Cazzola

I'm a bit late in blogging this as actually, this was last Sunday's supper, inspired by Giorgio Locatelli in the Guardian, who gave the most meagre of instructions on how to make this dish but also made it sound utterly delicious and exactly what I wanted for a cold Sunday. I went off to the shops, buying a Savoy cabbage (one of my favorite vegetables - its dark, nutty taste unbeatable at this time of year) from the cockney Pete on Bethnal Green Road market (strictly an English root veg and greens man, sipping whisky from a hip flask, of indeterminate age between forty and seventy, always gives the girls a wink) and then went to Spitalfields to the organic meat stall. They didn't have the odd scrag ends of pig that Locatelli advises (ear, trotter, snout), these not appealing to the well-heeled of Spitalfields, but they did have ribs and I supplemented with belly pork, being probably my most favorite bit of a pig and one that I thought would go well with the slow-cooking recipe he described.

I basically improvised, step by step during a day where the long cooking process chimed exactly with my house-bound pottering. Simmered the meat for an hour as suggested, skimming off the impurities, then browned it with some rough-chopped onions in my lovely Le Creuset, before adding a tin of plum tomatoes, half a bottle of white wine to (almost) cover, and putting the lid on for another hour. Locatelli suggests celery and carrot as well, but having neglected to buy these, I did without and the dish turned out delicious anyway. Then, chopped up the cabbage, steamed it and added to the casserole, and put back onto simmer slowly in the oven for another hour and a half, until the meat was deliciously wobbly and the winey juices had somehow gotten absorbed by the cabbage.

It was absolutely delicious and thoroughly recommended. Poor man's meal indeed, I got three large meal-fuls out of less than a fiver's worth of organic pork and a 50p cabbage. If I wasn't such a greedy-pig it would have gone further, too. Heart-warming, improving with a day's age, given depth by the tomatoes and the meat falling off the bone in a sensual way. Locatelli advises polenta to go with - I didn't have any in stock so I did delicious toasted St John bread a couple of times, and simple boiled potatoes once.

Apparently this typically Milanese dish originated from a Spanish princess who was married into the Lombard royal stock and brought this with her from Spain. Certainly it does have reminiscent touches of Spanish food, and the name is definitely related to 'cazuela', the Spanish for an earthenware casserole dish. Might it even have links to the Portuguese cabbage soups that they make with wonderful dark kale, and often bits of pork to flavour (as they do in the American South with cabbage greens)? Whatever, it certainly hit the spot on a wintry London day, filling my flat with sweet smells, and giving me something to look forward to at the end of the day, heading home from work knowing that I had this to heat up and savour...