Happy German Heritage Month!

Please excuse the lousy picture. I forgot to take a picture again, so this is a picture I covertly took in the break room at work. (Yes, that shadow is because my head was blocking the light.)

I'm just kidding, it really isn't German heritage month. Really bratwurst was on sale at two of the local grocery stores and so I decided to follow in my Nana's (grandma) footsteps and make it with rohtkohl. My Papa's (grandpa) parents were both from Germany. I found out after I made this that the recipe my Nana uses is actually Papa's recipe, and it was borrowed from "Gabby Gourmet". The only time I ever saw my Nana make rohtkohl she "cheated" and used a jar of pickled red cabbage from a German store in SLC it is called Sigfried's, and it is delicious. They serve lunch, but not dinner. Since that's how I thought she usually made it, and I didn't want to drive out to Sigfried's I decided to try this recipe from AllRecipes.com (Ardis Stauffer). It is not very different from the Gabby Gourmet version.

Warning: Apparently I don't know what a "medium sized" cabbage looks like. I ended up having to double the recipe, and that was a LOT of rohtkohl. Pick a smallish cabbage.

Ingredients:

1 medium head red cabbage, cored and sliced
2 large tart apples, peeled and sliced
1 medium sweet onion, sliced and separated into rings
1 1/2 cups of water
1 cup of cider vinegar
1/2 cup of sugar
1 Tablespoon butter
1 teaspoon salt
6 whole peppercorns
2 whole allspice
2 whole cloves
1 bay leaf

Directions:

1. In a saucepan toss cabbage, apples and onion. Add water, vinegar, sugar, butter, and salt. Place the peppercorns, allspice, cloves and bay leaf on a double thickness of cheesecloth; bring up corners of cloth and tie with a kitchen string to form a bag. Add to saucepan, bring to a boil. Reduce heat; cover and simmer for about an hour (until cabbage is done).

2. Discard spice bag, and onions.

I didn't have a cheesecloth, and I was just making it for the two of us, so I just tossed the spices in. I did accidentally bite into a clove though, YUCK! I was talking to Papa later, and he told me to leave the onion whole and push the spices into it. His recipe only calls for cloves and they have the long ends that will work well for that. I think I will probably just do that next time. When I read the reviews for the recipe one woman reported that she ruined the recipe by using ground spices so I would not recommend using ground spices.