Cabbage Education – Red Curry Cabbage with Toasted Coconut and Thai Basil

Gardening can be incredibly rewarding, but also unbelievably frustrating. Some crops are reliable, always a success from year to year. Green beans, for example, are one of the easiest vegetables to grow. I get a large harvest every summer, often more than I can use. I don’t ever recall a lousy yield of green beans.

However, with other items I plant, it’s often a crapshoot. One year the harvest may be bountiful, the next an utter failure. Why last summer was an excellent cucumber season but this one the vines are struggling, I may never figure out. My sugar snap and snow peas barely germinated this spring, while previously I have harvested basketsful. Luckily the disappointments usually rotate among crops, and I never know which will be the winners and which will be the losers when sowing seeds.

Yet year in and year out there are certain vegetables I try, and they always seem to fail. Sometimes, I give up. Why waste valuable garden real estate on something that has never been successful? I stopped growing sweet potatoes years ago, for example, because these storage roots never amounted to much; their meager size didn’t warrant the time, effort, and space. With other crops, I keep trying, even though I’ve come to expect the results to be disappointing.

One such vegetable is cabbage. I’ve been growing it for years, usually with terrible results, occasionally upgraded to fair. I’ve never had a particularly good harvest, until now, that is. It’s been an education, although I’m hoping that I’ve finally figured it out.

First, it took me a long time to realize that cabbage and most other cruciferous vegetables (cauliflower, broccoli, kale, and Brussels sprouts, among others) are cool weather crops, thriving only in spring and fall rather than the heat of summer. And when it comes to cabbage specifically, I had to learn that certain types are early season varieties to be planted only in spring, and others only do well in the fall, maturing as the weather cools. Once I was on to this, my efforts were met with more success.

Next, I learned that cabbages are voracious feeders needing frequent doses of nutrients throughout their growth, especially nitrogen (but only prior to formation of heads). Thus, amending the soil only when I transplanted them into the garden wasn’t enough. I gave them additional fertilizer and as they grew, their heads increased in size. I was slowly getting somewhere.

But then there were the pests. Spring cabbage would swell towards maturity as the temperature rose, only to be devastated by cabbage worms that would bore holes through the leaves, resulting in ugly, inedible heads, peppered with their wastes. Extremely frustrating.

I would rub the leaves gently with my hands, an attempt to dislodge eggs before they hatched. Inevitably I would miss some. I tried picking off the worms one by one, with limited success. Camouflaged green in color, when small, they were difficult to see. By the time they grew to a visible size, the damage was already done. I could find a pesticide, which is not really an option since I am loathe to use chemicals in my garden.

This year I vowed to make one final attempt before abandoning cabbage forever. I researched that the eggs were laid by small white butterflies with dark spots that I frequently saw fluttering among my plants. How to keep them away? If only there was some physical barrier that blocked their access, the problem might be solved. That’s when I discovered floating row covers. This mesh-like fabric, spread over a flexible frame in an arch shape might be perfect for my four-by-eight foot raised beds. It would keep the pests out, while allowing light and water to penetrate and air to flow.

In early spring when I transplanted my cabbage and kale outside, I immediately set up the floating row covers to block the pest, and the plants thrived. They grew and grew with my nutrient supplements as the temperature warmed, without a single cabbage worm doing them harm. The result is the biggest and best cabbage harvest I’ve ever had.

My success with cabbage goes to show that there are solutions to all sorts of garden problems if you’re willing to put in time, do some research, and experiment. While unfortunately this will not solve all my garden woes, and there will always be garden successes and failures, my cabbage education demonstrates that effort and persistence can reward you with an excellent harvest.

Red Curry Cabbage with Toasted Coconut and Thai Basil

I was searching for new ways to prepare cabbage with my bountiful harvest. My wife Marci loves my Indian Curried Cabbage with Toasted Coconut and suggested I create a different version of this dish. Immediately Thai red curry came to mind. The cabbage would be delicious with spicy red curry and Thai basil, with toasted shards of coconut replacing coconut milk to make a dry curry rather than one with lots of liquid. It worked out beautifully. The dish is simple and delicious, a perfect way to enjoy fresh-picked cabbage.

serves 4 as a side dish, 25 minutes

½ cup unsweetened coconut flakes

1 Tbsp. vegetable or canola oil

2 large shallots, peeled and cut into thin wedges

2 cloves garlic, finely minced

1-inch piece of ginger, peeled and finely minced, about 1 Tbsp.

1 Tbsp. Thai red curry paste

½ of a large head of cabbage, thinly sliced

2 tsp. fish sauce

½ Tbsp. brown sugar

½ tsp. kosher salt

a small handful of Thai basil

1. Preheat oven to 350 ^oF. Toast the coconut flakes on a sheet pan in the oven, stirring occasionally, until golden, about 10 minutes. Set aside to cool.
2. Add the oil to a wok or heavy bottom pot and heat on high. Drop in the shallots, stir, and cook until just starting to wilt, about 2 minutes.
3. Mix in garlic, ginger, and red curry paste and bloom in the oil for about a minute, stirring constantly so it does not scorch.
4. Add sliced cabbage, fish sauce, brown sugar, and salt, and cook, stirring frequently until cabbage is crisp-tender, about 3 or 4 minutes.
5. Mix in half the toasted coconut and half the Thai basil. Place on a serving plate and top with the remainder of the toasted coconut and Thai basil as a garnish and serve hot.

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