Braised Red Cabbage

Recipe Created By Daniel Clifford

To serve: 8-10

Preparation time: Approximately 20 minutes

Cooking time: Approximately 3 hours

Ingredients

1 medium red cabbage, quartered and sliced

2 onions, peeled and sliced

50g duck fat

200ml red wine vinegar

400ml full body red wine

2 handfuls of raisins

100g of red currant jelly

6 tablespoons of veal stock

½ a litre of brown chicken stock

Salt for seasoning

Bouquet Garni

Handful of cloves

Handful of white and black peppercorns

6 sprigs of thyme

6 sprigs of rosemary

2 bay leaves

4 strips of orange peel made using a vegetable peeler

Method

Prepare the cabbage and onions into 1cm slices.
On a medium heat, heat up the duck fat in an oven proof pot, and sweat the onion.
Create your bouquet garni (parcel of herbs). Get a muslin cloth and place the cloves, white and black peppercorns, thyme, rosemary, bay leaves and zest of orange inside and seal it off with string.
Place some salt into the pan of onions to help with the sweating process.
At this point you will want to make a cartouche, this will then be added over the top of the cabbage.
Create a cartouche, by folding greaseproof paper twice, and fold it into a triangle. Keep folding until it turns into a cone. Decide the size of the cartouche by measuring the cone to the radius of your oven proof pot.
Once the onions are sweated out, add the red wine vinegar and reduce to nothing.
Add the red wine and bring to the boil to start reducing.
As the red wine is reducing, add the cabbage.
Bring it all to a boil and leave it to reduce.
Add the red currant jelly to add sweetness and melt into cabbage.
Now add your bouquet garni and 2 handfuls of raisins to your pot. Mix and reduce more.
Add 6 tablespoons of veal stock and half a litre of brown chicken stock and mix (it should bring the liquid up to the cabbage) and mix.
Cover with the cartouche to keep the moisture in and place into a 130˚c oven for 2 ½ hours
After the first hour of cooking, stir and cook for a further one hour and a half, ensuring the cartouche is replaced back over the cabbage.
After 2 hours of cooking, the cabbage should be soft and coated in the reduced liquor, remove from the oven, correct the seasoning with salt and allow to cool.
The braised red cabbage can be transferred into an airtight container and kept in the fridge for no more than 5 days, it can also be frozen for up to 3 months’ making it perfect for batch cooking.
When you are ready to serve the Braised Red Cabbage, either remove from the freeze the night before and place it in the fridge or remove from the fridge at the time of cooking and reheat in a pan on the stove until hot.