I like cabbage and eat it regularly both fermented and cooked. Ran into a new type at the farmer's market this year.
Meet the Filderkraut Cabbage - from local Uprising Seeds:
(Brassica oleracea) *Ark of Taste Heirloom* Hands down our favorite cabbage. We searched for seed after first seeing it at the Slow Food “Salone del Gusto” food fair held in Torino, Italy in 2006 where its unusual conical shape and sweet flavor made a lasting impression. And I’m not talking about “egghead” conical; Filder is a cartoonish gnome hat extreme reaching sizes of a foot wide and two feet tall. Named for the region it hails from, near Stuttgart in southern Germany, it is traditionally a sauerkraut cabbage and in our opinion the very best there is. Written records of the variety date back to the 1700’s but with the mechanization of the kraut industry in the mid 20th century, it fell out of favor due to its awkward shape for mechanical processing. Having maintained a regional following, it was boarded on Germany’s Slow Food Ark of Taste, and has since then found a wider audience. A long season, fall cropper it can reach huge sizes (10+ lbs), with a single cabbage filling a 3 gallon crock for us last year. And please, it shouldn’t just be thought of as a processing cabbage. It is hands down the best tasting, sweetest cultivar we’ve tried with none of the sulfur-y pungency that mars many of the modern varieties available, and is a good medium term storage head to boot. For us, one of our most exciting new vegetable introductions of the year, strongly recommended, especially for fermenting enthusiasts.
Really delicious - I have both fermented it and used it in regular cooking and will be growing it here next year. There is even a festival you can go to in Stuttgart, Germany:
Filderkraut Cabbage Festival
A vegetable is the star of the traditional Filderkraut Festival in Leinfelden-Echterdingen: the famous pointed cabbage from the Fildern district. It has been grown here for centuries, because it only flourishes on the fertile loess-loam of the Filder plateau. This flavoursome subvariety of white cabbage is listed as an important and endangered regional species in the Slow Food Foundation's "Ark of Taste".At the Filderkraut Festival on 18th and 19th October, this delicious vegetable can be enjoyed in the form of sauerkraut, stuffed cabbage leaves or Echterdingen cabbage tart, to name but a few.
Fun stuff...Interesting in that the odd shape does not lend itself to mechanical harvesting so it has been abandoned by industrial agriculture. Wonder how many other cultivars like this are out there.
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