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Cabbage sits in the produce aisle all year and gets treated like packing material. Boiled, shredded raw, ignored. Cut it into thick wedges and leave it alone in a hot pan, and the flat cut faces brown and turn sweet, closer to a roasted onion than to coleslaw.
September is when I want that again. The tomatoes are on their way out, the stove is welcome in the house, and a head of cabbage is one of the cheapest things in the store.
The recipe: Chicken Cutlets with Charred Cabbage and Mustard Pan Sauce
Makes one full pan in about 30 minutes: dinner tonight and lunch tomorrow, or one big dinner if that is where your appetite lands today. The whole pan holds roughly 150g of protein.
1 1/2 lb boneless skinless chicken breasts, about 3
1/2 head green cabbage
1 small onion, sliced
2 tablespoons whole grain mustard
1/2 cup chicken broth
1 tablespoon cider vinegar
1 tablespoon butter
1 teaspoon caraway seeds
Olive oil, salt, pepper
Lay each breast flat on the board, put your palm on top of it, and run a knife through it sideways so it opens into two thin pieces. Three breasts, six cutlets. Salt them on both sides and leave them while you start the cabbage.
Cut the half head into four thick slabs straight through the core, so each one holds together. Get a large skillet hot with two tablespoons of olive oil over medium-high heat and lay the slabs in flat. Four minutes without touching them, until the underside is browned in patches. Flip, add the onion around them, four minutes more. A splash of water, a lid, three minutes, then onto a plate.
Wipe the pan, another spoonful of oil, back on medium-high. Cutlets in a single layer, three minutes a side, in two batches if your pan is crowded. Onto the plate with the cabbage.
Broth, mustard, vinegar and caraway into the hot pan. Scrape up everything stuck to the bottom and let it bubble down by half, about two minutes. Heat off, butter in, swirl until it goes glossy. Cabbage and chicken back in, and spoon the sauce over both.
Why this works: splitting a thick breast into two thin cutlets is the whole trick. A half inch of chicken is cooked through in three minutes a side, long before the outside has time to squeeze out its water and go stringy.
The cabbage keeps 4 days and is as good cold as it is warm. The chicken keeps 3 days, and lean cutlets dry out the second time through a hot pan, so slice the leftovers cold over the cabbage instead of reheating them.
No-cook breakfast: cold tofu with soy and scallion
No recipe, just an order of operations, and it is for the mornings when nothing sweet appeals. Open a 14 ounce block of firm tofu, pour off the water, and cut about a third of it into thick slabs. Lay them in a shallow bowl. Soy sauce over the top, a few drops of toasted sesame oil, a scatter of sliced scallion, grated fresh ginger if you have a knob in the fridge.
Blot the slabs with a paper towel before anything goes on them. Tofu sits in water in the package, and two minutes with a towel is the difference between soy sauce that clings and soy sauce that pools at the bottom. Buy firm or extra firm rather than silken, which falls apart under a spoon. Roughly 21g of protein.
Three quick bites
Roasted salted pumpkin seed kernels, the flat green ones rather than the white shells, with a few dried apricots alongside. A quarter cup of the kernels runs about 9g of protein, a jar of them keeps on the counter for weeks, and the apricots are what keep all that salt from getting tiring.
Anywhere a marinade calls for lemon juice or vinegar, use plain yogurt instead. Thin it with a spoonful of oil, salt it, coat the chicken, and leave it in the fridge for a few hours. Acid left on meat too long tightens the outside and turns it chalky. Yogurt is mild enough that it does not, and it is thick enough to stay put, so the seasoning goes into the pan on the meat rather than sliding off it.
In the produce aisle, near the tofu, look for tempeh. It is soybeans cultured and pressed into a firm cake, nuttier and much sturdier than tofu, and a serving carries around 18g of protein. Slice it thin, fry it in oil until the edges brown and crisp, then salt it while it is hot.
The why
Muscle is not a fixed thing sitting on your frame. Your body is constantly taking it apart and putting it back together, and the raw material for the rebuilding comes from the protein you ate. One amino acid in particular, leucine, gets more attention from researchers than the rest, and it turns up in the highest concentrations in dairy, eggs, meat, fish and soy. None of that is an argument for a supplement. It is an argument for putting one of those foods on the plate at every meal, including the small ones and the ones that end early, so that the eating you do actually gets used.
The rough-day plate
For the day this week when the stove is not going to happen: scrub a sweet potato, poke it a few times with a fork, and give it eight minutes in the microwave. Split it open, salt the inside, and drop in a big spoonful of whole milk ricotta with olive oil and black pepper over the top. Warm, soft, sweet and salty at the same time.
A head of cabbage will sit in the crisper drawer for weeks, which is more than the rest of the produce aisle can say. Once you cut into it, peel off the dried outer layer and the rest is fine.
Take the heavy ones. A head that feels light for its size has been sitting somewhere long enough to lose water, and those leaves go papery and bitter in a hot pan.
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If you know someone who only ever meets cabbage as coleslaw, forward this to them.
Jan
The New Appetite is a food publication, not medical advice. Always talk to your healthcare provider about your nutrition and medication.