But I want to warn you right away that this is the food of German peasants - people who worked willingly and a lot. That is why my great-grandmother traditionally stewed cabbage with pieces of pork fat the size of a pack of your cigarettes. When there was smoked fat, they would definitely take smoked fat, and if there was a ham hanging somewhere, they would take several pieces of the ham. You can take any vegetable oil, but I - here, albeit not very large, but still pieces of smoked fat. After the smoked fat, about two kilograms of lamb breast go into the cauldron. To prepare the specified amount of cabbage, you need to take at least a kilogram of onions. And so that the onions can fry well, it is better to remove the fried meat from the cauldron for a while. Stir in the cauldron often, forcing the onions to brown as evenly as possible. It will take about twenty minutes to fry the onions - calculate the time. Now you can put the cabbage in the cauldron. But you have to try it first: if it is recently fermented and not too sour yet, then you can cook it as is, but if it is already very sour and has a strong smell, then it is better to put it in a colander, let it drain, or even rinse it. Although, if the cabbage has its own correct sourness, then this is very good. It was in the hope of this sourness that I fried a whole kilogram of onions. Fried onions have a sweet note, cabbage - sour, this makes an excellent sour-sweet, well-balanced taste! Three tablespoons of vegetable oil, and in them - one and a half tablespoons of tomato paste. First, you must fry the tomato paste until a pleasant smell comes out. Never do as the cooks in the canteens - do not pour tomato paste into food as is, be sure to fry it! Add two or three tablespoons of sugar and half a glass of hot water to the tomato paste. Stir, let the sugar dissolve and let it simmer until a fairly uniform tomato syrup forms. Now you can add it to the cabbage. And the amount of sugar should be selected depending on how sour the paste is and what sweet and sour balance the cabbage has acquired by that time. When the cabbage is fried at least halfway, you can start tasting it - everything will be clear whether there is enough salt, whether it is too sour or, on the contrary, whether it is too sweet. By the way, did you remember to salt the meat that was fried from the very beginning? It's time to return it to the cauldron! I add a little salt to the cabbage, if necessary, a full tablespoon of paprika, a little hot red pepper and a full tablespoon of coriander. Closer to readiness, I add small raisins to the cabbage - osh-maiz, as they are called in Uzbekistan, or korinki, as some people still call it in Russia. Let everything cook together. From the very beginning of cooking, I had the fire on maximum, and when the cabbage began to decrease in volume, I reduced the heat. Since each time the stewed cabbage turned out to be small - only half of a cast-iron pot, designed for the whole family, the Germans liked to cook mashed potatoes with it.