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Tag: kale

Spud Sunday: Of Cabbages And Things

You really will have to excuse the tumbleweed that has been rolling around this site for nigh on several months now. I can only plead, in my defence, that there have been assorted distractions of the non-potato kind.

The important thing is, I’m back. And I’m exercised. About cabbage.

“The time has come,” the Walrus said,
“To talk of many things:
Of shoes and ships and sealing-wax
Of cabbages and kings”

From Lewis Carroll’s ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’, in Through the Looking-Glass

Little did Lewis Carroll know when he penned those words how on-trend he would be years – nay centuries – later, with his cabbage reference. Yes, as 2015 has gotten underway, with its usual deluge of articles, tweets and posts about trends, food and otherwise, I read with a certain degree of bemusement in this article in the U.K. Independent that – and sorry about this kale – cabbage is the new rising star. Yup, cabbage. There is, of course, nothing wrong with cabbage, and a lot to like (except, perhaps, when you have an excess to deal with). So good on the chefs who are, we are told, now doing all sorts of things with cabbage. It’s versatile and available, cheap and green. Is and was. Before it ever took a stroll down the culinary catwalks.

Savoy Cabbage

cabbage – enjoying a bit of close attention

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Spud Sunday: Super Mash

I do tire of spud-bashing.

In the healthy eating context, I mean.

All too often, potatoes end up on the wrong side of the whats-good-for-you conversation, as things that we need to eat less of, or seek alternatives to. They are, perhaps, the victims of the extreme success with which they marry with butter and cheese and a great many other fats. From Joel Rubuchon’s legendary butter-laden potato purée to your everyday bag of crisps, it seems that spuds provide a highly accessible parking spot for additional calories.

But potatoes themselves are not the source of this excess and – as I may have mentioned once or twice before – they make for quite a tidy nutritional package. What’s more, they can play just as well with card-carrying super foods – unregulated as that term may be – as with those apparently fiendish fats (though the fact is that our bodies need a certain amount of those too).

To prove my point, I made some mash. And not just any old mash but one that is probably about as far away as you could get from Joel Rubuchon’s all-butter version (though it does not shun butter entirely). It’s a recipe inspired both by Extreme GreensSally McKenna’s wonderful guide to making the most of mineral-rich seaweed, and a book that I have been delving into a lot over the past few months – and by a presentation which Dorcas Barry made at the Savour Kilkenny Foodcamp last month on eating to stay young. That talk featured much that was raw and green and vibrant, just like this mash.

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Kale & Dillisk Mash

Kale & dillisk mash

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Spud Sunday: Let There Be Colcannon

Colcannon

Ah lovely, colcannon à la Spud

I was thinking about colcannon lately. As you do.

To be honest, it’s been on my mind ever since I heard my niece express the following fond and particularly Irish hope a few weeks back: “I hope my Ma makes colcannon”.

And it occurred to me that I do not make colcannon half often enough. Mashed potatoes, cabbage or kale, butter, milk and maybe some scallions – it’s supremely comforting food.

So, it was with colcannon in mind that I went out the other day in search of cabbage. Only what I found was curly kale. Hmph. Of course I know that kale is the more traditional addition to colcannon, but childhood experience has led me to regard it as cabbage’s tougher and frankly less appealing cousin. It has not, therefore, been a vegetable that I have sought out but one that I feel I have to deal with whenever it is foisted upon me.

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