Stompin' for a Savoy

Elusive crinkly cabbage, you float my boat. Shall we try you in a theoretical minestrone? Plus chocolate crisis update.

Happy Friday, reinvigorated cook!

As each week sails merrily along, the question of what to write about in the upcoming newsletter marinates in the back of my mind, and I always feel I have so much to tell you. And then poof! All those things disappear and suddenly I want to tell you something else entirely.

This morning, that was caused by reading a column by Yotam Ottolenghi in the New York Times, “When There’s Pasta in the Soup, Everybody’s Happy.” So true! What’s better than pasta? What’s better than soup? When they meet in one bowl, that’s happiness cubed.

What really got me excited, though, was clicking on the recipe and finding that Ottolenghi puts Savoy cabbage in his minestrone. Savoy cabbage!!! Just the thought of it puts me in a fine mood, and so here I am trotting out the photo above I took last year in France, shown with its BFF and mine, turnips.

Here’s the catch: In my neck of the woods, it’s harder and harder to find Savoy cabbage. I used to find the bodacious brassica f…