Cabbage & Crunch

What do you cook at home? It’s a question that I, along with many of the other vendors, are asked each week. I used to print up recipe cards trying to include products from as many of the vendors as I could. Afterall, it really is what I’m eating at home since grabbing a muffin at the coffee shop or popping over to the noodle joint for lunch isn’t really an option for me and many of the other farmers who live rurally. But I’ve found the stickiest recipes offered to patrons are the simplest ones with three ingredients at most; ones that don’t need measuring.

This week as the damp chill of winter’s last gasps have gripped the region, I found myself wanting something that would require the use of a hot oven, something to throw off some heat. Looking in my fridge, two modest cabbages stared back at me begging to be neatly sliced, laid out on a baking sheet, drizzled in olive oil, dusted in herb-infused salt and then popped into a hot oven, roasting until the outer edges became the color of old parchment and the centers caramelized into a thick ooze. That should have been enough, but I was looking for more heat, something to bump up the flavor.

Enter the hottest condiment of the season—chili crunch, also called chili crisp. Like the roasted cabbage, it’s simplicity has the capacity to add depth to whatever it is added to.  Several years ago a customer gave me a jar of a celebrity chef’s chili crunch.  I devoured it and vowed if I came across something like that again I’d stock up. Then my neighbor at market showed up with a jar from the Chinese dumpling vendor. I love this stuff! was all he managed to say before I said I’ll be back in a minute and ran off to procure my own stash.

One of the coolest things about our market that I absolutely adore is there are multiple vendors who at first glance appear to carry similar products, but there are nuances that reflect everything from cultural to geographic differences. In past Dishing the Dirt posts I’ve touched on the assortment of pitas, breads, vegetables, proteins, libations, and such. In the summer you might crave a creamy cold ice cream cone in candy shop flavors and another time choose a simple popsicle made with fruits and flavors indicative of other parts of the world—we have it all. The varieties of foods are so numerous, one is guaranteed not to eat the same meal twice in a year.

So when a different jar of chili crunch appeared with a new winter vendor, I immediately snapped up jars for me as well as my market neighbor. Time to return the f(l)avor.

While the terms crisp and crunch are used interchangeably, each has their own texture and flavor profile. Chili crisp isn’t something new being a Guizhou-style condiment in Chinese dishes for centuries.  

Chili crunch is the artisanal version with tweaks made to the traditional crisp recipe to reflect modern westernized Asian cuisine. Both are a base of chili flakes and oil imparting either tradition or nouvelle. Since I have both in my pantry, no choice needs to be made including how to use it. That roasted cabbage really hit the spot and as always, all the ingredients are available at Central Farm Market.