This is an oven recipe. I thought it best to start by mentioning that, since most of my recipes aren't and you might not be expecting it. I've never had prolonged access to a good oven and the one I'm using these days is particularly bad. The temperature is difficult to regulate and the thermostat is broken so I can never tell exactly how hot it is. Consequently, my recipes which require an oven are few and none of them require an exact cooking temperature.
In the other recipes involving white sauces, I include milk and occasionally cheese among the ingredients, but mention that vegans could use soya milk and perhaps some nuts or other ingredients to substitute for the cheese. In this recipe I thought I would start from the vegan point of view. If you want, you can use milk and/or cheese. If you like that sort of thing, the recipe will be equally successful.
By the way, just because I use a crap oven doesn't mean my oven recipes produce dishes which are in any way substandard. Try this one and you'll see. The final result is absolutely brilliant.
Ingredients
About half of a cabbage
1 onion
4 potatoes
Half a litre of soya milk
2 rounded dessertspoons of flour
A handful of pine nuts
A large pinch of caraway seeds
Black pepper
Olive oil
Salt
Start by peeling the potatoes. You have to grate them for this recipe, but as they go brown quickly, it's best to leave this until the last minute. Leave the peeled potatoes in a pot of cold water until you need them. Once you've done that, turn on your oven at maximum to pre-heat it. The next two stages are making a sauce and partly cooking the cabbage. If you're good at doing two things at once, do it, otherwise do the sauce first and leave it aside while you fry the onion and cabbage. The last thing you need is burnt white sauce.
Make the sauce using the flour, soya milk, 3 dessertspoons of olive oil and a little salt. If you're not sure how to do this, follow the instructions on my basic white sauce page. Fry the chopped onion with the caraway seeds in a little olive oil, using a pan that's big enough to take the cabbage too. When the onion is beginning to brown, add the cabbage, roughly chopped, and stir it around to coat the pieces with oil. Cover the pan and let the cabbage steam for five minutes or so - just enough to let it begin to soften. While that's happening, chop the pine nuts (hold the knife with two hands, one on the handle and one on the point) and throw them into the pan with the cabbage and give it a stir.
Spread the cabbage mixture on the bottom of a baking tin of
some sort. Don't pack it down. Pour the sauce evenly over the cabbage then grate
the potato and sprinkle it over the sauce. Again, don't pack it down. Leave
it loose and uneven so that some of the pieces go crisp and brown. Sprinkle
some salt and black pepper on top and stick the tin in the oven near the top.
Cook it for half an hour, turning the heat down a little after fifteen minutes.