Here’s a beautiful recipe for cabbage that’s not cole slaw. It’s part of my Times Union story from December 2020. You can read it all here (the TU version) or here (mine). It went long with recipes for Roasted Red Pepper Soup and Chocolate Sweet Potato Spice Cake.

I love to roast vegetables and regularly roast cauliflower, onions, garlic, Brussels sprouts, carrots, radishes, squash, and the list goes on and on.

Cabbage is my latest victim, and after a slather of olive oil and a few minutes in a hot oven, crunchy cabbage turns soft, buttery and quite mild. It’s good on its own, or with a generous sprinkle of Parmesan cheese. The sauce here is made up of a few of my favorite things: salty green olives, pistachio nuts, lemon and olive oil. A small amount of this sauce packs a lot of flavor.

And, I’m always quite taken with the beauty of cabbage. Aren’t you?

Roasted Red Cabbage with Pistachios + Olives

Recipe by Caroline Barrett

Servings

5

servings

Ingredients

• ½ head of purple cabbage

• Olive oil

• Kosher salt

• ½ cup pitted green olives (I like Castravelano olives)

• ½ cup lightly salted pistachios

• 1 large handful flat leaf parsley

• Juice of ½ lemon

• ¼ cup extra virgin olive oil

• ¼ teaspoon crushed red pepper

Directions

• Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Cover a baking sheet with parchment paper. Slice the cabbage into 1” wedges, leaving the core intact. Place on the prepared baking sheet and drizzle olive oil over all, using about 1 teaspoon per wedge. Use a pastry brush to coat the cabbage with oil, then flip and coat the other side. Sprinkle lightly with salt. Bake for 12 minutes, or until soft and brown at the edges.
• Meanwhile, roughly chop the olives, pistachios and parsley leaves and combine in a glass bowl. Stir in the lemon, olive oil and crushed red pepper.
• Carefully remove the cabbage from the baking sheet and place on a serving platter. Spoon the sauce over each wedge and serve warm.

What I love most about roasted red cabbage is the beautiful deep purple hue, which is a lovely contrast to the greens in the sauce. Serve this as a side dish to steak or chicken. It would be good with a warm bowl of pasta, too.