i often find myself free-handing quick meals — that is, not using a recipe for them. most of the time i find the resulting dishes to taste good enough. but yesterday was an exception. i had a few things laying around that i have been wanting to cook up: cabbage and mushrooms. so, i pulled them out and prepped them. i cored and sliced the cabbage, and then de-stemmed and sliced the mushrooms.
i added some olive oil and butter to a heated cast-iron skillet, and began cooking the mushrooms. i wanted them to be browned and a little crispy. apparently you do not want to add salt to sautéed mushrooms til the very end, at which point you can salt them. it enables them to brown a bit better. from there, i added the sliced cabbage to the mushrooms, and added a little salt and more butter. i cooked the cabbage for probably 10-15 minutes, but next time i will cook it for more like 40 minutes if i have time. it was still great, but on the crunchy side. i would have liked it to have been a bit more caramelized and browned.
once the mushrooms and cabbage were cooked, i added in some roasted seaweed and let it wilt a bit. i added soy sauce, fish sauce, and rice vinegar as well, and mixed everything together.
while all of this was going on, i mixed together my classic sauce: kewpie mayo, coconut aminos, sriracha, and rice vinegar. i pulled out the toasted sesame seeds and some kimchi as well.
to plate, i added the sautéed cabbage, mushrooms, and seaweed, and topped everything with kimchi. i drizzled the kewpie mayo-based sauce on top, and then sprinkled with the toasted sesame seeds. this was a very simple, yet interesting meal, and i can imagine i’ll be making many more iterations of it going forward.
the nice thing about this dish is that all you really need is a head of cabbage to get things started, and the possibilities are endless, depending on what you have laying around your fridge and pantry. and another great feature of cabbage is that it lasts forever in the fridge. so this is essentially a pantry staple recipe, and i love that.
cooking with leeks 