Healthy Eating: Food and Health with Healthy Eating Recipes by Lucy Hyland at Food For Living

Wednesday 25th August

Check out my blog today on http://blog.localmarkets.ie/ for some healthy tips and hints with this great looking cabbage!

Romanesco Cabbage

The type of cabbage shown here is a Romanesco cabbage. I actually thought it was a type cauliflower so treated it like one when I cooked it. Cabbage is part of the cruciferous (or Brassica) family. In terms of health benefits, this family is currently topping the charts!  Not only is it packed full of Vitamin K and Vitamin C but also contains powerful anti-oxidants called I3C and sulphorane which have been closely linked to aiding the liver carry out its detox functions. There has been a particular link to it reducing the risk of hormonal cancers in women.

When it comes to preparing cabbage, one little trick to bring out its health benefits is to chop or slice into thin strips and leave it for 5 minutes to activate its health promoting properties.

When cooking cabbage, I usually slice it thin and cook in less than 5 minutes, ensuring it doesn’t get overcooked. If it is lovely young fresh cabbage, you can eat it raw in a salad, otherwise you can sauté in a little water or add at the end of cooking a soup or stew. The curry flavours here work really well.

Hot and Spicy Cabbage with Lentils

Serves 2

2 small heads of Romanesco Cabbage
1 tin of puy lentils
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon mustard seeds
1 teaspoon garam masala
A dash of chilli powder
2 cloves of garlic – crushed
1 inch piece of ginger – grated
50 mls of water
3 tbsp natural or Greek yogurt
Sea salt

Firstly, remove the outer leaves from the cabbage. Cut the heads off the stalk or simply tear off like I did.
Place a little water in a large pan and put on a medium to high heat heat.
Wash and drain the lentils well.
Sprinkle in the cumin, mustard seeds and garam massala and stir well, cooking for a few minutes.
Next add the crushed garlic, the ginger and the chilli. Stir again, then adding the cabbage.
Cook for a few minutes and then add the water and salt to the pan. Cook for another 5 minutes.
Add the lentils and stir through well until warm.
Remove from the heat and stir through the yogurt.

Serve with brown or white rice.

Wheat free, gluten free, sugar free

If you are looking for a menu to be designed to suit your health or nutrition needs, contact lucy@foodforliving.ie