Cabbage, Cabbage, and, Oh Wait, More Cabbage

by Anna Petsching

I buy cabbage approximately two times a year. Once in the early fall to make golumpki soup (a lazy way to eat the delicious, Polish, stuffed cabbage dish). I buy cabbage a second time midwinter to, once again, make golumpki soup. My soup recipe makes enough to feed a village so I generally am thoroughly sick of the soup after making it just twice. And that's it. That's my cabbage consumption for the year. Done. Voila. Everyone lives happily ever after.

But then (dun dun dun!) enter the CSA. Enter more cabbage in three weeks then usually graces my kitchen in an entire year. What to do, what to do? First, I did what I think every CSAer does as some point in their agriculture supporting career, I put the offending vegetable in the fridge and ignored it. Cabbage will last a week or two. I'd think of something to do with it. This plan always backfires, because the next week's share had yet more cabbage. No worries, I knew I'd think of a plan. That cabbage sat in my fridge for another week. Wednesday night, with two cabbages in my fridge, an email telling me I'd be getting more cabbage the next day, and an absolute hatred for wasting food I did what any modern day American would do. I Googled it.

And Google, in it's infinite wisdom, didn't fail me. I found a whole bunch of recipes for cabbage fritters. From that plethora of recipes I spent a harrowing five or ten minutes narrowing down my options. Here's the surprisingly easy and delicious result of that.

As an aside, before I write this up, I have to apologize. I HATE when people give me recipes that aren't exact. I want a recipe that says use a cup of flour, one egg. None of this "add milk until the consistence is similar to the mud pies you made as a child" No. Exact please. My mother doesn't seem to have this figured out. I'll call her to ask her how to make something and she'll say things like "cook it until it looks right." WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?

And yet, I'm about to do the same thing. That's it folks, I've become my mother. I'm going to give you a super inexact recipe and then leave you to it. So, don't burn the kitchen down. Kidding. That'd be pretty hard. This is pretty simple. (Huh, there I go sounding like my mom again).

Okay. Ready?

Take some cabbage. Chop it up. Coat it in flour. Throw in an egg, maybe two or three (enough to make everything stick together). Top all of that off with a dash (perhaps a teaspoon or so) of sesame oil and another dash of soy sauce. Mix it all together. Form the batter into patties with your hands. Fry in canola oil for just a few minutes on both sides. Serve with soy sauce.

That's it. Done. Once again, everyone lives happily ever after. Of course, I've made this a half a dozen times now in the last month, and much like the golumpki soup, I'm starting to get sick of it. So, if we get more cabbage? Well, that's when I'll get real serious. Rather than Googling it, I'll call Grandma and ask her what to do.