Boiled Cabbage.

Another day, another optimistic walk to the front of the Canteen Lunch Line, another shrug and dejected walk back to the end of the line, “Absolutely Nothing”, I tell Purohit, and a few choice expletives which would not do the “G” rating of my blog any good.

I do this every day, in fact I do this twice a day, Lunch and Dinner. Same routine, go to the place where I can catch a glimpse of the menu card, and walk the long way back to the end of the line thinking, “What could make all these people want to stand in line to eat that!”, my mom and in fact even I would do better with the choice of items that these guys use.

The dish that gets to me the most has to be “Boiled Cabbage”. For any one else, boiled cabbage is a precursor to any cabbage dish, simple recipe, take cabbage, shred to fine pieces, and then do the rest. Our canteen staff takes the first two steps and forget all the rest, to make the unique, “Boiled Cabbage”.

The main strength of the TIFR canteen is their ability to cater to the tastes of one and all, their food does not actually fall into the “Made to Taste” but the “Make to Taste” category, add as much salt and pepper as u can tolerate / need to liven up the food. The poha and upma made for breakfast are the main contenders for the best “Make to Taste Food”.

Simple recipe for Cabbage Thoran which is an awesome Kerala dish,

*Hoping against Hope that the canteen staff read this*

Ingredients:

1. Cabbage (as many as u need, a 1KG cabbage will do for approx 2-3 people)
2. Carrot 1 small , shredded into small pieces
3. Coconut 1 cup shredded
4. Green Chillies 5-6( add more or less to suit your level of spiciness)
5. Jeera / Cumin seeds 1/4 tsp
6. Onion sliced very fine 1/2 cup (OPTIONAL)
7. Mustard seeds 1/4 tsp
8. Turmeric 1/2 tsp
9. Oil 1 tablespoon
10. Curry leaves one sprig
11. Salt to taste

There are 2 ways to do the rest; I will extol the virtues of my method (useful for those who don’t like the smell of boiled cabbage)

Grate the coconut, and run it in the mixer with some chillies and salt.

Soak a tea spoon full of Toor Dal (Yellow) and Urad Dal (White) for about 10 minutes.

Boil the cabbage separately, strain and wash well with cold water (makes it cooked, crisp and non smelly ;))

Add the oil to the pan, add mustard seeds let it splutter, add the soaked dals, let them get to be a nice golden brown, add the onions and stir for 2-3 min. (If u are using onions which I don’t) Add the curry leaves now.

Then add the turmeric powder and fry for about 30sec.

Then add the cabbage mixture, mix everything well and then close the pan with a lid. After about 2 min, remove the lid, give a light stir and return the lid. Remove the lid and stir the cabbage every 2 min.

Add the coconut and chilli mixture.

Cook for another couple of minutes.

Taste.

The other method involves cooking the cabbage, where u cook the cabbage in its own water, and supposedly saves all the nutrients, but i cook for taste and not for nutrients, so i will nto go into this method.