Our test cook pays tribute to a meal from a Swiss cafe
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Many years ago I went to Switzerland with seven friends, and as we worked our way from the eastern part of the country to the west, I remember two things about the food.
One was that every morning at breakfast, a server would ask if we wanted coffee, tea or hot chocolate, and it sounded pretty much the same whether they were offering “Kaffee? Tee? Schokolade?” with muesli in the German-speaking part of the country, or “Cafe? The? Chocolat?” with a croissant in the French-speaking part.
My other food memory is that, one day in the French-speaking part of the country, I ordered a Croque Monsieur at an outdoor cafe, knowing from what I’d read in a guidebook that my lunch would be a grilled ham and cheese sandwich.
It was a lovely sandwich, of course. But what seemed really remarkable to a table of Americans who were used to seeing potato chips and pickles alongside sandwiches was that the Croque Monsieur came with two side dishes — both cabbage, one green and one red.
“Oh, you eat so healthy,” my friend Peggy remarked as the plate arrived.
Looking back, I think she may have said that with some exasperation, but I considered it a compliment — one I didn’t really deserve because I hadn’t asked for cabbage, or any sort of vegetable, with the sandwich.
But I was glad to have both side dishes, and it was probably the only time in my life, up until this week, that I’d eaten two kinds of cabbage at the same meal.
Feeling inspired by that long-ago lunch, and thinking that serving red cabbage on the same plate with green cabbage might be kind of Christmas-y, I decided to put together something similar for this week’s Test Kitchen, using two Old World recipes from my mother’s side of the family.
I’ve grown up calling them “Krautsalat,” which is shredded green cabbage served hot with bacon and caraway seeds, and “Blaukraut,” which is shredded red cabbage cooked with onions, apples and cloves.
Alert readers may notice that Blaukraut literally translates to “blue cabbage,” which is what people called the purplish veggie in Bavaria, where my grandmother was born. People in other regions of Germany apparently agree with Americans that it looks more reddish, and call it Rotkohl.
Whatever you call your cabbage, I’ll call it delicious. And good for you — loaded with vitamin C and antioxidants. And if you really wanted to healthy up these recipes, you could use olive oil in place of other fats. But I’ll write them here with the original ingredients — bacon grease in the Krautsalat and butter in the Blaukraut.
Oh, if you want to know how I made my facsimile of a Croque Monsieur, it’s ham and cheddar (sorry; we were out of Gruyere) melted on whole wheat with Dijon mustard.
Krautsalat
4 cups of green cabbage, shredded
2 teaspoons salt
4 strips bacon
1/4 teaspoon caraway seeds
2 tablespoons cider vinegar
Boil a quart of water, add salt to it and pour it over your 4 cups of shredded cabbage. Cover with a plate for about 20 minutes. This will soften the cabbage.
Cut bacon into bite-size bits and fry in a non-stick pan until it is cooked to desired degree of doneness.
Pour salted water and cabbage through a colander to remove the water. Add the hot bacon and the hot bacon grease to the softened cabbage. Add caraway seeds and vinegar. Mix everything together and serve it warm.
Blaukraut
4 or 5 cups red cabbage, shredded
1 or 2 small apples
1 medium onion
1 tablespoon butter
about 8 whole cloves
Apple cider vinegar
Slice onion and saute in butter in a large pot until translucent. Add shredded cabbage, sliced apples and cloves and cook about 40 minutes. Add a splash of apple cider vinegar before serving.