Lockdown Recipe of the Day: Cabbage & Bacon ‘Pie’

 



 

 

The day before the lockdown began, I bought a cabbage. It would last through the entire 21 days if necessary, kept in the crisper at the bottom of the fridge. It would be a handy backup, just right for when we look around and realise that the cooking options have become limited.

Then our local food hero, Lani Lombard, started offering to deliver weekly farm boxes. She’d registered her business as a Category A essential service, chiefly as a way to bring in income so she could pay her staff during the present trial. That meant two reasons to support her. There was, you guessed, a green cabbage in the first Saturday’s box. The second delivery, a week later, had a red cabbage. This past Saturday, out of the bakkie came a massive green cabbage. She kindly agreed to swop it for something else: two bunches of spinach, as it happens. (We’ll use spinach for one of the daily lockdown recipes soon.)

I love cabbage. I never boil it. I don’t steam it either. There’s no need, as it cooks quickly in melted butter, olive oil, coconut oil, as you like it. Start with sliced onion and chopped garlic, add thyme or another herb, gooi in finely shredded cabbage, and stir fry for a great side for, say, grilled pork sausages. Add a little mustard to the cabbage if doing that.

Cabbage is key to Caldo Verde, the Portuguese soup; Polish, Greek and other cuisines stuff cabbage leaves with ground beef, rice and flavourings; in Kerala, India, they’re made into a curry with all manner of spices, and for the Irish of course it’s the star of traditional colcannon, fried with spring onions and mashed potato, a sort of bubble n squeak.

I found something different this week, however: a dish in which you shred cabbage, beat eggs and add that with some flour, mix it together and fry it in an oiled pan. A sort of omelette, except that the eggs are not the hero; the cabbage is. The eggs are more of a binding agent here. Once cooked, it’s turned over and you sprinkle cheese on to the former under side, to melt in before serving. A sort of cabbage pie, or “cabbage and eggs”, as it’s referred to in a note with the YouTube video.

But there seemed to be a missing ingredient: bacon. (Oh and garlic. And thyme. And more cheese.) So what you find below the video is our adaptation of the recipe given.

Here’s the video we found on YouTube, showing how to do it before any interference:



For the TGIFood adapted recipe, you’ll need:

Ingredients

Half a cabbage, the hard spine cut away, the leaves shredded finely

1 onion, finely sliced

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

A few thyme leaves

3 extra large eggs

100ml flour

4 rashers back bacon, diced

150g grated Cheddar cheese (mature if possible or, better still, Gruyère if you have some; but whatever cheese you have in the house will do fine)

Salt and pepper

 

Method

Recipes being things which are best meddled with (unless it’s for bread or cake), I first chopped some rashers of back bacon and fried them.

As in the video, add the shredded cabbage and onion to a bowl, but add the chopped garlic and fried bacon bits too. Pick thyme leaves from their stems and add them. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Unlike in the video, also add 100g of the grated cheese (leave the rest aside for sprinkling on top). Beat the eggs and season with salt and pepper and add. Sprinkle the flour over and stir with a wooden spoon so everything is coated.

Oil a large enough frying pan and pack in the cabbage mix. Cover tightly with foil and cook on a medium heat for 15 to 20 minutes. Turn out on to a big plate and turn it over, then slide it back into the frying pan. Scatter the remaining 50g of cheese over, to melt in.

Cover again and let the (now) underside cook for four to five minutes.

Serve chunky wedges of it with slices of that loaf of bread you made yesterday and were so proud of. DM

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