Nicholas Gavin is the Culinary Creative Director of ChefSteps, where he develops recipes and is responsible for making all the food look beautiful. Nick has worked at ChefSteps for over a decade; he and ChefSteps co-founder Grant Crilly worked together at Modernist Cuisine. Nick has worked in professional kitchens both in the United States and abroad, most notably at Mugaritz in San Sebastian, Spain.

Nicholas Gavin

A vibrant, tart and pungent red cabbage purée is the perfect accompaniment to our pastrami. We cook shredded purple cabbage with red wine, then blend it together with a dash of vinegar, mustard, spices and xanthan gum to keep the purée from weeping juice on the plate. The flavor of this purée is bold and the color vibrant. The trick to maintaining the eye-popping color of the puréed cabbage is simple: keep it in an acidic environment. In fact, purple cabbage juice is a perfect pH indicator. As it interacts with acidic elements its color shifts towards red. Add basic elements to make the juice increasingly alkaline and it changes in color from red, to purple, to blue, to green, to yellow.

Red Cabbage Purée