Buttered Savoy Cabbage with Caraway

January. The garden is bare and the market stalls are full of the things that like the cold: roots, brassicas, leeks stacked in muddy bundles. A Savoy cabbage caught my eye on Saturday, the big crinkled sort with leaves like dark green lace, still heavy with rain. I brought it home without a plan.

This is what it became. Shredded, tossed into foaming butter with caraway seeds that had been toasted in the dry pan until the kitchen smelled like a good bakery. The whole thing took less than ten minutes. The cabbage went from raw and squeaky to soft, glossy, butter-coated ribbons that tasted of something far better than the sum of their parts. That's what caraway does. It takes cabbage, a vegetable most people think they don't like, and gives it a warmth, a depth, a quiet spice that makes you reach for more.

I ate it alongside a pork chop, but it didn't need the pork chop. It would have been enough on its own with some bread, or piled onto a baked potato, or spooned next to a piece of fish. We're only making dinner. But a side dish this good has a way of becoming the point.

I wrote it down in the notebook. Cabbage. Butter. Caraway. Tuesday. Cold outside.