Just Bento

So do I. My favourite is equal quantities of red onion and red cabbage boiled in butter, with lots and lots of black pepper. But it's not very slimming, and not nice cold either. Too much butter that all goes hard.

Well, it was the ginger wine that gave the flavour we couldn't identify when we asked what was in it. As a substitute, maybe a little grated ginger and some sherry?

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginger_wine

It's alcoholic and syrupy. But the alcohol all evaporates when you cook it, so you pregnant people don't need to worry! It's English - go down to your local off license and ask for some if you're in England. Sort of thing Ena Sharples would have drunk on a cold winter's day in the snug. If any of you are old enough to remember her.

Stone's Green Ginger Wine is what we have here too - I think it may be that there's not really enough demand for the stuff for anyone else to bother making it. It's not terribly expensive though, so I bought some and added it to my alcohol stash - the cabbage is nice enough that I may well get through the bottle in the next couple of years.

Hi sue

I'm in the UK too and I'm also not much of a fan of the cup system.

With Bronwyn's recipe there's no need to be very precise, but to get a handle on how big a 'cup' is measure out 225ml (or 225g) - you can google that to ounces if you want, the UK was supposed to have gone metric in 1971.
Once you have 225ml or grams, find a cup or mug that gives your measured water the best fit and use that to work out the amount of ingredients you need.

The answer to your question about how much is half a cup is roughly 110grams of water. But I would strongly advise you not to use this to measure out ingredients as half a cup of red cabbage, or vinegar, or sugar don't eight the same, it will only be accurate for the vinegar. The cup system measures volume NOT mass or weight. My sincere apologies if you knew this, I honestly have no desire to patronise you, all I wish is to make things clear.

I usually use weights myself, but this recipe was given to me in volumes. As Loretta says, it's not important to be precise so just use any old cup you have in the kitchen. A decent sized teacup or a small coffee mug will be about right - I think I use one of those smoked glass Arcoroc cups. Considering the possible variation inherent in "1/2 a red cabbage" and "a red onion", you could probably use a pint mug if it came to that.