“Oh, my name it is Nell, quite candid I tell,
And I lived in Clonmel, which I’ll never deny,
I had a large drake, and the truth for to speak,
My grandmother left me, and she going to die;
He was wholesome and sound; he weighed twenty pound,
And the universe ’round I would rove for his sake.
Bad luck to the robber, be he drunk or sober,
That murdered Nell Flaherty’s beautiful drake.
His neck it was green, he was rare to be seen,
He was fit for a Queen of the highest degree,
His body so white, it would give you delight,
He was fat, plump and heavy, and brisk as a bee;
My dear little fellow, his legs, they were yellow,
He would fly like a swallow, and swim like a hake.
Until some wicked savage, to grease his white cabbage,
Has murdered Nell Flaherty’s beautiful drake”
It isn’t often one gets the idea for a recipe from the words of a folk song but this one is the exception.
The last four lines of this song have been running around my head since Somerville and Ross put them into Flurry Knox’s mouth in The Irish R.M.
They give me hope that somewhere someone had the right idea about how to cook cabbage in Ireland.
I was brought up in a household where there was a notion that cabbage had to be boiled and long boiled, preferably in bacon water, until it resembled a brown green slick, before it was considered fit for eating.
In the Fifties and before in rural Ireland it was customary to “put down the cabbage” (that is start the boiling process) before one went to mass on a Sunday .
As a consequence the first time I ever tasted lightly fried cabbage cooked in butter or oil and NO water it was a delightful revelation to me.
It has a delicious light flavour of its own.
I have lost track of the amount of people, sworn brassica haters, who I have converted by tasting unboiled cabbage, cooked without reference to water.
I think it is the appalling boarding house smell of boiling cabbage which turns so many people against eating it.
I had always assumed that the cooking of cabbage by boiling was compulsory in our tradition until I examined the last two lines of this song;
“Until some wicked savage, to grease his white cabbage,
Has murdered Nell Flaherty’s beautiful drake”
There it is, the recognition that duck fat is a fitting and appropriate medium in which to cook cabbage.
Nowadays duck fat (and goose fat which will do at a pinch) is freely available in jars in supermarkets or it is a simple matter to reserve some and freeze it the next time you roast a duck.
And so with this in mind I will now share with you the recipe, the desire for which led the wicked savage to duckicide.
Nell Flaherty’s Beautiful Cabbage.
Half Head of White Cabbage
1 Tablespoon Duck Fat
4 Rashers of Streaky bacon (optional, in homage to our forefathers)
Black Pepper
Use a large saucepan or frying pan with a lid.
Shred the cabbage finely, discarding the central white core.
Chop the rashers and fry them in the duck fat until they turn crisp.
Add the shredded cabbage to the pan and stir it in the fat until it is glistening.
Turn down the heat and sweat the cabbage , with the lid on for no more than about five to ten minutes or until a piece picked from the pot still retains a little bite.
Eat on its own or with some stolen roasted duck.
