Cabbage Patches for Pain Relief

As I am typing this, I am eating something special. The simple dish, "Flekice sa kupusom" (pasta patches with cabbage) is what my maternal grandmother liked to whip up for her brood of grandchildren who visited every second summer or thereabouts.

Why flekice? Half a head of cabbage had been graying and vilting in the fridge next to a small tub of aging and almost ailing fatty plain yogurt. Perhaps my subconsciou self, reluctant to throw these two away, pushed to the surface the memory of flekice.

Cabbage - a health champion, detested for its plainness, uncouthness and the unfortunate images it evokes, images of grim German fraus or warty babushkas in head scarves,chopping and hacking, mincing and kneading in their steamy kitchens.

My maternal grandmother was actaully a tiny emaciated woman who after a life time of bigger and smaller diasasters developed a dictionary worth of debilitating digestive problems. She rarely ate herself, -usually a plain boiled potato with a drop of oil on it,- but she loved to cook for us. Few basic ingredients and even fewer condiments were enough to make for true culinary miracles.

She'd serve her famous cabbage dish ( a favourite only among children, though) in chipped soup bowls. A couple of heaping serving spoons, a generous dollop of sour cream, freshly greated black pepper on top... The creameness, the sweatness, the warmth from the dish and grandma's body hovering over us... In my memory, she remains a frail black figure by the huge kitchen table smiling wistfully at her grandchildren's open busy mouths that looked like dripping abstract miniatures framed in white sour cream.

My work on the dish was automatic. I had never made it or watched it made, but I knew what to do. I also knew that it would taste right.
The only thing I am not sure about is the apple. Did my grandma really add an apple to cabbage? Or did I confuse grandma's recipe with the recipe of my roomate in Germany who loved to saute apples, onions and cabbage tossing them with boiled pasta and generously inviting me to have some. No matter. In the end, the taste of my flekice was quite the taste that stuck to my palate all these years.

Recipe: Baba Ljuba's* Flekice** sa*** kupusom**** i kiselom pavlakom*****
Grandma Ljuba's pasta patches with cabbage and sour cream

* Ljuba =Beloved
**Flekice = a type of pasta, small squares
*** sa = with
****kupus = cabbage
*****kisela pavlaka = sour cream

INGREDIENTS
1/2 small head of cabbage, grated
2 cups of dry flekice (o.k., I cheated here, used tricolori fusilli)
1 apple, peeled, cored, grated
1 Tbps any cooking oil
1/2 Tsp salt
fresh pepper to taste
sour cream - to your heart's content

PROCEDURE
Cook the pasta according to instructions on the package.
In the meantime:
Heat oil in a frying pan; add cabbage and salt; saute at medium heat for about 5-7 min; add grated apples; saute for 5 minutes. The cabbage and apples should be 'sweating'(letting out juices) not browning or blackening.

Add cabagge/apple mix to drained pasta. Serve in bowls with a dollop of sour cream and grind fresh pepper on top.
It's simple. It's delicious. It's true comfort food.

NOTE:For all health benefits of cabbage, visit:
http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Health-Benefits-of-Cabbage&id=78014