Melissa Clark's Brilliant Dinner for One Is a Brothy Bowl of Cabbage
I'm on a perennial search for nourishing, satisfying meals for one—easy dinners that are a little less boring than a pile of roasted vegetables, but just as healthy and easy to throw together.
It was on my search that I stumbled across this Instagram post from cookbook author and New York Times columnist Melissa Clark. Clark had posted an extremely simple, but exceptionally delicious-looking, bowl, and written a caption that was basically a personal note from her to me.
"Cozy dinner for one," it read. "Savoy cabbage with garlic, chile crack, pecorino and homemade chicken broth." The bowl of warm, brothy cabbage was positioned next to a glass of white wine. That's exactly how I want to eat dinner alone every night, I thought.
Soon enough, I was. My version of Clark's brothy cabbage starts with pouring roughly two cups of broth into a medium pot and adding some sliced garlic to the pot. I bring that to a boil, then bring it down to a simmer. Meanwhile, I heat a tablespoon or two of olive oil in a skillet (preferably cast iron) over medium-high until it shimmers. Then I press two handfuls of sliced cabbage into an even layer in the skillet and don't touch it for about two minutes—I want it to have a chance to sear. I season the cabbage with a pinch of salt, then turn the cabbage with tongs and continue to cook, undisturbed, until lightly charred in places and still crisp in others, about 2 minutes more. Finally, I transfer the cabbage to the broth and serve immediately, topped with Parmesan and chile oil.
That works for me. Still, to really master this dinner-for-one, I felt I had to talk to Clark herself.
"It's funny," she told me over the phone. "I actually came up with that dish when I was living alone. I did a semester abroad in Paris in college, and that's when I started making it, because I was cooking really cheap food and I was living in the little chambre de bonne. I liked things that I could do in one pot. Figuring out how to use cabbage was sort of one of my realizations. Like, Oh, this is really cheap and delicious. When I first went to Paris I was like, "Oh, my gosh savoy cabbage. It's so much better. It was a new discovery for me then, but now we can get savoy cabbage pretty easily here."
Clark's other obsession—the Instant Pot—is another thing that's made this dish easier to execute since her Paris days.
"Since my Instant Pot, I'm like the stock person. It's crazy. I have so much stock. It's so great."
(Note: I have made this dish with store-bought broth, and while it's not the next-level greatness that you get from homemade, the added cheese and chile fortify the broth and the dish is still delicious. That said, this dish is so simple, the quality of the individual ingredients are especially important. So do use homemade chicken broth if you can.)
Other tips from Clark: Thinly slice the garlic instead of chopping or mincing it—"it's sweeter that way," Clark says—and, of course, top the whole thing off with chile. "I have this special stuff that's really hard to get because you have to go to London. It's from Calabria, but you have to go to Borough Market. There is no other chile crack like it. However, I've also done the same thing with just really good Calabrian crushed red chili flakes. If you go to a specialty store and get fancy ones, they actually taste not just hot, but they have a fruitiness and an acidity to them as well. If you can get those, a big pinch makes all the difference. Of course, if you just have chili flakes from the supermarket they're still going to be good, because they're going to add a spice, which is nice with the cabbage. But definitely get some sort of chili product."
Finally, Clark has this tip for making the meal more substantial. "If you wanted to make it a fuller meal, I like to have crostini with it, but you could throw a handful of orzo or whatever right in."
Or not. The point of this dish is that you make it exactly how you want it. Because, again, this is solo food. Even after all the years Clark has spent thinking about—and eating—this dish, she still almost always eats on her own. "I can't share it with my husband, because cabbage—let's just say it gives him internal distress," she says. "It's something that I'm happy to eat by myself. It's good alone food."
