green cabbage with honeynut squash and chestnuts / cavolo cappuccio con zucca e castagne

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fall flavors combine to make a delicious side dish
(placemat by La FABBRICA del LINO)

Our current Cook the Books Club selection is Crying in H Mart a memoir by Michelle Zauner. In August 2018, the author had an essay published in The New Yorker magazine¹ with the same title. It starts like this:

Ever since my mom died, I cry in H Mart. For those of you who don’t know, H Mart is a supermarket chain that specializes in Asian food. The "H" stands for han ah reum, a Korean phrase that roughly translates to "one arm full of groceries."

The essay became the first chapter of the memoir, which

maps a complicated mother-daughter relationship cut much too short. Stories of Korean food serve as the backbone of the book, as Zauner plumbs the connections between food and identity. That search takes on new urgency after her mother's death — in losing her mother, she also lost her strongest tether to Korean culture.²

For most of the book, I had difficulty connecting to the author. I finally felt the connection when, after her mother's death, Zauner experienced the unbearable weight of perceived failure in their inability of winning the fight against cancer. (My mother died 14 years ago, also of cancer.) Adding that crushing burden to a person's grief is unfair. I believe we should erase the metaphors used to describe cancer's progression in favor of factual words.   

I expected the book to make me want to try Korean food, but it didn't. Part of the reason is that most of the dishes mentioned (and there are a lot!) are meat-based. Then, the food is part of the language and narrative of the book. Not being Korean, I don't have any memories of, or associations with those dishes. However, I understand the feeling. Shopping at a supermarket (supermercato) is one of the first things I do when I arrive in Italy for a visit: surrounded by familiar foods, I have truly arrived.

street seller of roasted chestnuts (Perugia, 2012)

So the book inspired me to look at a food from my upbringing, something not only Italian, but from my family traditions. When I was in Italy last month, the smell of roasted chestnuts (caldarroste), which in Italy are sold as street food, reminded me of my mother. Every October, she would buy a large amount of chestnuts from someone in Casperia, the village in central Italy where she grew up. Then, in the following weeks, we would eat them often, as dessert at the end of dinner, alternatively roasted and boiled. I liked them both ways.

a trail above Bressanone through a chestnut grove

In Bressanone, a city in South Tyrol, where we spent the first week of the recent visit, one day I rode my bicycle through a castagneto (grove of chestnut trees) and saw people foraging for chestnuts, freeing them from the spiny burs (ricci). While chestnuts are not widely available where I live now, one farm brings them to the market. When, upon returning from Italy, I saw them, I was inspired to use them to make a side dish, together with other seasonal ingredients: honeynut squash, green cabbage, leeks.

The main ingredients
(placemat by La FABBRICA del LINO)

The side dish is earthy and sweet (almost dessert-like) and it's vegan. It is a great choice for Holiday-related gatherings as it accommodates a variety of eating styles.

Print-friendly version of briciole's recipe for Green cabbage with honeynut squash and chestnuts

Ingredients:

• 5 ounces / 140 grams raw chestnuts
• 1 small bay leaf
• 8 ounces / 225 grams honeynut squash, clean weight
• 6 ounces / 170 grams leek, white and light green portion, clean weight (set aside the darker green portion to make broth or stock)
• 2 tablespoons / 30 ml extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 tablespoon / 15 grams unsalted butter
• 1 pound / 450 grams green cabbage
• 4 garlic cloves, peeled and minced
• ½ teaspoon harissa spice mix
• ¼ cup / 60 ml lukewarm water
• ¾ -1 teaspoon fine sea salt, to taste

Notes: 1) The chestnuts must be prepared in advance, so plan accordingly. 2) If you cannot find the honeynut squash, you can use a small butternut or red kuri squash.

Do ahead: Cook the chestnuts
With a pointed blade, make a slit in the shell without cutting through the meat. Place the chestnuts in a saucepan, cover abundantly with water and add the bay leaf. Cover the saucepan, bring to a lively boil then cook on low heat until the chestnuts are tender (check one after 30 minutes to estimate the time remaining).

Take the pan off the heat. Take out of the water 3 chestnuts. Wait a minute to let them cool and peel the first one. Use a sharp knife with a pointed blade to remove the shell, then the skin. Take another one out of the water, then peel one of the first 3, and so on: this creates a lineup of chestnuts cool enough to handle but warm enough for easier peeling. If a chestnut breaks while being handled, it is fine: they will be roughly chopped later anyway. Set aside.

Prepare the dish
Use a sturdy swivel vegetable peeler to peel the squash. Deseed the squash, if needed. Slice it, then cut it into cubes no larger than ½ inch / 1.25 cm. (If you use a red kuri squash, quarter it and deseed it first, then peel it.)

Cut the leek (or leeks) in half lengthwise and slice into 1/8 inch / 3 mm half-moons. Rinse well in a colander, then place in a bowl and fill it with cold water. With your hands, swirl the leeks to clean them well, then scoop them out of the water with a sieve or slotted spoon and drain them in a colander.

Warm the olive oil and butter in a 10-inch deep sauté pan or large skillet on medium heat. Turn the heat down to medium-low, add the leeks, stir well and cook for 2 minutes. Add the squash, stir well and cook for another 2 minutes. Cover the pan and cook on low heat for 8 minutes, stirring often, until the leeks are just tender and the squash has softened a bit.

In the meantime, quarter and core the cabbage. Cut away the external thick ribs. Slice each quarter into ¼-inch / 6-mm-thick ribbons.

Turn up the heat to medium-low. Add the garlic to the pan, sprinkle the harissa on the vegetables and stir well. After 1 minute, add the cabbage and the water, stir slightly (this will be a bit awkward, given the volume of the raw cabbage) and cover. Cook over low heat until the cabbage is almost ready (15-18 minutes, or as needed), stirring often.

In the meantime, cut each chestnut into 6-8 pieces.

Add the chestnuts to the cabbage and stir well. Cover and continue cooking for 3-5 minutes, stirring often, until the chestnuts are heated through and the cabbage and squash are tender.

Sprinkle ¾ teaspoon of salt on the vegetables, stir, taste and add more salt, if needed. Remove the pan from the heat. Serve immediately.

Serves 5-6.

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¹ The essay published on The New Yorker
² The book's review on NPR

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Click on the button to hear me pronounce the Italian words mentioned in the post

cavolo cappuccio con zucca e castagne

or launch the cavolo cappuccio con zucca e castagne [mp3].

[Depending on your set-up, the audio file will be played within the browser or by your mp3 player application. Please, contact me if you encounter any problems]

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This is my contribution to the current selection of our Cook the Books hosted by me, Simona of briciole. (You can find the guidelines for participating in the event on this page.)

 

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FTC disclosure: I have received the table linen free of charge from the manufacturer (la FABBRICA del LINO). I have not and will not receive any monetary compensation for presenting it on my blog. The experience shared and the opinions expressed in this post are entirely my own.

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green cabbage, honeynut squash, winter squash, chestnuts

Comments

[Claudia]

I would love to try this Simona, especially since I recently bought some organic, roasted chestnuts to use in a Korean rice cake recipe, to go with another book on Korean food. I have since realized that I'll probably never get around to it. Your accounts of visits to Italy make me long to go as well. Maybe one day!

[Simona Carini]

Claudia, your comment reminds me that years ago, when I lived in Berkeley, I'd buy (raw) Korean chestnuts. It sounds like you are deep into exploring Korean cuisine and having fun. Italy is quite far from you, but I hope one day you'll be able to visit :)

[Frank]

What a lovely combination of flavors! And excellent timing, too. We're lucky enough to have chestnuts here and I happen to have a Kabocha squash and half of cabbage that need cooking...

[Simona Carini]

Thank you, Frank. Great that you have chestnuts. Let me know if you try the recipe. I just boiled chestnuts to make another batch of it: I like it so much :)