One of the great aspects of life in the Pioneer Valley is the region’s access to fresh produce. From roadside veggie stands to CSAs to supermarket shelves laden with the morning’s harvest, farm-to-table is a way of life. As such, cooking is a seasonal affair that’s curated by whatever happens to be ready.
Right now, cabbage is in season — just in time for flavorful summertime cooking.
At home, I’m the primary chef. My wife, Brianna, works the overnight shift as a pediatric nurse at Baystate Springfield. On work days, she usually sleeps in the afternoon and wakes up around 4:30 p.m. — around the same time I complete my own work day — in order to leave by 6. From prepping-to-plating, I have an hour-long window to create a protein-rich and tasty meal; breakfast for Brianna, dinner for myself.
Lately, I’ve been craving Asian-Mexican fusion — conveniently, because cabbage is a perfect base for Korean barbecue-style chicken tacos, which can easily be made in about a half hour. They’re savory and slightly sweet with a back-end kick of heat that lingers on the palate, accented by roughly chopped fresh cilantro from Brianna’s garden.
The cabbage, sauteed until tender and mixed with rice vinegar, makes up the body of the taco and acts as a vehicle for the savory chicken. The sauce is added straight into the pan once everything has been cooked. A nice variety of different textures and temperatures — fresh pickled cucumbers add a cool and contrasting crunch — round out the experience.
To enhance the summertime vibe, I recently served the following tacos with homemade mojitos, which I made using fresh mint and a liberal amount of lime.
As has become habit, I don’t follow exact recipes and encourage everyone to do the same. I’m a strong believer in cooking to personal taste. As long as cabbage is in season, they’ll be a staple dinner/breakfast in our home. The following recipe, written based on my memory (which is suspect at best), is intended for two people. More or less of each ingredient can be added as needed and based on your own preference. I find it’s best to prep everything beforehand because the cooking process itself is fast. Substitutions are encouraged (tofu could probably be used instead of the chicken and apple cider vinegar from a local farm might make a great replacement for the rice vinegar, for example). Notably, I most recently used a sweet chilli sauce instead of the Korean barbecue sauce, which worked out wonderfully.
6 to 8 ounces chicken
6 tablespoons rice wine vinegar
1/3 head of cabbage
1 cucumber
3 or 4 tablespoons sour cream
1 teaspoon sriracha or hot sauce
2 limes
3 stalks of cilantro
4 tortillas
¼ to ½ cup Korean barbecue sauce
Olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
Peel off the large leaves from the head of cabbage, leaving the core. Wash and thinly slice the cabbage into disks, then halve each disk until there’s enough loose cabbage to fill a large frying pan. Halve the cucumber length-wise then thinly slice it in about ¼-inch half-moons. Roughly chop the cilantro. Quarter the limes. Slice the chicken into small pieces and season it with salt and pepper.
In a small bowl, combine the cucumber pieces with about 3 tablespoons of rice wine vinegar and season with salt and pepper to taste. Saute the cabbage for 2 to 3 minutes in a swirl of olive oil on medium-high heat. Once it’s soft, add the remaining vinegar, cook for another minute and remove into another bowl. Wipe out the pan and brown the chicken in a second swirl of oil, cooking for about 12 minutes.
Meanwhile, wrap the tortillas in a paper towel and microwave them for about 30 seconds. Put the sour cream in a bowl along with the juice from one lime, the hot sauce or sriracha and salt and pepper to taste. Add cold water a teaspoon at a time until it’s a drizzling consistency.
When the chicken has cooked, add the cabbage back into the pan along with half of the chopped cilantro and the barbecue sauce. Cook until it’s congealed.
Assemble the tacos. In each tortilla, add a scoop of the cabbage/chicken, a few of the cucumber half-moons, a squeeze of lime and a drizzle of the sour cream. Top with the remaining cilantro and serve alongside a few lime slices and the rest of the cucumbers.
Again, I added the ingredients to taste so the following recipe, which is intended for one person, is more or less arbitrary.
1 ½ ounces white rum
1 ounce lime juice
1 teaspoon
3 to 4 fresh mint leaves
1 teaspoon sugar
Club soda
Ice
Crush the ice; chop the mint leaves; combine the ingredients; enjoy.
Andy Castillo is the features editor at the Greenfield Recorder. He can be reached at acastillo@recorder.com.