SPROUTS ARE OUT !
Give the Brussels a miss this year and plump for cabbage, says Monty Don
THE best Christmas dinner I have ever had was probably the simplest. It was 1991 and I had no work and no money. We were living in a rat-infested rented farmhouse and the future looked bleak. It was a dark time.
The three children were babies or toddlers but just old enough to be excited by Christmas and we were determined to celebrate as best we could. On Christmas Eve we bought a last-minute goose very cheaply from a local farmer, stuffed it with windfall apples I gathered from the tree in the garden and served it with boiled potatoes and a savoy cabbage and gravy.
We splashed out and bought a bottle of dry local cider to wash it down. Every mouthful was delicious and as we sat round the little kitchen table with our paper hats on we were a very happy family.
I often look back on that meal as a kind of corrective lest I ever get too spoilt or disgruntled about things that do not matter. Simple, fresh food eaten with those you love always makes the best meal. And if I deconstruct the menu, what keeps coming back is how important and good the cabbage was.
At Christmas most of us opt for Brussels sprouts. I like a good sprout but they are not the only cabbagey option. In fact, the first documented British recipe using sprouts is from Eliza Acton in 1845 and it seems that they only became popular after the First World War. So consider cabbage as an alternative to sprouts, and if you do not grow them already then start to look over the seed catalogues and order next year’s seeds for a first sowing - in February for summer cabbages.
Winter cabbages can then be sown in March and April and spring cabbages which are essentially summer cabbages that are eaten with loose leaves before they develop a heart - should be sown between mid-summer and the end of August.
The range of cabbages for the gardener far exceeds what you might buy in most shops.
The savoy cabbage has a sweet butteriness that is surprisingly delicate. It also looks sensational in the vegetable patch, with its convoluted, brain-like folds that crinkle across the range and depth of its greens. Winter whites or drumheads are also tough but tasty. They develop a solid white head and were developed primarily for making sauerkraut. ‘January King’ is an old French variety with a characteristic pink shading to its blueish leaves.
Red cabbages are the hardiest of the lot and are also the handsomest thing in a winter vegetable garden, worth growing for pure decoration. Simmered very slowly with brown sugar, juniper, onion and vinegar, they are the perfect accompaniment to turkey or any game, and get better when reheated. I like ‘Red Drumhead’, which has a deep, almost purple, colour, and ‘Red Dutch’ is also good. I also grow ‘Westlandse Putjes’ and black Tuscan kale, or cavolo nero, which is very hardy and one of the few cabbages that improves with prolonged cooking, making it excellent for soups and stews.
I sow my winter cabbages in early March, pricking them out into 7.5cm (3in) pots as soon as the first ‘true’ leaves appear. They can be sown into an outdoor seed bed in April, but they must be thinned early so that there is at least 7.5cm (3in) between each plant. I plant them out in June and July. Give them space to grow, with at least 60cm (2ft) between each plant. This may seem unduly extravagant with space but I often grow a crop of lettuce between them that can be harvested and eaten before the cabbages start to grow too big and shade the lettuce out.