Like others of its family you may remember Mark Twain’s dictum in Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar that cauliflower is but
Like others of its family (you may remember Mark Twain’s dictum in Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar that “cauliflower is but cabbage with a college education”), it is the pre-eminent, durable vegetable of the winter. This has led many to approach the cabbage as if it were Carthage and must be subdued and destroyed: stuck in water, and cooked until soggy and unrecognisable. But it is not an enemy, rather a slightly acid friend, one whose distinctiveness survives in any of the literally hundreds of ways in which it can be prepared, alone or in combination. I concocted a cabbage pie laced with turmeric and currants that carried off the prize for the day. And proud I was.Now the truth about cabbages is that, in their lovely and varied forms, they are all subtly different, powerful, compact and highly indigestible plants, and unless treated with tender care, they will take their revenge out on you. I have long associated cabbage with VI Lenin – as prepared by his wife Krupskaya, on whose teeny inheritance (something like pounds 100) this malodorous man shuffled off daily to the library in Zurich to importune his friends and excoriate his enemies He was a true sort of dirty, sharp- bearded Robespierre.
The reasons he went off were that the library was warm; it received all those tedious revolutionary journals by sectarians; and the Ulyanovs’ cramped apartment, whose only light came from a courtyard well, smelled of boiled cabbage. One has to doubt that Krupskaya was much of a cook or Lenin a fin bec, but it is maligning a noble vegetable merely to boil it On such a diet, any man would start an evil revolution. Occidit miseros crambe repetita magistros, said Juvenal: next-day cabbage kills poor Teach.
I have a particular, un-Russian fondness for cabbage, it having provided me with the first five bucks I ever made writing about food. There was this competition, in the wartime New York to which I had been exiled, to find cheap, unrationed dishes which could be made by even the most unskilled cook.
And pile in they should: not only is the food good, but the future of village shops and restaurants lies in the dedication to quality and enterprising zeal of the Jamie Dexter Harrisons of this world. All Dexters needs now is customers to pile in, stress out the kitchen and put lines of experience on the face of the dreamy young owner. At Dexters the texture is a bit gelatinous, but the flavour is all there and it is utterly delicious. Coffee is fine – and there is a perfectly good wine list that only needs more by the glass to be accessible at lunch time.The manager, Leigh Gooding, runs the place with immaculate manners, cheer and something rather rare: an honest brand of suave. By contrast, roast duck legs served on beautifully seasoned mash with roast red onions and a well-made red wine sauce was just right. Crisp skin, rich meat, fluffy mash, silky sauce, melting onions: the best of winter ballast.Elizabeth David’s recipe for gateau au chocolat et aux amandes has come a long way to become “St-Emilion au chocolat”, a flourless chocolate cake topped with crumbled amaretti. This was dull, rich and about as Mediterranean in style as strudel.
