Chinmayee Manjunath

I love cabbage. It’s not a popular vegetable, or at least I think it isn’t. Mostly you encounter it in a slaw of some sort. Many Indian restaurants will mix raw onions and cabbage and send that out as a side. Khane Khas, one of my eternal favourite restaurants in Bandra, does that, and I like adding a generous squeeze of lime and lashings of salt to make a tiny salad out of it.

But I really like cabbage on its own. I think it’s because my mother used to make a very simple salad of cabbage, salt, slivers of green chillies and lime juice. We ate it with sambar, which we call huli in Kannada, and rice. The crunch added texture to a meal that’s quite devoid of it. She also makes a very basic and delicious stir-fry of sorts, with a traditional Kannadiga seasoning of mustard seeds, urad and chana dals, hing, and green chillies. Just as the cabbage wilts and crisps, you throw in salt and some chilli powder for extra flavour.

Last week, though, I might have found my favourite way to eat this vegetable yet.

I had brought home a smallish red cabbage, and there was half of a regular green one in the crisper. I sliced both very thin and tossed the whole tangled lot with sea salt, cane sugar and a generous amount of equal parts rice wine vinegar and red wine vinegar. I added some paprika, too, and then put the whole thing away in a covered bowl for about six hours. That night, I ate it on the side of my dinner of stir fried tofu, and rice, with some roasted white sesame on top. There was a whole bunch of leftovers, of course, and I just stashed them in the fridge in a very tightly-shut bottle.

Now, eight days later, I cannot stop topping everything from my morning toast to my evening snack of crackers with this tangy, tart, spicy, crisp pickle. The brine is absolutely addictive, too, and I add a bit of it to whatever I’m eating. I know that simple refrigerator pickles such as this are very gut-friendly, but what really has me in love is the elemental flavour of it.

I cook dinner for myself at least five nights a week, and am constantly trying to break out of a rut that’s easy to fall into – pasta, stir-fry, soup, pasta, stir-fry, etc. Whenever I manage to have something like a quick pickle or sauce or dip at the ready, it makes things so much easier.

Tonight, for instance, I intend to finish the dregs of the cabbage by using it in a roll, made with broi bread (this is a real thing, made by Impossible Foods), with a filling of crumbled paneer spiced with coriander and cumin powders, pepper, and lots of chopped fresh coriander and mint leaves. This magical recipe for paneer was given to me by a friend’s excellent cook. I make it often, and it keeps well in the fridge for a couple of days. You can eat it on toast, crackers, as a roll, or just by itself.

Sometime soon, I’ll tell you about the green pea pesto, equally inspired by Nigella Lawson and Jenny Rosenstrach, which I use all the time, in every meal.