Tuples and Attributes

When I’m going through cookbooks trying to pick out recipes, I can usually visualize what they might be like. Every once in a while, though, I come across one that I haven’t a clue about and yet something about it makes me want to try it. This is one such recipe for me:

• Cabbage & Beef Soup
• 1/4 cup Vegetable oil, (2 fl oz/60 mil)
  1 Yellow onion, large, coarsely chopped
  2 cloves Garlic, coarsely chopped
  1 lb Flank steak, (500 g), trimmed of fat
  Salt and pepper
  8 cups Canned beef broth, (2 qt/21)
  1 lb Canned plum (Roma) tomatoes, (500 g) with juice
  1/3 cup Lemon juice, (2-1/2 fl oz/8O mil )
  1/4 cup Sugar, (2 oz/60 g)
  1/4 cup Raisins, (1 oz/30 g)
  1 head Savoy cabbage, cored and cut into 1/2-inch (12-mm) wide ribbons
  2 Bay leaves

(You can replace the beef with kielbasa sausages, cutting them into 1/2-inch (12-mm) slices, which is basically what I did; I used some beef summer sausage that I had down in my freezer.)

There are reasons I didn’t know what to expect from this dish: I don’t fix soup very often, I don’t cook with cabbage much, and I have never made a sweet and sour dish before. And, yet, I kept coming back to this recipe.

Finally, last week, I decided it was time to try it. Mom doesn’t think much of cooked cabbage, but was willing to at least taste the dish. The only change I made (besides the meat) was to use a red cabbage I happened to have on hand. I knew there was enough acid in the dish to keep the color of the cabbage from going to blue.

Turns out this soup is freaking delicious!

Mom not only ate all I gave her, but was open to a second serving. And it made enough that I have two bags full of soup in the freezer to look forward to having at a later date.

The only thing I didn’t think worked out well was the use of whole (albeit smashed) tomatoes. I ended up cutting them into smaller pieces so that they were spread throughout the soup.

The other change I would make to the ingredients is that I would cut the cabbage in spoon-size pieces to make it easier to eat.

Here are the instructions:

Heat the oil in a large pot over low to medium heat. Add the onion and garlic and cook until
translucent, 2-3 minutes. Season the flank steak with salt and pepper, add to the pan, and cook, turning once, until lightly browned on each side, 2-3 minutes. Add the broth and stir and scrape with a wooden spoon to deglaze any browned bits.

Add the tomatoes, crushing them slightly with the wooden spoon. Add the lemon juice, sugar, raisins, cabbage, and bay leaves. Raise the heat and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to low, partly cover, and simmer gently until the meat is tender, about 1 hour.

Discard the bay leaves. Remove the meat from the pot and, using a sharp knife and a fork, cut and tear it up into coarse bite-sized pieces. Stir the meat back into the pot. Taste the soup and adjust the seasonings, if necessary. Ladle into warmed bowls and serve.

Very glad I tried this out; it’s a definite keeper!