The story of the versatile cabbage

Say, ten kids there are who don’t take vegetables. But, I bet you, nine of them would gladly try cabbage, especially the genteel, faintly suspicious boys who prefer white vegetables to the green ones.

Coleslaw, a cold dish, probably their first vegetables, quickly becomes their favourite.

Egged on, the older kid would start making one out of the blue. One of the easiest dish to prepare, coleslaw, once the amount for mixing is mastered; the art is perfected after several trials and errors.

Fresh, preferably organic or cabbage soaked for a while was shredded into tiny stripes. The same should be done with the carrot, a little of which is added to the bowl of shredded cabbage for the slight sweet tang or mainly the colour. Dashes of sugar and a little salt, mayonnaise and milk are now added to the mixture to complete the dish. Cover the bowl and left it to stand in the fridge.

Nothing to do with the palm family, we have no idea why the Cantonese name the cabbage, ‘coconut’ veggie. We may compare the shape of the cabbage to that of the coconut. But that’s as far as we can go. It doesn’t even look as near as the coconut. Found almost everywhere around the world, no one has claimed its origin.

The Westerners use cabbages mostly for soups or they cut it into smaller pieces to make pickles. The sour veggie at the side of the salty German ham is actually pickled cabbage shreds.

The Korean preserved vegetables are mostly made from cabbage. After adding dashes of pepper, the cabbage is left to set. The sourness came when it fermented.

A way to refine the preserve is to use tomato sauce instead with a little sugar. It might look like the Korean kimchi, but it is crunchy and no way near hot. One specialty of the Northern Chinese is the preserved cabbage in huge jars where only salt water is added. It definitely is an acquired taste.

The bigger and rounder cabbage also tastes better than the flat ones. Cabbages can be kept for up to two months in the fridge. The simple yet good taste is cabbage with preserved vegetables in your noodle soup.

The soup that comes with the original Hainan chicken rice is made with cabbage and preserved vegetables in the chicken soup itself. There doesn’t seem to be any more complicated techniques.

No doubt we are happy with the cabbage as it goes with any type of meat. For salad, we clean it up, add a little salt and perhaps more sugar. It is ready to be served after a few hours. Or if it isn’t suitably sour, we add a little white rice vinegar.

The beef soup can’t do without some cabbage. After adding plenty of tomatoes, potatoes and cabbage, we simmer the beef soup for two to three hours. The only thing left to do is to check the fire, to avoid letting the soup burn. And there we have it.

The ladies, who don’t cook, love to choose cabbage to begin. After blanching the cabbage leaves, they use them to wrap the minced meat as seen on the telly. Then they cook the dumplings which surprisingly turn out to be pretty delicious.

A guaranteed tasty way with cabbage is to shred it, add a little salt, more black pepper, a little olive oil and then eat it. Or if you intend to cheat, add Ajinomoto.