A LA CUISINE!!!

This week's secret ingredient is cabbage!!

For those of you who are thoroughly confused let me take a step back and explain.

The Hatgas' and the Mulders have joined a CSA (community supported agriculture) group. Every Tuesday we walk down to Coventry and pick-up our share of veggies for the week. The great part about a CSA is that you don't always know what you are going to get. This week we got potatoes, scallions, yellow squash, zucchini, radishes a pint of blackberries and, you guessed it, a head of cabbage.

The 4 of us decided that it would be fun to take the craziest ingredient in the bag and have a cook off the following weekend using that ingredient, Iron Chef style. (I'm not going to explain that show to you but it's worth checking out sometime especially if you've never thought about turning raw blue footed chicken into ice cream)

Last night was battle cabbage. It was an interesting meal. We started with a cabbage and potato soup that Joel made (Irish) Then continued on to my favorite; Kelly's Cabbage Stir fry with shrimp (Chinese) next my Cabbage Tikkis with yellow squash Chutney (Indian) and finished with Kevin's Cabbage, bacon, barbecue pancake (Japanese). I would call all of them a success but in the end my Tikki's took home the prize. It was a lot of fun and it was a great chance to learn how to cook with a vegetable that I've never taken a second look at in the grocery store. I always thought it was for sauerkraut and coleslaw and I've never been a fan of either. I'm hoping that the next ingredient is just as challenging. Maybe some Bok choi.

In the meantime here are a few things we all learned about cabbage:

1) It gets everywhere
2) It does not freeze well

3) 1 head of cabbage will give you about 6 cups of shredded green stuff.

4) It doesn't go as well with Bacon as it does with shrimp.

5) Most Cabbage recipes also call for onions

6) It's not just for green Jell-o anymore!!!!

Adeline recommends the alligator.