Name: Spicy Cabbage
Yield: Serves 4 to 6 as part of a rice-based meal (do not serve at a meal with potato and cauliflower dishes)
Cuisine: India
Ingredients: 1 cup thinly sliced shallots; 2 green cardamom pods, smashed; 1 teaspoon sugar; 1 teaspoon salt; 1 large or 2 small plum tomatoes, coarsely chopped; 2 medium or 3 small potatoes, peeled and cut into ½-inch cubes; 1 to 2 small bay leaves; 2 tablespoons mustard oil; 2 small dried red chiles, broken into pieces; ½ teaspoon cumin seed; ¾ teaspoon turmeric; 2 tablespoons minced ginger; 1 pound green cabbage; ½ cup water; 1 inch cinnamon stick, broken into several pieces

Preparation info

Serves
4 to 6
as part of a rice-based meal (do not serve at a meal with potato and cauliflower dishes)

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

Seductions of Rice

By Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid

Published 1998

About

In India in the winter, cabbage comes into its own. Here it’s grated and slow-cooked until reduced to a tender dense pile, still with a little bite, beautifully tinted with turmeric and flavored with cloves, cardamom, cinnamon, ginger, and mustard oil, with some heat from dried chiles. Gita, who taught us this dish in Calcutta, used shredded (on a coarse grater) green cabbage, then made a fairly dense mound of cabbage on the plate. This version is a little wetter, slightly stew-like, though