balm, me.

As the title of the last post said, "OK!" Which means, among other things, OK, I'm back. I haven't been feeling, eh, "100%" for the past few days, and haven't been eating much other than imaginary sandwiches (also see previous post). That ham, avocado, tomato sandwich was real, though, but it didn't fix whatever badness lurked inside me.

So today I went outside thinking "what's the healthiest possible food I could eat?" This is a pretty tough question to answer definitively, but lots of things came to mind: vegetables of course, dark leafy greens and bright orange things and stinky cruciferous things. But I was also craving protein, so I picked up the "sale tilapia" at the Dirk (frozen, don't worry...that's the only kind of "sale fish" I buy) and a big head of cabbage, thinking I'd make some kind of zuppa di pesce thing.

But my mind is still in the tropics. So we turn to the great tradition of tropical cabbage dishes. Don't laugh, there probably is one, I just can't think of anything except that wickedly spicy cabbage from Jamaican Foods in Athens, GA. I'll have time to use the InterGoogle eventually, and I'll return triumphant, you'll see.

I basically took a recipe for Surinamese cabbage (half of a cabbage) with masala (1 tbsp or so of Nandan brand Hindustani masala) and added 1 jar of "No-E" chicken broth (as in no additives), maybe a cup of sliced leeks, and 500 gr fish. I felt like I was channeling some Portugese influence via the ol' Mystic Pipeline (which I haven't used in some time, so bear with me) until I added some ginger.

Portugese-Surinamese? Or is it just Chinese with some Indian spices? I'll sort out the lineage later...right now it smells very good and will hopefully set my insides right.

UPDATE: This was totally delicious, especially after I added some adjoema and a sprinkling of seroendeng. Why do these flavors go together? I don't get it. I'll totally make this again, but it's so ugly I can't imagine ever serving it to anyone.

+++