Ukrainian Cabbage Dumplings (Varenyky), and a Confession

posted in: Dumplings, Recipes | 16

The holiday season has arrived, and that means a lot of dumpling-making from November through February to my family and friends. Although no time of the year is spared of this tradition, we really bring it on the nights before Thanksgiving and Christmas: at least two types of fillings, stacks of round wrappers, and often, square, yellow wonton wrappers for boiled wontons and their filling are brought out onto the table and everyone gets busy folding. The inevitable chatter over how … Read More

Sticky Rice Stuffed Cabbage

Food tucked inside individual portion-sized packages—it’s a formula that has served many favorite dishes of mine. From dumplings to tamales, these dishes are often clever ways to stretch or use up scraps and leftovers. Because yesterday’s stale starches and bits of proteins are much more charming dressed up in a wrapper. This dish is a cross between the minced mushroom and meat-laden Chinese sticky rice that I grew up with and stuffed cabbage, a homestyle European dish that I would … Read More

Torn Cabbage Salad with Apples and Pecorino

This dish is part-recipe, part-stress therapy. When I served it as part of a baby shower brunch recently, people kept coming up to ask me a) Was that raw cabbage? and b) How did you cut it? You don’t cut it, I told them. You have to roll up your sleeves and tear it with your bare hands, which I demonstrated by air-tearing. It’s a lot of fun.

Shredded Vegetable Dumplings

There are a lot of initiatives around hunger lately, with World Peace Day just behind us and a long winter ahead, but when one happens to involve dumplings, I cannot sit idly. The New York Dumpling Festival (#dumplingfest2015) is this Saturday, and it benefits one of my favorite charities, the Food Bank for NYC. To salute this group and shout-out the event, I thought I’d go orange with this dumpling recipe, a blend of hearty vegetables from my CSA.

Seared Savoy Cabbage Salad with Potato, Bacon and Scallions

Sssizzle. One simple technique — searing — can add dramatic layers of flavor, even in places where you’d less expect it. A salad, for instance. I’ve had slightly charred radicchio and even romaine lettuce, but there’s something about sweet savoy cabbage, with its crinkly leaves, that tastes divine when given the treatment. Also, cabbage, in its many shapes and colors, is inexpensive, hardy, and readily available at a (yes, it’s still) winter farmers market. But the weather is getting warmer, … Read More

Soy-Marinated Steak with Shiitake Mushrooms and Napa Cabbage

posted in: Meat & Poultry, Recipes | 2

Here’s my new take on a standard beef stir-fry with vegetables over rice. I like to use a good cut of good, grass-fed beef to its fullest, and I love the tenderness of a rare-cooked steak, whose drooling juices contribute to the rich flavors of ample marbling (aka fat). Here, I’ve taken a decent cut (sirloin) of really good, pastured beef and added one other benefit: a light marinade for flavor and texture, in the style of a Chinese stir-fry.

Spaghetti with Cabbage, Sungold Tomatoes and Duck Prosciutto

You might be wondering why, in the midst of summer, when all the glorious squashes, eggplants, tomatoes and peppers have come into season, did I choose to get cabbage at the Greenmarket? Well, the short answer is that I’m slightly obsessed with cabbages — of all kinds — and I don’t expect anyone to relate. And seeing a new head of Savoy cabbage, with quilted-textured, pristine green leaves on the outside and tightly wound like a rubber band ball, promising … Read More

Creamy Cabbage Salad with Romano Beans & Mint

These hot few weeks, nothing cools like a crunchy salad. I like shards of crisp, brittle cabbage, which deserve the name “iceberg” much more than most types of lettuce. If you’ve ever bought a whole head of one, you’ll know how many mounds of shreds they’ll yield, and how they last long in the crisper, too. The fresh, sweet flavor of cabbage compares to that of pole beans, just in season now here on the Northeast; combining the two, I … Read More

Fresh Parsnip & Red Cabbage Salad with Mint

I was craving the coolness of some type of salad, now that it’s reached 68 degrees this early March in New York. Visions of cucumbers and fresh stone fruit danced in my head, but despite the warmth, it was still no time for such produce. Bah humbug, but here’s a tip for the midst of winter: fresh parsnip has a slightly tropical, fruity taste, especially when tossed with fresh lemon juice.

Pasta and Potatoes with Cabbage

This dish is inspired by the classic preparation of pizzoccheri, a tagliatelle-like pasta made with buckwheat flour from Northern Italy. It’s commonly tossed with cooked potatoes and cabbage in a buttery, starchy cooking water-thickened sauce accented with grated cheese. It sounded like just my kind of dish, only getting my hands on pizzoccheri noodles this side of the pond, or making it, proved unwieldy.

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