A homemade life

Last weekend, I felt the need to indulge myself. So I went to the bookstore to pick a book to read explicitly and purely for the joy of reading. But however much I tried in the novel section, I found myself drawn again and again to the cookbooks. Finally, I found a happy compromise in A Homemade Life, by Molly Wizenberg. I had read about this cookbook cum memoir some time ago in Sunset Magazine, and I am awed by the clean beauty and lovely writing on Molly's blog, Orangette. This, I think, is one of the most well written blogs I know, every entry is flawless and professional (although sometimes a bit on the long side, for my personal taste). So I was looking forward to reading an actual book by this very same author.

I really enjoyed her writing, as always. It's just beautiful. She put in an essay that she wrote in high school, about how she started cooking, and, I swear to god, she wrote better in high school than I will in my whole life, ever. The story is uplifting- In a nutshell, she grows up in a food centered family, falls in love with France (duh! :)), and, when she finds herself unexcited by her anthropology graduate studies, drops out, moves to Seattle and starts a blog about food, Orangette. Much to her own surprise (not to mine, when you look at the blog), Orangette quickly develops a following (these days, any one of her posts will generate several hundred comments). To make the real life fairy tale complete, she meets her lovely prince and future husband through the blog when he contacts her about one of the recipes. The book ends with a recipe for wedding cake, of course.   

Although I liked the book as a whole, I wasn't too excited by the format of mixing recipes in with the memoir part. Although I enjoy reading cookbooks per se, I find that recipes embedded within a story, like here, somehow interrupt the flow of the tale, and thus take away some of the joy of immersing myself in it. So I ended up skipping over the recipes while I was reading, although many of them are gorgeous by themselves.
I doubt that I will use it much as a reference for cooking (there are too few recipes for me to consider & use it as a "cookbook"). This is too bad, because the recipes sound quite tasty. In my perfect world, Molly would have written two books, one a memoir to read, and one a cookbook to devour. Perhaps the cookbook is still out there, who knows?

Spring

One of the ways to tell that spring is here is if there are people besides you in the community garden. Last weekend, we finally met some of our old gardening friends whom we have missed all winter. They were preparing their beds for spring planting, and we ended up being presented one of their phenomenal red cabbages. I had been admiring those cabbages all winter, asking myself why they were so much bigger and prettier than ours. I'm still not sure, but since they planted earlier, my guess would be they simply got more of the late summer warmth.

Red cabbage, when made the traditional German way, is very good, but always reminds me of Christmas, which is when it is usually served with an apple stuffed roasted goose and potatoes. In order to get around that association, I usually spice up red cabbage when I make it outside of the holidays.

Today, I made honey, beer and mustard braised red cabbage.

I apologize for the vague recipe, but it's one of those improvised dishes that I've never measured the ingredients for.

one head of red cabbage, central stem removed and sliced into fine strips
one large red onion, halved and sliced into thin strips
butter
about 1 tablespoon honey
about 1 tablespoon mustard
about one tablespoon dark raisins
about 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
about 1 cup of beer (you can substitute chicken broth)

melt butter in a large pan over low-medium heat, add onions and slowly cook until translucent, but not browned, about 10-15 minutes. This takes a little time, but it's well worth the patience- the onions will turn slightly sweet. Add shredded cabbage and other ingredients, turn, cover the pan with a lid, and keep braising over low-medium heat for about 25 minutes. There should always be a little bit of liquid at the bottom to prevent things from sticking, so if you opened the lid too frequently and too much evaporated, just add a little more beer or chicken broth. Season with salt, pepper, and chili flakes if you like it hot (I do). Goes well with beer, of course.