Last weeks cooking for men class made cabbage rolls. I have to tell you, they did a great job. Everyone went home with about 6 beautifully filled and rolled cabbage rolls and a tub of delicious tomato sauce to bake them in.
I chose to use Savoy cabbage. The crinkly leaves are not so tightly packed as a drumhead cabbage. This makes it easier to get the leaves off. Some men chose to use the very dark-green outer leaves. I told them that these could be fibrous, although they are packed with nutrients.
Here is the recipe we used:
CABBAGE ROLLS
For the cabbage rolls you will need:
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1 whole cabbage with the all the outer leaves still on it
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250g finely ground mince of your choice. We used beef, but lamb, pork, turkey or chicken are fine too.
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1 very finely chopped onion – about 1/2 a cup full
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3 very finely chopped cloves of garlic
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1 very finely chopped stalk of celery
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about 1/4 of a cup of finely chopped red capsicum (bell pepper)
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if you fancy it – a couple of finely chopped slices of ham or bacon
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1 cup of cooked rice. We used white, but brown is a more nutritious option.
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2 teaspoon of mild paprika
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salt and freshly ground pepper – maybe 1 tsp of salt and a 1/2 teaspoon of pepper. Salt is a matter of personal taste. Too much for one person is not nearly enough for the next. Try and imagine that the bowl/pan of whatever you are salting is your dinner. Mentally spread it out over a ginormous dinner plate 🙂 Then you can sprinkle on as much salt as you would if it really was your dinner.
Bring a pan of salted water to the boil.
Carefully remove the cabbage leaves from the cabbage. Remember; the very dark green ones can be fibrous. Some leaves will start to tear as you go further in. Don’t worry too much, you can still use them. Cut the leaves off at the core of the cabbage with a little sharp knife.
Put your leaves into the boiling water. Leave them to wilt. It will only take 1-2 minutes. You don’t want to cook them, just make them soft enough to roll up.
Pull the leaves out with tongs, and put them onto a clean towel. Cut out the tough central core of the leave with a little sharp knife. Not all of the core, just the first few cm’s of the toughest bit.
Mix all of the other ingredients up in a bowl. Mix it all very well.
Lay a cabbage leaf out in front of you. Core bit facing you. Put a sausage shaped blob of the filling at the end facing you. Roll it up once, and then bring in the sides and roll again.
Put your cabbage rolls in a large, greased baking dish. It has to be large enough to take the rolls and the sauce you are going to tip over them. This baking dish is NOT large enough to cook the rolls and the sauce in. The gentleman took the rolls home in this to transfer to a much bigger dish later 🙂
The sauce an be as simple as plain tomato or vegetable juice or a can of tomato soup diluted with water. Or, it can be something like this one we made:
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saute one roughly chopped onion and 3 finely chopped cloves of garlic in a tablespoon of olive oil.
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when they are very lightly coloured add a cup of sliced mushrooms and a chopped red capsicum
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gently fry until the mushroom softens a little
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add either; 4 very ripe tomatoes, chopped, or a can of tomatoes
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now add a can of tomato soup + one can-full of water or a jar of plain Italian pomodoro cooking sauce ( this is basically pureed tomatoes in a bottle. The kind of sauce Italians make at the end of every summer. Families come together and produce litres and litres of sauce, bottle it, usually in long-neck beer bottles, and distribute it among the family. It’s an inexpensive buy at the supermarket)
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in goes 1/4 cup of vinegar, 2 teaspoons of brown sugar,2 teaspoons of paprika, 2 teaspoons of oregano, a bay leaf and salt and pepper.
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simmer gently for about 20 minutes until the tomatoes break down a bit and you have a lovely sauce
Whatever sauce you choose to use, tip it over your cabbage rolls and bake in a 150C oven for about 1 hour.
The list of ingredients looks long I know, and it seems like a lot of stages to go through, but, my gentlemen, who are all novice cooks made this dish from beginning to end in about an hour. They took it home to do the final cooking.
It’s one of those old-fashioned recipes that’s good to know. It’s economical, it’s delicious, it’s packed with nutrients and it lends itself so well to variations. Try your own flavours in the filling and in the sauce.
I hope you enjoy making cabbage rolls as much as we did 🙂
sweetrosie 