A staple of food writer Romy Gill’s childhood in India, cabbage has played a starring role in her kitchen ever since

Cabbage is one of India’s most popular vegetables. As a child I remember eating it often – we’d make pickles, ferment it, and prepare fresh cabbage salads with onion, lime or lemon juice, pomegranate and cucumber. Or we’d cook sabzi, a vegetarian curry, blending cabbage with summer or winter squashes, depending on the season, and peas or potatoes. Cabbage in one form or another has played a part in my cooking for as long as

I can remember.

And yet in this country cabbages are arguably some of the most underrated vegetables around. Despite the variety available – from the curly, bitter savoy to the pointy, sweet hispi – when I moved here 30 years ago I discovered that cabbage was all too often cooked to death. People would boil or steam it and have it on the side of a roast. To me, that doesn’t make the most of this misunderstood vegetable. Perhaps that’s why many children hate it.

My own daughters were sceptical of cabbage when they were growing up, so I always had to think carefully to create dishes they liked. I looked to garlic, ginger and chilli, and to spices like black mustard seeds, cumin or nigella seeds, which can transform bland steamed cabbage into a delicious side. Simply add the spices and some oil to a pan, add minced ginger or garlic, then fry off the cooked cabbage in it. You can add cooked butternut squash, pumpkin or peas, too.

Even with more traditional British flavours, you can still avoid plain soggy cabbage. Roasting pork belly in the oven? Place wedges of cabbage, along with apples and pears, around it in the tin and roast them all together. Those ingredients are a match made in heaven.

I use cabbage year round. In summer it’s a leafy variety chopped raw into salads. During the colder months I like a harder cabbage or a red variety. You can make a lovely, simple wintry salad of shredded red cabbage with pomegranate molasses, walnuts and balsamic vinegar, which softens the cabbage. My daughters – now converts – just love it.

If you are able to, the best way to get cabbage is through a veg box. They are usually of the highest quality. Supermarket options are, of course, fine, but I do find that cabbages often come in much bigger sizes than I need. A recipe may call for 200g but the cabbage weighs 500g. Instead of leaving it to grow old at the back of the fridge, chop or shred the excess and freeze it. If you’re not going to use it all, that’s the best way to preserve it, and you can use it in any way you like once defrosted.

The recipes I’m sharing here will, I hope, inspire you to look at cabbages in a new light. There are dumplinglike rolls of steamed savoy cabbage stuffed with pork mince and served with a soy and spring onion dipping sauce. There are beautiful sweet potato tikkis – little croquettes of delicately spiced cabbage and sweet potato that are my version of a snack popular all over India. Finally, there is a kaleidoscopic salad of glossy cavolo nero and beetroot.

Think all cabbage has to be boring, bland and boiled to death? Think again.