A tribute

Following the two servings of cabbage from economy restaurants recently (see references 1 and 2), we thought yesterday to test the kitchen at the Beachcroft Hotel where we are staying.

As it happens there are a lot of market gardens and a lot of glass marked on our map on the way to nearby Selsey Bill, so off to Pagham to see what we could do there. Which was, turn up a very decent summer white cabbage for 50p, perhaps a pound and a half in weight. I was not altogether sure what sort of cabbage this was, but it looks a bit like a white cabbage without being anything like as dense or as tough. It might be a juvenile or it might be something else altogether.

Back at the hotel I explained my needs at reception and the receptionist, without fuss, carried the cabbage off to the kitchen.

Later on, at dinner, I took cabbage with my beef strogonoff - there being no pies here, thank you very much. Both cabbage and strogonoff were very good, although I doubt whether the latter was made out of fillet of beef as advertised. The instruction regarding the former, the cabbage, was that it should be lightly boiled in water, no more than two or three minutes, and that neither butter nor salt should be added. All of which the kitchen managed very well, even to the point of cutting it up nicely into slivers, perhaps half a centimetre by three. And nicely served up on its own little vegetable plate.

Which all goes to show that the young cooks of today do know how to prepare and serve cabbage - it's just that they do not do it very often, at least not in the sort of restaurants which we normally use.

PS: we learned in the margins of Selsey, that back in Saxon times there was a bishop there, but the Normans ruled that bishops had to live in towns and the bishopric was translated to nearby Chichester where it has remained ever since.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/cabbage.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/more-pies.html.

Reference 3: http://www.beachcroft-hotel.co.uk/.