Riverford Farm Cook Book: Tales from the Fields, Recipes from the Kitchen

100g light soft brown sugar

150g cranberry sauce, cranberry jelly or dark plum jam

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small red cabbage, finely shredded

3 medium beetroot, peeled and cut into matchsticks on a mandolin, or grated

a splash of balsamic vinegar

celery salt and freshly ground black pepper

Melt the butter in a large, heavy-based saucepan, add the onion and sweat gently until soft but not coloured. Add the red wine vinegar, sugar and cranberry sauce and bring to a gentle simmer. Add the cabbage and beetroot, stir well, then cover and cook very gently for 30–40 minutes, until the vegetables are soft and the liquid has reduced to a sticky sauce. Adjust the seasoning with balsamic vinegar, celery salt and pepper.

Easy ideas for cabbage

♦ Melt some butter in a pan, sprinkle in some caraway seeds and cook for a couple of minutes. Stir in finely shredded white or green cabbage, cover and cook slowly for 10 minutes or until soft. Chopped cooked bacon can be stirred in to keep meat eaters happy.

♦ To make an anchovy coleslaw, mix chopped anchovy fillets, crushed garlic and rosemary with a basic oil and vinegar dressing, then toss with finely sliced Hispi or white cabbage.

♦ Substitute cabbage for Brussels sprouts in Bubble and Squeak Soup (see Bubble and Squeak Soup with Wensleydale Cheese (#u298c70b0-5062-4ee0-b1df-7a02ade5d3fb)).

♦ Substitute cabbage (ideally Savoy or similar) for kale in Kale, Chorizo and Potato Hash (see Kale, Chorizo and Potato Hash (#litres_trial_promo)).

♦ Make the classic Irish dish, colcannon (see Perfect Mash variations, Perfect Mash (#litres_trial_promo)).

♦ A dish from Modena, the home of balsamic vinegar: mix very finely shredded Savoy cabbage with slivers of Parmesan and a drizzle of good aged balsamic vinegar. Serve with slices of prosciutto.

♦ Brown some partridges (or could be pigeons or pheasant) well in a little oil in a heavy casserole, add a few rashers of streaky bacon, a chopped cabbage (January King is good), a splash of red wine and enough chicken stock to come half way up the cabbage. Cover the partridge with the cabbage, then bring to a simmer, season, and cover the pan. Put in an oven preheated to 160°C/Gas Mark 3 and bake for about 30 minutes, until the partridges are cooked through.

♦ To make a red cabbage slaw, mix shredded red cabbage, grated carrot and finely chopped red onion with sliced pickled jalapeño chillies, mayonnaise and chives.

Carrots (#ulink_292c3abf-2b12-525d-ac4d-88a0f2f56da7)

The best-tasting carrots I ever grew were an old-fashioned, non-hybrid variety called Autumn King. We grew them on top of a hill to avoid carrot root fly, scraping what little soil there was into ridges and sowing the seed on top. They grew slowly and steadily without irrigation or fertiliser until they hit the bed rock and then pushed themselves out of the ground, so that by November they stood several inches proud of the soil. Some of the carrots were over a foot long and weighed several pounds. They were harvested by hand and we had to stand some upright in the sacks because they were too long to lie crossways. It is interesting that when carrots are grown for processing, where flavour rather than cosmetic appearance is the main determining factor, this variety, or its modern-day cousins, is still grown commercially.

The carrot industry excels at growing and selling carrots that are cheap, cosmetically perfect and consistently tasteless. Over the last 20 years the drive to reduce costs has concentrated the industry in the hands of three or four large players with land in the east of England and southern Spain, supplied with seed by two or three international seed companies and all fighting for contracts with four major supermarkets. Carrots are lifted, sifted, sorted and washed; polished, packed, cooled and distributed to shelves around the country with extraordinary speed and efficiency 52 weeks of the year.