ROTKOHL! (German Red Cabbage)

A delicious and versatile side dish.

If great color scores culinary points, this dish is a grand slam.

Let's face it-- few of us automatically reach for cabbage in the fresh produce aisle. Too bad, because cabbage is inexpensive, nutritious, and keeps longer in the fridge than most other veggies. And red cabbage is even more nutritious and flavorful than its pale green sibling.

Google ROTKOHL and you will find a plethora of conflicting recipes... all of which are essentially sweet & sour preparations of red cabbage. I settled on a hybridized, "quadruple red" version of Rotkohl with red cabbage, red onions, red wine, and red wine vinegar.

I like to use a large and wide stockpot for sautéing large quantities of veggies. I began by thinly slicing a large red onion and sautéing it in lard. After they the onion was well softened, I added a head of finely (hand)shredded red cabbage and kept stirring.

Meanwhile, I poured 2/3 of a bottle of red wine (an inexpensive Bordeaux) and set it a-boil to reduce. I added a good sound splash of red wine vinegar, a scoop of raw sugar, salt and pepper, a wee pinch of cinnamon, and three whole cloves... all adjusted on the fly to my arbitrary taste, for we humans pretty much recognize a proper balance of flavors when we taste it. This concoction grew slightly syrupy as its volume slipped beneath half of its initial quantity, indicating that it was ready for prime time.

By this point the cabbage and onion mixture was thoroughly softened yet still a bit crunchy, still vibrantly colored rather than paled to lilac... a much more desirable outcome than what simply boiling it would achieve. I added the reduced wine mixture to the cabbage and onions (carefully straining out the cloves) and simmered it a bit more. And that was that... it was the hit of my recent dinner party, and, perhaps paradoxically, the least expensive item on the menu.

Rotkohl pairs well with a wide variety of dishes. We enjoyed it with roasted rack of venison, and I would happily serve it with other game (such as pheasant) or just about any pork dish.

Just one note of caution-- sweet & sour flavors balance each other perfectly well, but the less you include of each, the more wine-friendly the outcome.