Cabbage and Apple

A couple of weeks ago, we went to an event hosted by Simply Good Food, our local CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). One of the growers, Frank van Steensel, was so eloquent about the superior nutrition of vegetables grown properly in nutrient dense soil, that it reminded me that there are not many vege recipes on this blog, yet...


So let's get started with our favourite cabbage recipe - Red Cabbage simmered with apples and onions. This is adapted from a  recipe in Nourishing Traditions that doesn't include the onion. So if you can't have onions, it's fine to leave them out. If you're on GAPS or SCD and can have fruit, the apple adds some carbs without adding starch.

• 1 tablespoon butter or ghee
• 1 onion
• ½ medium red cabbage
• 1 bay leaf
• 5 cloves
• ¼ teaspoon sea salt
• ½ teaspoon honey
• Sprinkle of cinnamon
• ½ cup water
• 1 apple
• 1 tablespoon butter
• Optional: 1-2 Tbs red or white wine vinegar

Chop up the onion, and sauté in butter in a large frying pan that has a lid. In a small pan, mix bay leaf, cloves, salt, honey and cinnamon with water and start simmering. Cut the core out of the cabbage, and slice thinly. Rinse the cabbage in a colander and add to the frying pan. Pour the now flavoured water through the colander into the frying pan, and mix all together. Put the lid on, turn the heat down low and cook gently for about 15 minutes. Meanwhile, peel the apple if you like, but it doesn’t have to be peeled. Cut into quarters, and slice each quarter thinly. Add to the frying pan, stir  and cook for another 15 minutes. Take off the heat, and drain off any excess liquid. Toss with the butter and optional vinegar and serve.

This is a nice side dish with any meat or poultry. Or you can chop up your meat when it’s cooked and toss it through, for a one dish meal. 

You can do something similar with Green Cabbage. Green cabbage doesn't need to cook as long.

• 1 Tablespoon butter or ghee
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1 carrot, cut in half and then sliced thinly
• ½ a large or all of a small green cabbage
• 1 apple, sliced
• Juice of a lemon
• 1/4 teaspoon sea salt
• sprinkling of paprika

Sauté the onion and carrot  in butter. Meanwhile, chop up the green cabbage, and rinse. Chop up the apple. Add the lemon juice, salt and paprika to pan and stir well. Add cabbage and apple and stir well. Add more butter if needed. Cover and simmer for a few mins till cabbage is soft.

Coconut almond bread

A few of you that came to my GAPS workshop last week wanted the recipe for the pumpkin bread, and I discovered I hadn't put it on the blog yet. So here it is!


The basic almond bread recipe in "Gut and Psychology Syndrome" contains just ground almonds, eggs and fat of some kind (eg butter, ghee, duck fat or coconut oil). In "Breaking The Vicious Cycle" Lois Lang's Luscious Bread also contains dry curd cottage cheese, salt and baking soda.


I developed this combination of Lois Lang's bread with the basic coconut flour bread recipe. It contains baking soda, but to be 100% GAPS just leave that out. The variation I made last week used coconut oil for the fat and pumpkin for moisture to make it dairy free. It stays moist in the fridge for a few days.

• 5 eggs
• 4 oz melted butter (or ghee, coconut oil, duck fat, palm oil)
• 1 cup cottage cheese, yoghurt, yoghurt “cheese”, kefir, kefir cheese OR 1 cup mashed pumpkin 
• 1 heaped teaspoon baking soda
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 2 ½ cups ground almonds (or other nut flour)
• ½ cup coconut flour, sifted

Preheat oven to 175C (350F). Line a loaf tin with baking paper. Beat the first 5 ingredients together. Mix the flours together and beat into the wet ingredients. Spoon into tin and smooth the top. Bake till golden, about 45 minutes.


Variation: Zucchini bread


Replace the cottage cheese or pumpkin with 1.5 cups grated zucchini. Stir this in when you mix the wet and dry together.

Making ghee

After you've been off dairy products for a while, and want to introduce them again, you need to start with homemade ghee. Ghee is butter that has the milk solids and water removed, leaving pure butter oil or clarified butter. It is often used in Indian cooking as it is a highly stable cooking oil, with excellent flavour, that aids the digestion. It is often used in gourmet cooking as well. It is considered a lactose free food, and can be used instead of butter in most recipes, and for most uses.

Store in a glass jar with a lid, but don’t put the lid on till it’s cooled. You can keep ghee in the fridge, but it doesn’t need refrigeration if you keep moisture out of it; for example, don't dip a wet spoon into the ghee jar, always use a clean utensil. It will keep in the cupboard for weeks. But with it's delicious caramelly flavour, it might not last that long!

Stove top method
(Time: less then 30 minutes)

• 500gm / 1 lb. sweet butter (preferably unsalted and organic)

1. Melt the butter in a medium sized, heavy bottomed saucepan over a medium heat, and bring to the boil. Do not leave ghee unattended during this process and watch to make sure that the butter doesn't scorch while melting.
2. Lower heat to medium-low. The butter will bubble and make a slightly popping sound and a layer of foam will form. After about fifteen to twenty minutes, it will be a clear golden colour and quiet, and the milk solids at the bottom of the pan will have turned a light golden brown. It is important to take it of the heat as soon as it goes quiet, or it will burn.
3. Pour through a sieve or cheese cloth to strain out the milk solids.

Crock-pot method
(Time: 8 hours)

• One or more pounds of unsalted butter

1. Cut the butter into 1/4 pound portions and place into the crock-pot on low temperature setting.
2. Leave it on all night.
3. In the morning you will notice that there is a brown crust on the top and a white sediment on the bottom. Skim the crust off the top and pour the golden liquid into stainless steel or glass containers. When the white sediment begins to mix with oil while pouring strain the sediment from the ghee by pouring it through a cotton cloth placed over a stainless steel strainer.


Oven method
(Time: Depends on quantity. 1 pound could take as little as 1 hour)

• A heavy-bottomed, thick-walled ovenproof pan
• As much unsalted butter as will comfortably fit into your pan

1. Preheat the oven to 150 C / 300 F.

2. Cut the butter into 1/4 pound portions and place into the pan.

3. Allow the butter to melt and slowly clarify, uncovered and undisturbed, until there is a layer of solid foam on the surface, clear amber-gold ghee in the middle and lumps of pale gold solids on the bottom. Remove from oven.

4. Skim off the crusty foam on the surface with a fine mesh skimmer or a large metal spoon.
5. Ladle the clear ghee into a glass jar using a strainer lined with several layers of cheese cloth. When you have removed as much as you can without disturbing the solids, skim off the last 1 inch with a large spoon. 

Winter Warmer Soup

This is a quick and easy way to make your daily stock more interesting, when you can't be bothered making a vegetable soup. 

Have a mug of this warming soup at first signs of a flu or cold, or when you're feeling the winter weather. If you get sick, sip throughout the day.

• 1 litre of chicken, duck or turkey stock
• 1 teaspoon fresh ginger, grated or finely chopped
• 4-8 Tablespoons creamed coconut
• juice of 1 lemon
• sea salt to taste

Bring the stock to a boil, skim off any foam. Add the ginger (and optional extras) and simmer for 10 minutes. Stir in the creamed coconut and simmer for another 5 minutes. Add the lemon juice and sea salt to taste, and serve.

Variations:

• For an even more heating soup, also add 1/4 teaspoon dried chilli flakes -OR- 1-3 dried chillies (depending on their size)
• Use as a base for a more filling soup by adding pumpkin, butternut or kumera. After adding the lemon and sea salt, take out the chillies (if you used whole ones) and puree with a handheld wand blender.
• Garnish with a spring onion, very finely chopped