Cabbages and Kings
Grow your own cabbages….
I think I’ve always liked cabbage, thinking back it must have been my first taste of Mrs Collins’ braised red cabbage, German style when I was a young boy in lederhosen (still got them for special occasions!!) I shall be forever grateful to my parents for feeding me fresh vegetables from the start, we always ate properly and that, without doubt shaped the chef and man that I have become (bitter and twisted aside)
So this year I am going to grow my two favourite cabbages; red and savoy. Red because I shall grow them for my mum and ask her to share her recipe with you, mine isn’t practical at all; two bottles of red wine, a kilo of brown sugar…you get the picture-bloody chefs.
Savoy because they look great, taste fantastic and cook quickly. They scream out for some cubes of thick cut Italian bacon, caramelised onions, some thyme, bay leaf and cream to bind it all together. Good God, I’m thinking about winter already!
Growing cabbages well isn’t that easy, the art is to ensure the plant forms a nice tight ball. You will do battle with the evil forces which seek to destroy your hard work but don’t give in, the end result is worth the effort.
Red cabbages don’t seem to attract the attention of slugs and cabbage butterfly in the way their green counterparts do, they are very hardy and look superb in the bleakness of a winter vegetable patch. All cabbages like an open, well drained site. Make sure the ground has been suitably fed well before planting, I always sow cabbages in individual pots, it reduces the risk of slug attack and I don’t need to mess about with thinning them out.
Whilst the young plants are doing their thing in pots I am busy preparing their bed. Firm ground is essential, if you stick them into freshly dug, fluffy soil you’re asking for trouble. Walk up and down the soil and plant the cabbages firmly, it’s a must. Once you’ve planted the cabbages you can expect a visit from the cabbage white butterfly, if one type doesn’t get them then the other will, look out for eggs on the outer leaves or further inside the plant. The large white butterfly will leave you with a couple of hundred black and yellow caterpillars which will strip your cabbage plant like a piranha on a goldfish.
Keep them well watered and check back here for updates, or not if the butterfly has its way.
Miles,
Had good day yesterday in general but especially enjoyable since the Tastes of Lincolnshire food market was in town. I came back with Russian kale, a sort of reddish maple leafed shaped veg… pink fir apples (knobbly potato), smoked eel fillets, free range chicken portion (the size of a whole bird from my local supermarket!), a packet of Lincoln Red minced beef, borage honey, delicately scented chocolate buttons from the confectioners at Market Rasen, smoked Lincolnshire Poacher cheese and some smoked garlic.
Yea, my cup runneth over
Cid
March 30, 2008 @ 11:27 am
Cid,
That sounds like a great day, intrigued by the borage. I use the leaves and flowering heads but have never heard of it in honey. Makes sense though because bees love my borage plants.
Well done for supporting the cause.
Miles
March 30, 2008 @ 4:09 pm
Miles,
The honey was produced from bees that fed on borage or so the man said. All I can tell you is that it has a mild flavour and is clear.
Borage (Starflower)
In recent years, borage has been shown to contain gamma linoleic acid (GLA), an omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acid, which is active against various cancers, including breast, brain and prostate. It prevents the spread of malignant tumours by restricting blood vessel growth. For these reasons, borage has been adopted as the symbol of National Cancer Day, as promoted by Cancer Research UK. In fact, borage has the most potent concentration of gamma linoleic acid found in nature, containing twice as much as is found in the evening primrose, and which is used to treat pre-menstrual syndrome (PMS). Indeed, it is now possible to buy capsules of borage seed oil from health food shops for this purpose.
Culinary Uses
In folk tradition, borage has long been believed to dispel melancholy and ease grief and sadness. According to Dioscorides, borage can ‘cheer the heart and lift the depressed spirits’, while Gerard3 wrote that its flowers were used in salads ‘to exhilarate and make the minde glad’ while cooks used them ‘for the comfort of the heart, to drive away sorrow, and increase the joy of the minde’.
The flowers can be picked and make a fine addition to salads, as do their leaves which have a taste reminiscent of cucumber.
The leaves can be cooked and served up as a vegetable in much the same way as spinach, or in soup recipes.
The leaves and flowers can be added to refreshing cold summer drinks such as Pimms or to non-alcoholic fruit punches. Borage tea can be made by taking a small bunch of leaves and simmering in boiling water. If mixed with honey, this can help if one is suffering from a cold.
A Recipe for Claret-Cup
A traditional and refreshing drink, seasonable in summer, this recipe comes courtesy of Mrs Beeton.
Ingredients
1 bottle claret
1 bottle soda water
225g (8oz) (approx) crushed ice
1 liqueur glass maraschino
4 tbsp caster sugar
One quarter tsp grated nutmeg
1 sprig green borage
Serving
Place all the ingredients into a silver cup, regulating the quantity of ice by the state of the weather: if it’s a very warm day, a larger quantity is required. Pass the cup around with a clean napkin passed through one of the handles, so that the edge of the cup may be wiped after each guest has partaken of the contents thereof.
… and that is all I have to say on the subject
Cid
p.s. Miles, I can see someone we know going for the Claret Cup purely for medicinal reasons
March 30, 2008 @ 6:11 pm
Cid,
What a fantastic comment. I have been growing borage for about three years now and aside from their use in Pimms I didn’t realise it had so many uses. On my food resource site I mention the use of borage as a remedy for tickly coughs but this is much more interesting. It is quite beautiful in flower but its ability to self seed is in itself both remarkable and mildly annoying.
Thanks Cid, you’ve done it again!
Miles
March 30, 2008 @ 8:21 pm
Cid,
Fascinating recount. It made me look through some of my reference books. Interestingly, one of my continental healing plant books refers to Borago officinalis as ‘blue sky star’ or ‘heart flower’. Describing it as a plant growing between herbs and vegetable that signifies its general use.
I love the flower, it is most striking.
Elsie
March 31, 2008 @ 7:55 pm
Elsie,
I used to grow it years ago and use the flowers in ice cubes. Now though I fancy the tea ‘to exhilarate and make the minde glad’… I could do with a mug or two of that today in between scrubbing kitchen floors and painting units
I like the sound of those healing plant books… I too have a selection gathering dust in the spare room. Think I missed my vocation as a herbally/potion mixing type although my interest has been rekindled by finding some sites that offer raw ingredients like shea butter.
Cid
April 1, 2008 @ 8:19 am
Cid,
.
It sounds as so you need all the help you can get. Can’t you drum a troop together?
I am sure that you have still plenty of potential for herbal mixing. The so called witches of years gone by were not always of the young variety
Elsie
April 1, 2008 @ 10:05 am
Elsie,
My troops tend to be the coffee swilling kind, in fact they’ve just left and I’ve achieved nothing so far today. Later on and usually at a most inappropriate time, I shall feel a surge of creativity and have to stop myself short of painting scenes across the ceiling
For now though I must gather my thoughts, write a list and then forget where I’ve put it…. walk three times around the garden contemplating life and the universe…. only then will the paint brush see the light of 
dayeveningCid
April 1, 2008 @ 11:49 am
Cid,
Sounds a bit like me but minus the paintbrush
Elsie
April 1, 2008 @ 1:44 pm