Haluski Noodles & Cabbage – so Simple but so Delicious

I bought some fancy pasta the other day; pappardelle – it was pretty and called out to me and, in any case, I had a cunning plan – Haluski!

Haluski (pronounced ha-loosh-key) is a Polish and Slovakian “peasant” dish of egg noodles tossed with onions and cabbage that have been cooked in butter.  I had it for dinner last night and it was a heck of a lot tastier that I’d expected. 

Haluski

Serves 2

50g butter
1 thinly sliced medium onion
2 good handfuls of thinly sliced cabbage
225g egg noodles – they don’t have to be pappardelle, cooked and drained

~   Melt the butter, add the onion and cook like this  till tender and starting to brown.
~ Add the cabbage and cook for another 5 or 6 minutes, it’s nice if this too is starting to caramelise.
~   Stir in the noodles and heat through.
~ Taste and, if not buttery enough, add a little more!

That’s pretty well it and it is surprisingly good just like that, but you can, of course, doctor it a bit, it’s your Haluski!

Haluski Additions …

~   Add a little garlic when the onions are cooked.
~   Season to taste! Add black pepper, cayenne, whatever you fancy.
~   Some versions have caraway seed added but not mine, I can’t stand them.
~   Some sort of meaty addition works well – bacon, ham, cooked sausage, that sort of thing.
~   Maybe grate in a little Parmesan or similar.
~   Use a different pasta – posh pappardelle is not essential.

I couldn’t eat it all, as is so often the way with me, and this happily lead on to the next day’s lunch. I decided to toss the leftover Haluski in a ….

Simple Tomato Cream Sauce

This is not quite a recipe, just how to do it!

Peel and dice a couple of large tomatoes and cook in a spoonful of olive oil till they are broken down and squashy. Stir in a good splash of double cream. Taste and act accordingly – a little sugar might be a good idea as well as salt and whatever else you fancy, see here for useful information on seasoning to taste.

As you may know I do like a bit of crunch with my meals, so I fried a few pieces of the leftover pappardelle in olive oil to crisp and heated the rest of it up in the above sauce.  The fried pasta came out exactly as I had hoped and imagined, crisp but with a bit of chew, and went so well with the sauce I might do it again but fry the lot!