Cabbage Eaters of the World, Unite!

[The demands of my job, my family, and my household have gotten the better of me this week. So I leave you with this re-rerun, which originally aired on January 23. It's one of my favorite posts. By the way, I can't believe I've been doing this long enough to have material for re-runs. Almost a year! I think I'll need to celebrate that anniversary somehow.]

I come from a long line of cabbage-eaters. While I’m only half German, and therefore technically only half cabbage-eater according to the official definition (as defined by Cassell's Dictionary of Slang), I’m pretty sure the Finnish side has eaten more than its fair share of cabbage through the ages. The sad thing is, I can’t remember once in my life being served cabbage by any of my blood relatives. In fact, the only time I’ve ever been served cabbage (by someone other than myself) has been in the form of curry cooked by my Indian mother-in-law. Well, unless you count coleslaw. Which doesn’t really count, as it’s not cooked and therefore doesn’t carry the same baggage (ie: smell, much associated in times past with working class immigrant homes).

I’m not sure why it took me so long to be exposed to the wonders of cooked cabbage – maybe my relatives wanted to distance themselves from its pejorative connotations. Or maybe I just grew up in a time and place when all vegetables came from a can, and as far as I know, they don’t sell canned cabbage. (Very fortunate.) I think I was finally in my early to mid-twenties before I gave it a try and cooked some for myself.

As a side note, as I write this, I have in the back of my mind an M.F.K. Fisher essay from 1937 – “The Social Status of a Vegetable.”

    At the word spinach her face clouded, but when I mentioned cabbage a look of complete and horrified disgust settled like a cloud. She pushed back her chair.
     "Cabbage!" Her tone was incredulous.
     "Why not?" James asked, mildly. "Cabbage is the staff of life in many countries. You ought to know, Mrs Davidson. Weren't you raised on a farm?"
     Her mouth settled grimly.
     "As you know, she remarked in any icy voice, with her face gradually looking very old and discontented again, "there are many kinds of farms. My home was not a collection of peasants. Nor did we eat such – such peasant things as this."

At the end of the essay, Ms. Fisher asks, "Who determines, and for what strange reasons, the social status of a vegetable?" I really don't know, but I bet someone somewhere has written a Ph.D. dissertation on the subject since then. The question that's been troubling me is this: If cabbage is the low-brow vegetable, then what is its opposite? What is the high-brow elitist vegetable of our time? One that immediately sprang to my mind was arugula. And then I laughed, because arugula is actually in the same plant family as cabbage (Brassicaceae), so they're related! Poor country bumpkin cousin cabbage.

At any rate, I love cabbage and I'm not afraid to admit it. And while cabbage curry is delightful, sometimes I don't want too many extra ingredients coming between my taste buds and the sweet taste of the cabbage. So I was browsing my usual internet haunts, and came across this lovely recipe for Noodles and Fried Cabbage on Salon. It calls for nothing more than cooked noodles, cabbage, salt, pepper, and a truly ridiculous amount of butter (which believe it or not I actually reduced by more than half in my own version below). The author claims a Hungarian origin for this recipe, but I found that it's also considered to be German and Polish (the Polish name for it being haluski, and apparently it's hugely popular in Pittsburgh). Some people also fry onions along with the cabbage, and I briefly considered doing so myself, but swiftly decided against it, as I think for this dish it should be all about the cabbage. It might seem crazy, but it really worked for me. Really. And don't be scared of the butter. We peasants need it, to keep our backs strong. Well, I don't know if it will keep your back strong, but it will keep you pleasantly full figured. As my great-grandmother always said, and I really do believe this is true, "You need a little bit extra on you, in case you get sick."

Here's the version I came up with:
Fried Cabbage and Noodles
Adapted from Ann Nichols on Salon.com
Ingredients
1 large head of cabbage, thinly sliced in two-inch long pieces
1 and a half sticks of salted butter
1 pound of egg fettucine, cooked (You need egg noodles, it's just not the same without it. You could use the regular wide egg noodles, but I thought the egg fettucine had a nice toothsome thickness to it which worked well with the tender cabbage.)
salt to taste
freshly ground black pepper

Cook the noodles and drain according to package directions. Melt the butter in a pot large enough to hold all the cabbage. Throw in the cabbage and some salt and cook on medium to medium-high heat until the cabbage is very tender, and a bit brown in spots. Throw the drained noodles into the pot with the cabbage and mix thoroughly. Add more salt if needed. Serve with freshly ground black pepper on top. Don't skip the pepper – seriously, it's really important.