I know this is nothing new to any of you out there who’ve done CSAs before, and I had certainly heard enough about the vagaries of CSA shares that I should have known this would come. As of Friday evening, I’d hit a crisis point—way too much cabbage. Two massive (as in bowling ball-sized) heads, in fact, were taking up space in the fridge, and procrastination was no longer an option.
Cole slaw, of course, would be the obvious thing to make with this bounty, but I’d already made that a few weeks ago (albeit a non-standard version), and much as I like cole slaw, I just couldn’t feature eating several gallons of the stuff. Stuffed cabbage was out, too—I remember my Grandma’s sisters and nieces making it for family reunions, and I remember my Mom trying to replicate the recipe, not quite so successfully. It’s sort of like making tamales—which I love, but have never summoned up the ambition to make. So there was no way I was going to make stuffed cabbage, which I feel rather meh about.
What to do? Other than cole slaw, and other, similar salad-like recipes, I could find very little in the way of summer-y cabbage recipes on Epicurious, foodandwine.com or anywhere else on the web (I did find this recipe for a very interesting-sounding Indian take on cabbage, but decided to try it another time). So I finally gave in, and decided to do St. Patty’s Day in July. (Why should Christmas be the only holiday to double-dip?)
The main event: baked cabbage with bacon…
and since we needed something to round out the meal: Irish soda bread with raisins and caraway…
Both were unqualified successes. The hubby described the baked cabbage as being like “a bowlful of bacon”, in a good way—the bacon and cabbage melded together nicely, both in taste and texture, with a healthy dose of toasted bread crumbs providing a little contrast. And the bread—the best soda bread I’ve ever had, hands down. I was initially a little worried about the combo of raisins and caraway (which usually puts me in mind of rye bread), but it was a good, if unusual, pairing.
Now if I could just figure out what to do with all the summer squash and cukes…