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Cabbage and Potatoes
Boil the cabbages in salted water till tender. Chop them up. Brown an onion in butter, and add the cabbage, salt, pepper, and a little water. Slice some potatoes thickly, fry them, and serve the vegetable with cabbage in the center, and the fried potatoes laid round.
A plain two-vegetable dish that depends entirely on driving water out of the cabbage and getting real colour on the potatoes. Quantities are left to the cook, as they usually are in this book.
- The hingeBoiled cabbage carries a great deal of water. Drain it hard, press it in the colander, and let it sizzle in the buttered onion until the pan is dry before adding the "little water" — otherwise the dish arrives grey and soupy.
- What cabbageA firm green or Savoy head, roughly 2 lb, feeds four alongside the potatoes. Quarter and core it before boiling so it cooks evenly; 8-10 minutes in well-salted water is enough for tender, not collapsed.
- Chop, don't puréeChopping after boiling is deliberate — the cabbage should be coarse, in short shreds, not creamed. A knife on a board does this better than a processor.
- A little waterRead this as two or three tablespoons, added only to keep the cabbage from catching while it finishes in the butter. It should reduce away entirely.
- Frying the potatoes"Sliced thickly" suggests substantial rounds, somewhere between 1/4 and 1/2 inch. Waxy potatoes hold their shape; fry in butter or a butter-and-oil mix over medium heat, in one layer, turning once, until the interiors cook through as the outsides brown — roughly 10-12 minutes for the thinner slices, longer for thicker ones.
- Butter, generouslyThe recipe names butter for the onion and cabbage, and the dish tastes thin without a fair amount of it; butter was a common cooking fat in Belgian home kitchens, though lard and beef fat were used too, especially for potatoes. Allow 2-3 tablespoons for the cabbage and more for the potatoes.
- ServingThe arrangement is the point: a mound of cabbage in the middle of a warmed platter, the potato rounds overlapping around the rim. Serves four as a side, or two as a supper with sausage or bacon.
The Belgian Cook Book was compiled in 1915 by Mrs. Brian Luck from recipes gathered from Belgian refugees who had fled the German invasion; that origin explains why so many of its entries are this spare, with quantities left unstated and no luxury in sight. Cabbage and potatoes were the two cheap keeping vegetables of the Flemish and Walloon kitchen garden, and dishes pairing them — sometimes mashed together, sometimes plated separately as here — run through the everyday cooking of the Low Countries. The distinguishing habit is butter rather than the bacon fat or dripping often associated with English or American cooking of the same date, and the small flourish of composing the plate, cabbage centred with a ring of fried potatoes, suggests a cook accustomed to sending food to table properly even on very little.