If I were to make a list, in the manner of the medieval Japanese writer Sei Shonagon, of “Things That Make One’s Heart Beat Faster” — like a hint of cloud inside a mirror or raindrops chiming against the shutters — cabbage would not be top of mind. Yet here it is, this hardy vegetable that I have largely ignored my whole life, gently torn and given a simple anointing of sesame oil, garlic, black pepper and a fingerprint’s worth of salt. So few ingredients, so little time required, and I can’t stop eating it.
In Japan, the word for this is “yamitsuki”: addictive. A Japanese restaurateur once told me that addictive cabbage — perhaps as counterintuitive a union of words as “jumbo shrimp” to the average American — is the true test of any izakaya, where you go to drink as much as to eat. Cabbage is the first thing you order, he said, and if it’s good, you stay. You keep taking mouthfuls, to refresh the palate and ease the stomach between bites of the rich, fatty foods strategically served to whet your appetite for more liquor.
But addictive cabbage is a home dish too, a seemingly humble side that slyly steals all the glory. Aiko Cascio learned to make it from her grandmother as a child in Kagawa, a small prefecture on Japan’s Seto Inland Sea, in the wake of World War II. Her family shared the house with her aunts and uncles, and her grandmother needed her help in the kitchen because there were so many people to feed.
Recipe: Yamitsuki (Addictive Cabbage)
In 2014, a lifetime later, as a recent retiree living in Harlem, she saw a segment on Japanese TV about the League of Kitchens, an organization in New York that trains immigrant women to offer cooking classes in their homes, to empower members of sometimes-sidelined communities and preserve traditional knowledge. “I don’t want to be a lonely senior, sitting in the house,” Cascio remembers thinking.
She didn’t catch the organization’s name, so she wrote to the station, and some kindly soul replied. Within months, she was welcoming students to her home and connecting with fellow immigrants from countries including Afghanistan, Argentina, Burkina Faso, Lebanon, Nepal and Ukraine. Today the instructors range in age from 39 to 90, although the League of Kitchens’ founder, Lisa Kyung Gross, notes that no matter how old they are, “They cook like grandmas” — nonchalant virtuosos, all instinct and muscle memory, the recipes of generations written in their bones.
Cascio’s take on addictive cabbage appears in “The League of Kitchens Cookbook,” published in November. Often the people who sign up for classes want to learn how to make the showiest, most difficult dishes; here, the focus is on the everyday — “the best comfort food from around the world,” Gross says. One hurdle to overcome: The instructors rarely measured anything. Each was sent a digital scale and measuring spoons. “It drove them crazy,” Gross recalls with a laugh. “But they were good sports.” (Some amounts have been left to the reader’s discretion, as not everyone will be able to match the exuberance of the cook who throws five whole bird’s-eye chiles into a curry, guns blazing.)
A simple dish, where details make all the difference.
It’s the details that make the difference. Cascio prefers tearing the cabbage by hand rather than using a knife because the rougher edges absorb more of the sesame oil. Flathead cabbage, also known as Taiwanese cabbage, is best, soft and tender, with space between the ribs. If you can find only green, she advises cutting it into smaller pieces and letting it rest a little longer in salt.
None of this quite explains how good this dish is, how it makes the heart race. Perhaps the secret is its very simplicity. No cooking, just tear the leaves, salt, squeeze, rinse, dress and serve. Make it often enough, and soon you might not need measuring spoons either, or even words on a page.
Recipe: Yamitsuki (Addictive Cabbage)
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