Salmon with Creamed Leeks and Cabbage

Leeks and cabbage are the unsung heros of the vegetable world. Cabbage normally gets lumped into the smelly and disgusting vegetable category, and leeks are known mainly for the elegant vichysoisse cold soup and ignored the rest of the time.  This is a shame because both vegetables are really tasty.  Leeks have a lovely sweet flavor.  I often just saute them quickly in a bit of butter and then add a tiny bit of water and cook until the leeks is tender.  The leeks make a lovely side dish to chicken or fish. Cabbage can be mild and sweet or slightly spicy, depending on the type.  A quickly sauted cabbage also makes a great side dish, and just needs salt and pepper as a seasoning.

In this dish I combine the two, and add a bit of cream for lusciousness.  It is quick and easy to make and makes a tempting base for a piece of fish. A little chopped almonds gives a bit of crunch and textural contrast.

I have chosen salmon but any fish would taste good here, or even chicken.  Cod would be especially delicious and I probably would have chosen it, but they didn't have any at the store yesterday!  A fresh fillet of salmon is a delicious thing but if it is not fresh, it can have a strong "fishy" flavor that I do not like.  I always ask when I buy the fish if it was delivered that day.  If it was not, then I don't buy it.  However, you never know if they are telling you the truth, so what I really recomend is finding a fishmonger that you like and going to them often.  If you are a good customer, they will let you know what is really fresh. Here in Sweden, I often buy Salmalax, which is a brand that advertises that they process the fish within 4 hours from catching.  You can find it in many of the regular grocery stores. It is a bit more expensive, but it does give perfect results, every time.


Serves 4
4 skinless fillets of salmon
3 medium to large leeks
1/2 head of a smallish cabbage
3/4 cup cream
handful of roasted and salted almonds
salt and pepper
a bit of butter for frying the fish

First prepare your vegetables.  Cut the cabbage into quarters.  Cut out the core.  Slice thinly crosswise.  Cut off the ends of the leeks. Cut in half lengthwise.  Wash the leaves carefully to remove any dirt and grit that might have lodged there.  Slice crosswise.Take the almonds and roughly chop.  Set aside.

Put a pot on the stove on high heat and pour in 1/2 cup of cream. Add in the leeks and cabbage, a half teaspoon of salt and some freshly ground pepper.  Put the lid on the pot and bring the cream to a boil.  Once it comes to a boil, turn the heat to low, give the vegetables a good stir, and put the heat back on.  Let cook for a few minutes, until the vegetables are tender.  Pour in the remaining 1/4 cup cream and give a good stir.  Put the lid back on and take off the stove.  It can sit while you cook the salmon.

While you are waiting for the leeks and cabbage to get tender, prepare the fish.  Salt and pepper each fillet.  Heat a frying pan on high, with a knob of butter.  Put the fish into the pan and cook for a couple of minutes until it is nicely golden brown.  Flip the fish over and cook on the other side, until that side is nicely golden brown.  The fish is cooked through when you see it begin to "break" in the middle of the fillet where the spine of the fish was.

Give the creamed cabbage and leeks a stir, then spoon a nice helping onto each plate.  Top with a salmon fillet and sprinkle with some of the roasted almonds.  Enjoy!

Swedish Cabbage Pudding (Kålpudding)

The other day, I was was at the absolutely lovely Ulriksdal slottsträdgården which is a huge kitchen garden where you can pick your own vegetables and herbs, as well as apples and berries.  As well as the gardens, they have a beautiful set of greenhouses where they sell plants and garden accesseries. Last but certainly not least, they have a great cafe where they have a vegetarian brunch which is cooked with the vegetables they grow in their own garden.  It is a very happy place.  I had my eye on some beautiful artichokes but they were all gone!  So, I settled for some corn and a beautiful cabbage.

With the weather here in Stockholm becoming colder and the rains starting, classic Swedish dishes start sounding very tempting.  So, I used my cabbage in a classic, very-old fashioned dish, Kålpudding. If you are a fan of cabbage rolls, then you will have an idea of how this tastes, since it is basically like a big huge cabbage roll.

In Sweden, cabbage rolls are called kåldolmar, after the Turkish dolmar using grape leaves.  The earliest Swedish recipe for dolmar is in a famous cookbook by Cajsa Warg in 1765 version, which I just happened to receive a few weeks ago in a suprise gift from my husband.  I really love kåldolmar, but it is a lot of work making all those little bundles, so imagine my joy when I came across this recipe from my favorite Leif Mannerström in "The Art of Home Cooking."

Kålpudding eptimizes what I love about Swedish cooking; taking humble ingredients, in this case mainly cabbage, potato and minced meat and turning it into something delicious.  As is often the case with these old-fashioned recipes, cooking with love can be time consuming.  So, while there is nothing difficult about this recipe, preparing the cabbage is time consuming.  But still, puttering around in the kitchen for an hour or two on a weekend is a small price to pay for deliciousness.

Here is my recipe, slightly adapted from Mannerströms:

Serves 4 to 6 persons

800 grams to 1 kilo of mixed beef and pork ground meat (blandfärs)
1cabbage head (white or Savoy)

1 large onion
1 medium sized boiled potato
2 dl milk
1 dl dried breadcrumbs
2 eggs
6 tablespoons soysauce
2 tablespoons syrup (ljus sirap, light corn syrup, or golden syrup)
2 tablespoons concentrated veal stock (kalvfond)
1 tablespoon brown sugar
butter for frying and garnishing
salt and pepper to taste

First put a big pot of water to boil that will fit your cabbage.  Core the cabbage by taking a narrow knife and carving out the car at the bottom.  Some of the outer leaves will fall out as you do this, and that is fine.  Add some salt to your boiling water and put in the cabbage head, including the outer leaves.  Cook for 10 to 15 minutes (closer to 15 if it is a white cabbage) until the cabbage has softened.  (If you do not have a leftover cooked potato, then you can add a peeled potato to the water.  Depending on the size, it may take about 20 minutes to cook) Take out the cabbage and let it drain and cool slightly. Remove each leaf carefully and cut out the hard central core.  Set the leaves aside, saving the core bit and the tiny leaves at the center.

Coring the cabbage.  It is not a precise art.

After boiling, separate each leaf, and cut out the thickest part of the vein.

A nice pile of leaves when you are done.

In a large bowl, put in the boiled potato and mash it with a fork.Add the breadcrumbs and the milk.  Stir and set aside to allow the breadcrumbs to absorb the milk.

Not very pretty but it will taste good.

Chop your onion finely and chop up the leftover cabbage bits.  Fry the onion and the cabbage in a blob of butter until it is soft and the mixture is just starting to get some color.

Onion and leftover cabbage bits frying.

In your bowl with the breadcrumb mixture, add the meat, the soysauce, the kalvfond, the syrup, the two eggs, and the onion mixture.  Add a generous grinding of pepper. Mix it well with a spoon.  In the frying pan, take a small blob of the meat mixture, fry it up and taste it and adjust the seasoning if necessary.

Mixing the meat mixture with all the ingredients.

Get out a springform pan, if you want it to look elegant.  Otherwise you can use any kind of caserole dish.

In the frying pan, add a blob more butter.  Fry each cabbage leaf quickly on both sides.  They are done when they just start to wilt a bit more and get a tiny bit of color.  This is a fiddly job and takes a bit of time to fry all the leaves, but don't skip this step.  If you don't do it, the cabbage will not cook sufficiently and you will have hard cabbage not melt-in-your-mouth cabbage.

Fry each cabbage leaf on both sides until there is a slight big of color.

Put a layer of cabbage leaves at the bottom of your baking dish, roughly a third of the leaves.  Add half of the meat mixture and smooth it down, pressing it to make sure it is level and covering the whole dish.  Put in another layer of cabbage leaves and then the rest of the meat.  Put in a final layer of cabbage, saving some nice large leaves for the top.  Smear a bit of butter on the top and give it a nice grinding of pepper.  Then sprinkle some brown sugar on top. This may feel strange, but believe me that the sweetness goes beautifully with the cabbage.

Add the cabbage and meat in layers.

Ready to cook after a smear of butter and a sprinkle of sugar.

Put in the oven at 200 degrees C (400F) and cook for about 40 to 45 minutes in the lower half of the oven.  If you are using the springform pan, set it in another pan, just in case some of the juices leak out.  Check the pudding half way through to make sure that it is not burning on the top since the sugar will carmelize.  If you feel it is browning too fast on the top, you can put a piece of foil over it. It should be beautifully browned on top from the carmelized sugar.

The finished pudding! It looks a bit funny because I had some dark green leaves mixed with some light yellow leaves.

Let it sit for 10 minutes or so, and then remove the rim and serve it in wedges, hot.  Traditionally, Swedes would serve lingon jam with it and boiled potatoes.

This dish can be made in advance and then re-heated before serving.

Eat it with lingon if you are Swedish!