Tag Archives: Mimi Sheraton

Sweet and Sour German Cabbage Grandma Would Love

My grandmother loved sweet and sour dishes. I’ve never been able to pull off a duplicate of her really delicious sweet and sour dandelion greens. Despite her almost all British Isles background, in northern Ohio where she lived, Germans immigrants have influenced the foods we ate for centuries, like this German cabbage.

My German cookbook does have a slew (or slaw?) of German cabbage recipes,among them this recipe for sweet and sour cabbage.  Not very photogenic, but you don’t want to waste time taking pictures when you could be eating, now do you?

German cabbage with raisins

German cabbage,  sweet and sour cabbage with raisins

I found this recipe because I bought a pretty little Savoy cabbage at the Farmer’s Market.  Savoy is the one with the ruffled leaves that curl out away from the main ball of the cabbage like an Elizabethan collar. It has a milder flavor, so is an easier sale with non-cabbage people.

The recipe is from the German cookbook that I keep on my Kindle. You can see a bit about The German Cookbook by Mimi Sheraton on my Cookbooks Page.  I just prop the Kindle up on the counter as I would a recipe card. Very handy.

So I spotted a recipe for Savoy cabbage in brown sauce that looked pretty good, but a few pages farther on, I saw an adaptation of that recipe that made a sweet and sour German cabbage dish.  I followed the recipe except for swapping vinegar for the called-for lemon juice.  Lemon would be delicious, but somehow I can’t picture German–or northern Ohio cooks having a lot of lemons around in the winter time when they were using up their cabbage. Likewise with the called-for white raisins. I used currants.

My husband turned up his nose when he heard I was making German cabbage for dinner, but lo and behold, he took one bite and pronounced it good!  Hope yours will be as successful.

German Sweet and Sour Cabbage

Prep time 10 minutes
Cook time 30 minutes
Total time 40 minutes
Allergy Wheat
Dietary Vegan
Meal type Side Dish
Misc Serve Hot
Region German
From book The German Cookbook by Mimi Sheraton
A favorite flavor for German recipes--sweet and sour--with a favorite German vegetable--cabbage.

Ingredients

  • 1 head of savoy cabbage
  • salt
  • 1 onion (minced)
  • 3 tablespoons butter
  • 4 tablespoons flour
  • 2 cups vegetable stock (Cooking liquid from the cabbage--see directions)
  • 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
  • 2 tablespoons brown sugar
  • 1 pinch cloves
  • 1/2 cup currants (Or use raisins. Original recipe calls for white(golden) raisins.)
  • salt and pepper (to taste)

Directions

1. Cut cabbage in quarters, and remove tough outer leaves, hard core and any tough stems.
2. Bring to boil 4 cups water with a little salt, add cabbage and any loose leaves, reduce to fast simmer and cook for ten minutes.
3. Remove cabbage from pot and drain, reserving liquid.
4. Chop by hand or in food processor and drain again. Set aside
5. Melt butter in two-quart pan. Add onion and saute, stirring until onion turns brown.
6. Sprinkle in flour and continue stiring and sauteing until flour becomes a rich brown. Keep the heat low so it will not burn.
7. Stir in the two cups of cooking liquid from the cabbage and stir with whisk to keep it smooth as it thickens slightly.
8. Add vinegar, brown sugar, and cloves and simmer five minutes, stirring frequently.
9. Add cabbage back to pan, stir in raisins or currants and stir to combine with sauce and continue cooking slowly for ten more minutes. Taste and add more sugar or vinegar or salt or pepper if you wish.
10. Serve with sausage or a salty ham. Roasted potatoes would make a good side dish and applesauce or cooked apples are also good as a side with cabbage.

Note

As usual, I eliminated the onion in this recipe and thought that it was plenty tasty.
The sauce will not be thick, but smooth and satiny
Although I used the milder Savoy cabbage, the sauce will match up with any variety of cabbage.
I used the time when the cabbage was cooking to measure each ingredient for the sauce into small dishes, so everything was ready. Once you start cooking the sauce, you need to pay attention to it, so it does not clump or stick to the bottom of the pan.

 

Disclaimer: The book cover illustration is linked to Amazon for your convenience. You need to know that I am an Amazon affiliate, which means if you use my links and buy something, I get a few pennies to help support this site. Thanks.

Apples in Nightgowns, a German Apple Dessert

I am taking a short break from writing stories about ancestors, as I get into some thorny thickets of research, but meanwhile, we still have to EAT! So how about a German apple dessert?

Since I’m mostly looking at German immigrant ancestors right now, I checked out a German cook book for some inspiration. I had downloaded —The German Cookbook: A complete Guide to Mastering Authentic German Cooking by Mimi Sheraton –to my Kindle. (It is also available in print editions.)

One of the reasons I chose this book is that it has lengthy introductions to each chapter, filling you in one what Germans eat, or what they ate in the past, and Sheraton emphasizes the regional nature of recipes.  Thus I can look for the Bavarian dishes that would have been prepared by most of my German ancestors, or wander farther afield.

German Apple dessert

Apples in Nightgowns, a Greman dessert

I had a bag of apples that needed to be used up, and I wanted a German apple dessert that is a little different than my favorite apple dumplings.  Under baked German desserts I came across the title Apples in Nightgowns (Äpfel im Schlafrock) Now who could resist a dish with such a cozy name?

Sheridan’s recipe for this German apple dessert calls for one recipe of Rich Tart Pastry. She has three versions of Rich Tart Pastry in her book, but I chose to use my Perfect Pie Crust recipe, since I had some in the freezer, ready to go.  Her Rich Tart Pastry does not diverge far from the Perfect Pie Crust dough, and it worked just fine.

Unfortunately, I did not have marmalade, so as you can see above, I used a blackberry jam instead, adding some lemon juice to increase the tanginess.  I think I’d prefer the marmalade version, but there is nothing wrong with using any jelly, jam or preserves you have on hand.

My other divergence was in the size of the apples.  Mine were larger than she probably intended, so I made only four.

Apples in Nightgowns, a German Apple Dessert

Serves 4-8
Prep time 25 minutes
Cook time 45 minutes
Total time 1 hours, 10 minutes
Allergy Egg, Milk
Meal type Dessert
Misc Pre-preparable, Serve Cold, Serve Hot
Region German
From book German Cooking by Mimi Sheraton
A German apple dessert with a novel name, Apples in Nightgowns, is a new take on apple dumplings.

Ingredients

  • 8 small cooking apples (not too sour)
  • 1 egg white
  • 1 egg yolk (beaten)

Filling

  • 3 tablespoons sugar
  • 1/4 cup raisins or chopped nuts
  • 2-3 tablespoons citrus or quince marmalade (melted)
  • 2 teaspoons cinnamon

For serving (Optional)

  • Confectioner's sugar

Directions

1. Prepare pastry, chill, then roll out to about 1/4" thickness in a single sheet.
2. Cut into squares, each of which is large enough to wrap around one apple. Chill dough.
3. Preheat oven to 400 degrees
4. German apple dessert before wrapping
Core and peel apples and set one in center of each dough square.
5. Mix sugar, nuts or raisins, cinnamon and marmalade and place a little of mixture in core of each apple.
6. German apple dessert with envelope wrapped dough
Cover apples with dough, envelope style, or bring corner of square up toward center to form a peak. Seal edges with egg white.
7. Set dough-wrapped apples on ungreased baking sheet or pan and brush with beaten egg yolk.
8. Bake in preheated oven ten minutes, then lower heat to 350 degrees and continue baking 20 to 30 minutes, or until crust is golden brown and crisp.
9. Cool and serve sprinkled with confectioners' sugar. Can also be served hot.

Note

Sheraton recommends either egg white or milk to seal the packets, but I used the egg white, since the egg yolk was going to glaze the packets.

Get as fancy or plain as you wish with wrapping the apples. The squares I cut were about 7 inches on each side. I would recommend testing the size of dough you need on one apple, and then measuring the rest of the pieces to the same dimensions.

With larger apples it took 45 minutes in the 2nd phase of the baking (after the initial ten minutes).