I began making variations on this dish about a year ago and since then it has become — and I’m sorry, I know how annoying unrelenting, gasping praise of every recipe that crosses your social media threshold can sound, despite feeling certain that here it’s warranted —
everything. It’s a warm salad for cold weather. It’s Starter Cabbage for people who are cabbage suspect (savoy is lacier and less heavy than the white/red stuff). It’s a quick vegetable dish that’s not a salad or bland broccoli that my kids, by some rare miracle, agree to (they like the crispy crackly outer leaves). It’s even better from the tray (which keeps it hot) than it is from a plate, which is basically a reward for being as lazy as I prefer to be. With prep and even oven-warming, it takes exactly 20 minutes to make. Finally, it’s the kind of humble, economical dish that feels good at a time of year when we need to shell out for so many extra things.
The recipe is inspired by one in that astoundingly good vegetable cookbook I talk about a lot here (see: this asparagus salad and this soup) because I think (ahem, after my own two) you might enjoy it a whole lot: Six Seasons. I made, okay, quite a few changes — the cooking time was too long without flipping it, and it’s better when cooked on two sides. The original recipe has saba (an acidic wine reduction) or vinegar but I got the flavor I wanted with just lemon. There were breadcrumbs but I skip them; the cabbage is roasted in butter, not olive oil, but I found it just smoked a lot. I add lemon zest, since I’m already using a lemon. The nuts are already toasted in the recipe, but mine never are so I worked it into my take, below. Honestly, I haven’t looked at the original recipe in so long (you won’t need to once you’ve made it once or twice), I had to pull down the book just to see what changes I’ve made.
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