The eatin’ has been good around my house lately.
I bought a head of cabbage, just because it looked good at the time, which of course led to Cabbage Conundrum by the time I got home. I’ve made roasted cabbage within recent memory, but I consider that a failed experiment. I believe the source of the error was having made an entire giant head all at once and then being left with a large container filled with limp, cold, leftover roasted cabbage stinking up the joint. After sufficient shudder time has passed, I may try it again, one or two wedges at a time.
So I knew what I did NOT want to do with my (more reasonably sized) new head of cabbie. I turned to the ever-reliable 101 Cookbooks and found Rustic Cabbage Soup. Recommended! Great for the raw, wet days we had in mid-February. Filling and virtuous.
I also found myself in possession of red lentils, sweet potatoes, and acorn squash. I suppose I was having an Orange Moment. Praise be to Google, which gave me Lentil, Spinach, and Sweet Potato Ragout from Recipes 4 Every Kitchen when I plugged the ingredients into the search bar. Because I made it with red lentils, I think mine’s prettier than the picture on the site – a nice bright yellow punctuated by the orange sweet potato and green spinach. Man, it is so good: unctuous, smooth. The mint is like tiny bits of firecracker in there. I’ve been eating it under or on top of all kinds of things. Tonight I’ll top it with some nice salmon. Last week I had it over cheese ravioli. Highly recommended.
I remember a dish my pal Eugene made with cabbage and lady peas (or maybe some other tiny peas) where he took half the head of cabbage, emptied out all but the outer few layers of leaves, and stuffed the inside with peas. Then he inverted the thing on a sheet pan and roasted the whole thing so that it ended up as an cabbage igloo full of peas. Then he served it by cutting it into wedges.
Was that yummy?
It was as yummy as you might expect. I find that the effort that goes into making food pretty (and I’ve eaten some pretty food) often would be better spent making it delicious, but it was interesting.
I agree with your sentiment, that delicious > pretty.