Cabbage, onions and potatoes

There's a recipe in Moosewood Restaurant's New Classics that I return to every fall and winter, occasionally multiple times per extended fall/winter season. It's incredibly humble, and incredibly good -- cabbage, onions, paprika, noodles. As I've said before (and no doubt will continue to say OVER and OVER because I'm subtle that way), I get tired of pasta. I decided to make this dish yesterday, but I served it with pan-fried potatoes instead of noodles, and it was awesome.



3 onions, sliced

1 head cabbage (I used some kind from the farm that I'm not sure exactly WHAT it was -- crinkly/curly like savoy cabbage, but elongated like napa cabbage rather than round), sliced into ribbons

1 Tablespoon paprika

salt to taste

2 T canola oil plus 1 T of butter for the onions and cabbage, plus an additional couple of T canola oil for the potatoes

4-6 large potatoes (if your family is complete potato hounds like mine)

Heat the oil and butter over medium high heat and add the onions and a few pinches of salt. Cook, stirring occasionally, but not so often that they don't brown, for 20 minutes or so. Then add the cabbage and maybe a little more salt and continue cooking and stirring occasionally for another 10 minutes. Then turn the heat down and cover the pan and let it just cook along in there for as long as you have. Much neglect is possible at this point -- I was outside with my kids for about 45 minutes. But the longer you have to cook them, the softer and browner and more caramelized and delectable this gets! When it's cooked down, uncover and raise the heat to cook off any accumulated liquid, then add the paprika and cook another 10 minutes or so.

For the potatoes -- I scrubbed and cubed the potatoes, boiled them for about 10 minutes (actually, longer because I forgot about them when I was outside) -- and then put them in a hot pan with oil to brown.

If one were feeling particularly decadent, one might serve sour cream with this, although I didn't this time.

Leftovers were amazing about 11 o'clock this morning with an egg and some toast alongside.