Sweet Sour Cabbage Soup with Sausage

At the risk of embarrassing such a humble vegetable, we won't revisit the impressive attributes of cabbage in this post.  (For a cabbage refresher, visit the post just before this one.)  We will, however, reiterate the all-important "easy to cook" part which is a major selling point for this soup recipe. 

There are many ways to turn out a good cabbage soup, but this is our favorite when cooking for a crowd.  Rather than attempting to saute a huge amount of chopped cabbage, we roast the ribbons until they are slightly wilted and lightly browned.  Aside from being nearly effortless, this turns out a soup with a crisp-tender texture and maintains the sweet nuttiness of the cabbage.  After roasting, the ribbons are stirred into the soup base where they cook just long enough for the flavors to meld.  This recipe pairs cabbage with sausage, a classic and much-loved combination around the world, and brightens both with a broth that's a little salty, a little tangy and a little sweet.  Paired with cornbread and a tangy apple salad, this is textbook autumnal eating that's easy on the pocketbook and popular with the crowd. 

A few cook's notes... We'll refer to our usual fresh soup disclaimer:  fresh soup is chopping-intensive but infinitely worth the effort.  We highly recommend employing a food processor to prep the onions, carrots, celery and garlic.  This can even be done the day before and stored in air-tight containers (we use two 8-qt restaurant-style storage containers with lids).  If you don't have access to a food processor, give yourself plenty of extra time to prepare the vegetables.  Feel free to substitute pre-washed baby carrots for conventional carrots.  As for the cabbage, halve and quarter each head, cut out the cores and thinly slice the quarters into ribbons. We further chop the ribbons until they are about 2" long-- much more managable on a spoon than a five inch slice of unruly cabbage.  Alternatively, you could send the cabbage through a food processor fitted with a medium-sized shredder blade.  You'll have a texture that's more like slaw, but it will certainly work.  And if you're really pressed for time, you could consider roasting one of those huge bags of pre-shredded coleslaw mix, though you'll be trading in the freshness of a local cabbage. 

As we've come to realize, there's a great economy of effort in making a double batch of soup to serve at the next meal, so this recipe is sized accordingly.  We store the second batch in those same 8-qt containers in a deep freezer until our next meal and enjoy a night with a little less elbow grease required.  If you just need a single batch, cut the recipe below in half.  Finally, if scratch cornbread and scratch soup seem like too much to tackle in one evening, a quintuple batch of a good cornbread mix does just as well.  Enjoy!




Sweet and Sour Cabbage Soup with Sausage
Makes a double batch for 36 persons (one for now and one for the freezer)

• 1/2 cup olive oil, divided
• 3 lbs red or sweet onions (about 4 medium), diced
• 2 lbs carrots (about 16 medium), diced
• 1 large bunch celery with leafy tops included (about 1-3/4 lbs), diced
• 8 cloves garlic, minced
• 8 lbs cabbage, outer leaves and cores removed (about 2 heads), cut into thin, 2" long ribbons
• 3 gallons spring water
• 8 oz jar "Better than Boullion" brand organic chicken stock base (you could also use vegetable base)
• 24 oz tomato paste
• 4 cups honey or agave syrup
• 4 cups cider vinegar (start with 3 cups and add more to taste depending on preference)
• 3 lbs chicken-apple sausage (we used Trader Joe's brand "Smoked Apple Chardonay"), sliced into thin half-rounds
• 1 cup freshly chopped flat-leaf parsley, cilantro or a comination of both
• 2 cups buttermilk, optional
• Sea salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. 

Prepare two full-size hotel pans by adding 1/4 cup of olive oil to each pan and preheating pans in the hot oven for 5 minutes until oil is warm.  Remove pans from oven.  Add diced onions, carrots, celery and garlic to the first pan and toss with the olive oil.   Add sliced cabbage to the second pan and toss with the olive oil.  Season the contents of each pan with salt and pepper and return to the oven to roast until vegetables have wilted and lightly browned.  This will take about 20 minutes in commerical convection oven and a about twice that long in a conventional oven.  Remove pans from oven once or twice during the cooking process to give the contents a good stir and to prevent the top layer from burning.

While vegetables are roasting, pour water into a very large stock pot (at least 18" in height) and put pot over high heat.  Add stock base and tomato paste to pot to water and stir to dissolve. 

When vegetables are roasted, transfer to the stock pot and stir well to combine.  Add honey (or agave nectar) and vinegar and taste for flavor, making adjustments as neccessary.  Add sausage and cook for an additional 15 minutes at a gentle boil. 

Remove pot from heat, stir in chopped herbs and buttermilk and make one final check for flavor, seasoning with salt and pepper to taste.   Serve hot with cornbread and apple salad on the side.




Tangy Apple Salad
Serves 36 persons

• 6 lbs Granny Smith apples (about 12 large)
• 9 oz raisins
• 1 lb baby arugula (usually available pre-washed in clamshell containers at most grocery stores)
• 1-1/2 cups vegetable oil (like canola or light olive oil)
• 1-1/2 cups buttermilk
• 1/4 cup honey or agave nectar
• 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
• 1 TBS dijon mustard
• Sea salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

To prepare dressing, whisk vegetable oil, buttermilk, honey (or agave), vinegar, and dijon in the bottom of a large work bowl.  Season with salt and pepper and make any flavor adjustments as desired.  Mix raisins into the dressing.

If you have a mandoline or food processor with a shredder or slicer blade, slice or shred apples and add them immediately to the bowl with dressing to prevent browning.  If preparing by hand, slice apples into quarters, and slice quarters into very thin half-moon slices. 

Just before serving, toss arugula with apples and dressing (tongs work well for this).  Season with salt and pepper and serve immediately.





Cheddar Scallion Cornbread

Makes (2) 8x13 pans or one full-size hotel pan, about 40 slices

• 3 cups unbleached white flour
• 3 cups yellow cornmeal
• 3 TBS baking powder
• 1 1/2 tsp sea salt
• 6 eggs
• 3 cups whole milk
• 1/2 cup canola oil (or melted butter)
• 1/3 cup agave syrup (or honey)
• 1 lb sharp cheddar or cheddar jack cheese, cut into 1/4" cubes
• 2 cups thinly sliced scallions, white parts only
• 1 cup thinly sliced scallions, green parts only
• 2 TBS canola oil for greasing pan

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Combine flour, cornmeal, baking powder and sea salt in an XL mixing bowl. Creat a crate in the center of the dry ingredients.  In the crater, combine the eggs, milk, oil and honey and whisk to combine the wet ingredients. With a large wooden spoon slowly incorporate the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients, being careful not to overwork the mixture as this will toughen the bread. Once mixed, gently fold in cheese and white scallions.

With a basting brush, lightly grease (2) 8x13 baking pans or a single full-size hotel pan.  Preheat the greased pan in the oven for about 5 minutes to ensure a good crust.

Carefully remove the preheated pan(s) from the oven.  Immediately pour batter into the hot pans and top with remaining green scallions.  Return to oven to bake for 25-30 minutes or until bread is crusty brown and cooked through.  Allow to rest five minutes before slicing.  Serve warm.

Pasta with Roasted Cabbage & Sausage

Cabbage doesn't get any tastier than in autumn.  Like so many cruciferious vegetables, a few nights in a cold field make it that much sweeter.  If you have access to farmer's market cabbage (and in Chicago, there's no shortage), now is the time to pick up head or three. Aside from being one of the most economical vegetables around, it's a nutritional powerhouse and, in our editorial opinion, much underappreciated.  We suspect that traumatic, early-life run-ins with smelly cabbage dishes (sauerkraut and Brussels sprouts, anyone?) cause people to shy away in later life.  Even the sweetest and freshest cabbage cooked long enough or in the wrong manner (eh hem...  crockpot... lesson learned) will be transformed into something so pungent you may not be able to bear it.  Ironically, cooking cabbage correctly takes very little effort;  it's actually much more difficult to turn out a smelly dish, but somehow, we do it.

If you need further convincing before attempting a cabbage-centric menu, here's our best shot. Cabbage is rich in fiber, low in calories (one cup has only 15) and great source of Vitamin C. It contains a naturally-occuring nitrogenous compound known as indoles which has been linked to lower occurances of various forms of cancer- most notably breast cancer in women and prostate cancer in men.  It's rich in vitamin A (responsible for the protection of your skin and eyes), vitamin C (an all important anti-oxidant), vitamin E (a fat soluble anti-oxidant which plays a role in skin integrity), and vitamin B (helps maintain integrity of nerve endings and boosts energy metabolism).  It inhibits infections and ulcers and boosts the immune system's ability to produce more antibodies. Finally, it provides high levels of iron and sulphur, minerals that work in part as cleansing agents for the digestive system.  And the best endorsement?  In our shelter community, where many of the roots run south, it's often requested.

But pasta and cabbage?  Yes!  This is an American rendition of the classic Italian dish pasta with radicchio.  Fresh cabbage is sweeter and more approachable than its intense cousin, radicchio, but the idea stays intact in the recipe below.  Is there anything easier than tossing a heap of roasted vegetables with freshly cooked pasta, a bit of sausage and a flavorful cheese?  We don't think so.  The most challenging aspect is finding a spoon that's hefty enough handle the final tossing.  Given the vegetables, sausage and cheese in this recipe, this is main course and side dish rolled into one. We serve it with a tangy apple salad on the side and not much else.  If it's a chilly evening, warm apple cider compliments nicely.  So... grab a cabbage, get crazy, and go for it.  Enjoy!


Pasta with Roasted Cabbage and Sausage

36 (generous) servings

• 4 lbs small whole wheat pasta (like rotini, penne or tubetti)
• 3 lbs pre-cooked chicken sausage (use Andouille if you like spicy and chicken-apple if you prefer sweet)
• 3/4 cup unsalted butter
• 3/4 cup + 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil, divided
• 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
• 2 TBS honey or agave syrup (optional)
• 1 head garlic, cloves smashed and sliced into extra-thin slivers
• 1 head purple cabbage, thinly sliced into ribbons (about 3 lbs before trimming and slicing)
• 1 head green cabbage, thinly sliced into ribbons (about 4 lbs)
• 3 lbs red onions, halved and thinly sliced into half-rounds
• 2 cups Italian flat-leaf Italian parsley, finely chopped
• 1/2 lb freshly grated Parmesan cheese (or, if you prefer, crumbled blue or gorgonzola cheese)
• 1-1/2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes (optional)
• sea salt
• freshly ground pepper

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Preheat flattop grill to medium-high heat.  Put a covered XL stock pot (16 qts or larger) filled with cold water and 2 TBS salt over high heat.

Rinse, halve and quarter cabbages.  Remove cores and thinly slice the quarters into 1/4" thick ribbons.  Trim the longer ribbons into 3-4" pieces. 

Melt butter in a small saucepan over medium heat until just foaming. Add garlic to the pan and cook for two minutes over low heat.  Remove from heat and add 3/4 cup olive oil.  

Toss the sliced cabbage and melted butter mixture together in a full-size, extra deep hotel pan. Season the mixture with sea salt and freshly ground pepper. Transfer pan to the hot oven and roast for about 20-25 minutes until ribbons are tender and slightly browned, stirring occasionally to prevent top layer from burning.

While cabbage is roasting, slice the onions into very thin half rounds.  Warm the remaining 1/4 cup olive oil, apple cider vinegar and honey (or agave syrup) in a shallow hotel pan or chafing dish in the same oven as the cabbage for 3-4 minutes.  When warm, remove the pan from the oven, add the onions and season with salt and freshly ground pepper.  Roast onions for about 20-25 minutes until they are deeply browned and caramelized.  (If onions begin to burn before they fully soften and caramelize, cover pan tightly with foil and continue cooking.)  Keep onions warm until ready to use.

About 20 minutes before mealtime, when stockpot has reached a full boil, cook pasta per the package instructions.  Drain pasta and reserve one cup of cooking water. 

While pasta is cooking, slice the sausages into thin rounds and arrange in a single layer on a sheet pan.  Warm in the oven until heated through.

To serve, add very hot pasta, caramlized onions, sausage rounds, choped parsley and cheese to the pan with the roasted cabbage.  Use a hefty serving spoon (or two) or kitchen tong to toss all ingredients together.  If the pasta seems a bit dry, use the reserved cooking water to assist with the mixing.  Season with salt and pepper, taste for flavor and add additional cheese as desired.  (If you have fresh and flavorful olive oil on hand, you can finish the dish with a swirl of that as well.)  Serve immediately.



Tangy Apple Salad

Serves 36 persons

• 6 lbs Granny Smith apples (about 12 large)
• 9 oz raisins
• 1 lb baby arugula (usually available pre-washed in clamshell containers at most grocery stores)
• 1-1/2 cups vegetable oil (like canola or light olive oil)
• 1-1/2 cups buttermilk
• 1/4 cup honey or agave nectar
• 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
• 1 TBS dijon mustard
• Sea salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

To prepare dressing, whisk vegetable oil, buttermilk, honey (or agave), vinegar, and dijon in the bottom of a large work bowl. Season with salt and pepper and make any flavor adjustments as desired. Mix raisins into the dressing. 

If you have a mandoline or food processor with a shredder or slicer blade, slice or shred apples and add them immediately to the bowl with dressing to prevent browning. If preparing by hand, slice apples into quarters, and slice quarters into thin matchsticks.

Just before serving, toss arugula with apples and dressing (tongs work well for this). Season with salt and pepper and serve immediately.

Crustless Breakfast Quiche

This Sunday's breakfast will be a meal-on-wheels as Team Grace isn't able to assemble in person for live cooking.  We're turning to one of the best make-ahead recipes in our breakfast repertoire, a crustless breakfast quiche.  We're making and baking on Friday afternoon, wrapping things up nice and tight, and doing a drop-off (with directions for reheating) for Sunday morning.  The time in between cooking and eating is time well spent, as this dish only gets tastier as the flavors have time to mingle and marry.  If you really want to go "crustless" and turn out a totally bread-free quiche, omit the bread in the recipe below and increase your quantity of egg-custard accordingly.  There's no perfect formula for this one -- just experiment until you find a version you love.  The flavors below are Italianate (for lack of a better description) but if you have a favorite classic quiche recipe, swap and sub ingredients as your heart desires. 

A few cook's notes...  We used a Kitchen-Aid stand mixer to mix our egg custard in two batches and highly recommend that method.  If you don't have a stand mixer, try a hand held mixer and several large work bowls.  If you're mixing things manually, whisk the eggs by hand prior whisking in the liquid egg whites to make the mixture more manageable. Tranfer each batch of egg custard to a very large (12+ qt) stock pot where the ingredients can rest until you've finished the recipe.  As for cooking, we happened to have half-size disposable aluminum pans on hand, so that's what we used.  Although you end up with six pans, half-size pans are easy to transport and don't over tax a conventional home oven.  If you're using a commerical oven and/or pans, you can use 2 or 3 full-size hotel pans depending on your preferred thickness for the finished dish.  Cooking times below are for half-size disposable pans in a conventional home oven. 

We served this with fresh fruit and orange juice, but also think a side of something sweet (muffins, pastries, quick breads, etc.) would round out the meal very nicely.  Either way, it's a savory and hearty start to the day.  Enjoy!





(Make ahead) Crustless Breakfast Quiche
Serves 36 (Makes 6 half-size disposable aluminum roasting pans with 6 slices each)


For the egg custard:

36 large eggs, cage-free
64 oz liquid egg whites
1/2 gallon 1% milk, organic
1/2 gallon heavy cream, organic
1/4 cup dijon mustard
2 tsp sea salt
2 tsp freshly ground black pepper



For the filling:

1/4 cup olive oil for brushing pans
2 loaves savory bakery bbread (about 2 lbs), cubed into 1" pieces (we used rosemary-olive oil)
1 lb solid genoa salami, cut into very small cubes
5 bunches scallions, tops and bottoms trimmed, wilted stems removed and chopped into thin rings (about a 3/4 lb yield)
1-1/2 lbs roasted brocolli florets, roughly chopped into small, bite sized pieces
1 lb sundried tomatoes, roughly chopped 
1 lb Parmesan cheese, grated or shredded
12 cloves garlic, finely minced
1 bunch flat-leaf (Italian) parsley, finely chopped (about a 1/4 lb yield)



Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

In the work bowl of an electric stand mixer, combine half the eggs and half the egg whites.  Use the whisk attachment to whisk until well combined.  Transfer contents of the work bowl to a clean, covered stockpot and set aside.  In the same work bowl, combine the remaining eggs and egg whites.  Return to the stand mixer and whisk until well combined.  Add the dijon, salt and pepper and whisk again.  Transfer contents of the work bowl to the stock pot.  Add the 1% milk and the heavy cream to the stock pot and mix by hand until all ingredients of the egg custard are well combined.  Cover stock pot and set aside.

Use a basting brush to lightly oil the bottom and sides of six half-size disposable aluminum pans.  Scatter 1/6th of the diced bread in the bottom of each pan.  In the same manner, divide the cubed salami, chopped scallions, chopped brocolli, sundried tomatoes, parmesan cheese, garlic and parsley between the pans.  Ladle 1/6th of the egg custard into each pan.  (This equates to about 6 cups of egg custard per pan.)   Using a wooden spoon or clean hands, gently mix the custard with the filling to fully saturate and cover the quiche ingredients. 

Transfer three of the half-size pans to the oven, stagger on the oven racks to allow air to circulate around the pans and bake for 45 minutes (give or take 5-10 minutes depending on the strength of your oven) until just set.  You don't want to overcook at this point, as quiche will cook further while reheating. Repeat baking process with the second batch of quiche.

Allow quiche to cool slightly and cover tightly with aluminum foil.  Refrigerate until ready to serve.  Before serving, bake covered for 25-30 minutes at 350 degrees until fully warmed through.  Serve immediately or at room temperature.

Serve with fresh fruit, sweet breads and orange juice.  Enjoy!

Thoughts for Food: Fall

It's almost impossible not to vigorously lament the passing of summer in Chicago, but fall is so darn beautiful at least it's easy to be distracted.  Everywhere you look, the view is full of burnt orange, gold and brick red.  These early autumn days are sweet with tranquil weather, sunshine and the last of the warm winds.  They are easy to savor as you take the final liesurely walks and spend just a few more minutes at the park with little ones.  Getting to work on foot is still enjoyable and the heavy jackets have not yet come out.  Ask any Chicagoan what comes next, and... well, never mind.

If summer brings the intense but fleeting pleasures of garden tomatoes, sweet corn and fresh berries, fall can be heartily commended for delivering more lasting fare.  At the markets, crates of storage apples come in every color of the rainbow, piles of root vegetables make you wish you had an old-fashioned celar for purple carrots and sweet onions and the pumpkins and squash are vibrant with the colors of the season.  The gardens may be giving up and the markets shutting down, but these flavors hang on for a while.  Even on a warm October night, you can begin to taste Thanksgiving right around the corner.

It's in this spirit that we line up our menus for fall with foods that keep one last leg in the garden and bravely ward off winter.  We'll enjoy warm cider, cranberries, apples, roasted root vegetables and the cool weather greens that just get sweeter with a frost or two.  Between us and the depths of winter stand the holidays and a season of generosity that can soften even the rough edges of shelter life.  There will be days with gifts and music and pie and lights scattered among the leaner days.  It is a pleasure to serve in such a time, bolstered by the knowledge that He who controls the changing of the seasons will never cease to provide.  Before the winter, He always provides a harvest.