Although botanically classified as a biennial crop, cabbage is grown
mostly as an annual crop throughout the United States. It is the most
easily grown of the cole crops (which include broccoli, brussels sprouts,
and cauliflower) because it can be planted under a wide variety of conditions.
As a native of the temperate zone, however, it thrives best in cool, moist climates.
Fresh-market cabbage is sold mostly to brokers, supermarket warehouses, or
central markets in large cities. Some cabbage is also sold directly to retail
food chains, including fast food restaurants. Some large buyers seek the services
of local agents or brokers to facilitate trading activities. The top three
cabbage markets are Los Angeles, Chicago, and Boston.
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Yuk, cauliflower! That was certainly my feeling as a child. My mother could take a beautiful, white head of this lovely vegetable and with a modicum of effort, turn it into a fowl-smelling, gray lump of mushy fiber. I’d push the squishy florets around my plate with a fork like a slow-moving earthmover. Since I couldn’t leave the table until either my plate was clean or I outlasted my mother’s patience, I spent many evenings building cauliflower roads. Long before I became a rebellious teenager, my mother gave up, and when she and my father ate cauliflower, I found an alternative vegetable on my plate.
With adulthood, my attitude didn’t improve. I dreaded the all too frequent airplane meal accompanied by a mixture of overcooked cauliflower and broccoli. Sometimes the airlines provided variety by adding a few carrots to the dish, but the cauliflower was still inedible. At banquets and other semi-public dining occasions, I seemed to encounter cauliflower much too often. And at private homes, the hors d’oeuvre always seemed to be raw cauliflower served with some strange, sticky dip. Yuk!
But after five decades of avoiding cauliflower, something happened recently. I don’t remember being struck by lightening or seeing an image of the Madonna on my refrigerator door, but for some reason I decided to purchase and prepare some cauliflower. The preparation process wasn’t unfamiliar. I had prepped many heads of this white stuff in various French-kitchen sojourns (although I avoided eating any). The results of my first tentative steps into twenty-first century cauliflower imbibing led me to venture further into this world. Before I knew it, I was eating cauliflower three or four times a week. The taste was exciting, the texture exquisite, and the aroma enchanting!
Although I have been enjoying cauliflower for only a short time, the French have been partaking in it for more than 400 years.Apparently originating in Cyprus,cauliflower may have been known to the Romans, though proof of this contention is, to my knowledge, not available. The Romans were familiar with other cabbages (and cauliflower is related to other cabbages). Vehling speculates that the recipe in Apicius for cymas et cauliculos — translated by Vehling as young cabbage, sprouts — includes cauliflower and broccoli.Olivier de Serres discusses cauliflower’s early French cultivation in Le Théâtre d’agricvltvre et mesnage de champs published in 1600,and in 1651, La Verenne wrote what may have been the first instructions for how to cook cauliflower
Fresh vegetables Cabbage&Cauliflower sech
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