Monthly Archives: October 2014

Braised cabbage in miso

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Long read? Slow food? How about nearly four hours for a cabbage dish…howzatgrabya?

To be clear; I don’t actually like cabbage. Generally I think they’re like a Godzilla-ish Brussel Sprout. Only the death ray doesn’t shoot out of your eyes it shoots out a little lower down. I do however like this dish, which says a lot about the merits of this recipe in my (ever humble) opinion.

Needed:

  • About 1/2 a large cabbage, or equivalent.
  • 2 cloves garlic
  • 2 tabs light miso
  • 400 ml water
  • Splash of olive oil
  • 4 hours

Doing:

Crush and very lightly sauté the garlic in the oil. In the same pan, add the water and bring to a boil, then add the miso and thoroughly dissolve.

Remove any manky outer leaves off the cabbage and compost. Cut the cabbage into 5cm or so thick slices, going across the layers. Try to keep each slice as intact as possible.

Lay the slices, tightly packed into a lidded baking dish that has sides high enough to be higher than the cabbage slices. If you don’t have enough cabbage to pack the dish, and don’t have a smaller dish, cut another slice of cabbage. Go with the flow people!

Pour the liquid evenly over the cabbage.

Bake the container with the lid on at 250c for 30 minutes. Then reduce the temperature to 150c and bake for another 90 minutes. After that, carefully turn all the cabbage slices over and repack them as tightly as possible. Bake for another 90 minutes.

An even better quiche recipe

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Real men don’t eat quiche. Real men eat vegan quiche, then do the washing up followed by giving their partners a back massage.

This is a superior quiche to this one.

A lot of the heavy lifting steps in this recipe can be done ahead of time, indeed the pastry needs to be made ahead of time and refrigerated for while. The cauliflower can also be roasted a day or two ahead if you happen to using the oven already.

In:

  • 1 batch Shortcrust pastry
  • 1 batch Scrambled breakfast tofu
  • 300 g cauliflower, chopped into small florets
  • Handful of green beans, finely diced
  • 1 medium onion, finely sliced
  • 1 tomato, sliced fairly thinly
  • 1 cup chickpea flour
  • 1.5 cups water
  • 2 tabs of light miso
  • handful of your favourite olives (de-stoned if necessary) and sliced
  • 2 or 3 (semi) sundried tomatoes, chopped
  • Olive oil

Do:

Dissolve the miso into the water. In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, miso water, 2 tbsp of the oil. Cover and let it sit for a few hours or overnight. There’s no need to refrigerate it – in fact…just don’t. The keen eyed will note that this step is based on a Soccatta mix.

Once the Soccatta mix is ready…Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius.

Roast the cauliflower. Place in a bowl with a splash of olive oil and coat well. Place on a baking tray and bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes until softened and slightly charred. Put to one side.

Whilst roasting, add a teaspoon of oil to a pan and fry the onions for about 3 minutes until they start to caramelise. Meanwhile, put a small saucepan of water on to boil.

Once the water is at a rolling boil add the chopped beans and blanche quickly. Drain and cool them with cold, running water. We want them still slightly crunchy.

Line an oiled quiche dish with pastry, prick the bottom and bake blind for 15 minutes. Remove from the oven and prepare the filling.

In a large bowl (or use one of the saucepans if big enough) combine the cauliflower, beans, olives, sundried tomatoes, onions, and scrambled tofu. Toss until fairly evenly mixed.

Add everything from that bowl into the pastry shell and gently smooth down until fairly even. Pour the the flour mix over as evenly as possible. Top with the sliced tomatoes.

Bake for 20 minutes. Remove from oven, brush with a little olive oil, place in the oven for a further 5 minutes.

Allow to cool before serving.

Kitchen Note: If you don’t have one of those quiche dishes where the sides can be removed separately from the bottom despair not. The shortcrust pastry has a tendency to shrink slightly so will almost always smoothly pull back from the edges during cooking. Lightly oil the quiche dish if in doubt.