging in a cold, well ventilated storeroom where it is left to 'dry' out for at least another 6 months, or even up to a year. It is then served sliced very thin, the slices almost translucent. It is usually enjoyed with sweet melon or as an antipasti with olives and maybe some cheese and other cold cured meats like sausage, but oddly enough it is very tasty when served warm.
I have been known to grill it like ordinary bacon and I do love it on top of a pizza....a recipe for which I will post soon....but eating it with cabbage is amazing!
So for this you will need.......feeds 6 - 8 people....great for a sunday lunch side dish
1 good head of sweetheart cabbage or a nice big savoy or york cabbage...really enough cabbage to feed all your guests
2 slices of prosciutto per person...so if you are feeding 6 then you want 12 slices
freshly milled black pepper
olive oil....some ordinary olive oil and some extra virgin...for drizzling over afterwards
80 - 100g butter
a little water if needed
How to......
- remove any ugly outer leaves of the cabbage, cut into quarters and remove any tough root and stalk, then shred into thin strips or large pieces as takes your fancy
- wash the cabbage well and leave to drain
- take your slices of ham and place on top of each other
- using a sharp knife or scissors, cut the ham into thin strips
- heat a tablespoon of the ordinary olive oil in a wok or a large sauteuse pan and gently begin to cook the ham strips to release the flavour....about 3 - 4 minutes
- turn the heat down on the pan and add the butter....gently let it melt
- pile in the cabbage and turn in the butter and ham making sure the cabbage is completely coated in all those lovely juices
- cover your pan and continue to cook on a medium heat until the cabbage is just done....you can add a little water to the pan if you think it is too dry but remember, cabbage is a vegetable naturally full of water and should happily steam away under its own steam!
- once cooked, season your cabbage with some fresh black pepper, pile into a nice serving dish and drizzle over a little extra virgin olive oil.....then sit back and enjoy the delighted looks on everyone's faces at the mingling of those delicious flavours
Thinking of trying this recipe using red cabbage or those really firm white ones? then let me stop you now...don't bother, that is a whole different texture combination there, and frankly it's not very nice....you were warned!
Now I'm off to have a soothing bowl of my vegetable soup, my throat can't take any more typing today.
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