Braised Cabbage and Garbanzos

Super cheap vegan budget meal for all your friends. Take out the butter and you've practically got spa food on your hands. Low grocery bill. Oh yes.

Serves 4 hongry people.

Ingredients:

5 cloves garlic, minced
1 medium head of cabbage
2 carrots
2 cans garbanzos
black pepper
salt
cumin
paprika
olive oil
butter (okay, that's not vegan, but you can just substitute more oil if you want it vegan).

Make some brown rice.

You could just buy shredded cabbage, but this way of cutting the cabbage makes the dish seem special, for some reason. And the cabbage cooks in a really delicate way:

Wash the outer leaves of cabbage. Lay several leaves at a time one on top of the other, kind of like a wad of money or measuring cups that sit inside each other. Now roll them together like a cigar. Cut the cabbage into one centimeter strips. Cabbage ribbons. You can keep the thick white middle part of the leaf. Use the whole head. You can chop the heart, just not that really tough stem.

Put this cabbage aside.

Scrape two carrots. Then, take a knife and flick off slivers of carrot in the Italian fashion, i.e. as if you are whittling the carrot into a pencil, except you keep whittling until there is no carrot left. (Sorry, no youtube). Or you can also just julienne them, but that is bow-ring. Not to mention it's supposedly attracts good qi to your food to have irregular shaped pieces. Hey, I said your hippie friends were coming over. Put the carrot slivers aside in their own bowl or dish.

1. Put a Dutch oven on high heat until it's pretty hot, then put half a stick of butter (*whistling*) and about 2T of olive oil. Put in the carrot and saute until a bit soft. Put in two cans of garbanzos, drained-ish*. Sprinkle on about 2t of cumin and a generous sprinkle of paprika. Let this cook on almost high for about 3-4 minutes.

2. Add half the minced garlic and toss the garbanzos until the garlic is fragrant. Pour this out into a bowl.

3. In the same Dutch oven (don't wash it), put in about 2T butter and 2T olive oil (or less if you are worried about these things -- I think less would work just as well). Put in the cabbage and turn it until it is really coated. Let this cook for about 3-4 minutes on high while you stir every so often. Don't go anywhere.

4. Season the cabbage the way you did the garbanzos: lots of black pepper that you've ground further with your fingers, salt, cumin and paprika. Throw in the garlic. Let the cabbage get a little brown here and there.

5. Pour 1/4 cup water into the pan, cover and let the cabbage braise on medium high for about 5 minutes. You should really actually go away and forget about the cabbage for like, 8-10 minutes. Stir once in between there, if you can. The cabbage should have wilted, gone whitish, and gotten browned and started to look caramel colored along some edges. It should not be soft and mushy, just wilted and easy to cut with a fork.

6. Pour in the garbanzos. Check seasoning. Serve on brown rice.

Mmm.

*it'll be good if some of that juice from the can gets into the dish, but get most of it drained off...

Achiote Hot Sauce

Mr. Svalina says this will work. I can't even find the peppers though.

1 cup achiote peppers
1 head of garlic, cloves skinned and cut in two lengthwise
1 head of garlic, cloves skinned and chopped roughly
White vinegar
A bowl
A mortar and pestle
A bottle that closes well, about the size of a hot sauce bottle, or a jar, very clean.

Take about a cup of achiote peppers.
Clean a head of garlic so you have cloves, uncrushed, but cut in two.
Soak the peppers and the garlic in white vinegar for a week.

(Time passes).

Saute a chopped, cleaned head of garlic in olive oil.

Put the achiote peppers, vinegar, and raw garlic plus the sauteed garlic in a blender or mortar and pestle. Grind. Bottle.