Sweet Potato & Cabbage Charlotte

A beau­ti­ful cab­bage char­lotte, so unlike the soups and stews I’ve been crank­ing out in the past few months. Who even knew cab­bage and pota­toes could look this refined? It just makes me feel fancy all over. It’s like a dish you can bring to a din­ner party and get your oohs and aahs, guar­an­teed. Now the tools: I assume most peo­ple on this planet don’t have a spe­cial­ized cab­bage char­lotte mould and I won’t kid you, I don’t either! It’s time to get cre­ative — I used my LeCreuset mor­tar and it did great. What’s the spin? I used sweet pota­toes, the orig­i­nal calls for reg­u­lar white bak­ing spuds.

Before I go into the recipe, I have to tell you that we just had the cra­zi­est snow­storm here yes­ter­day. I think what saved every­one from a com­plete zom­bie apoc­a­lypse was the fact that it was Sun­day — so can­cel all your plans and sit at home watch­ing favorite tv shows all day. Guilt-​free, we didn’t have a choice, we were forced to. It’s like snow day for grown-​ups. I like.

Shall we get cooking?

Ingre­di­ents:

1 medium head of Savoy cab­bage
2 tbs but­ter 1 red onion, finely chopped
2 medium sweet pota­toes, cooked and mashed
1 large egg, beaten
1 – 2 tbs milk, if needed
salt and pep­per, to taste

Direc­tions

Pre­heat the oven to 375F. Lightly but­ter the char­lotte mould.

Bring a medium pot of salted water to boil. Remove 5 – 6 large leaves from the cab­bage and add to the pot, cook the leaves for about 2 mins, then plunge into cold water to stop the cook­ing process:

Once cooled enough to han­dle, remove the cen­ter veins:

Melt but­ter in a fry­ing pan and cook the onion for 2 – 3 min­utes, until just soft­ened. Stir in the chopped cab­bage and cook, cov­ered, over medium heat for 15 min­utes until tender.

Put the pota­toes in a large pot of boil­ing salted water and cook until ten­der, then drain. Mash them with milk until smooth and creamy, then stir in the cab­bage mix­ture. Sea­son with salt and pepper.

Next, use the leaves to line the mould, sav­ing one leaf for the top:

Note: Dry the leaves first — oth­er­wise the char­lotte will leak water on the plate once inverted.

Add the potato mix­ture into the dish, smooth­ing it out to be even:

Then cover with the remain­ing leaf and tuck in:

Cover tightly with foil. Put in the mould in a shal­low roast­ing pan and pour in boil­ing water to come to halfway up the side of the mould.

Bake for 40 minutes:

To serve, remove the foil and place a serv­ing plate over the mould. Hold­ing the plate tightly against the mould, turn over together. Lift off the mould and serve.

Adapted from: