Stuffed Cabbage Soup #recipe @LucyBurdette

 Lucy Burdette: Who doesn’t love stuffed cabbage on a winter night? However, it’s time consuming enough to make that I don’t do it very often. When I do, I have used a version of Jane Brody’s stuffed cabbage which you can find here. 

Then a couple of weeks ago my friend Chris mentioned that her family makes a stuffed cabbage casserole in which the cabbage is not actually stuffed but chopped and mixed into the dish. And then I realized that stuffed cabbage soup must also exist and I decided to try a version of that. It really should be called "unstuffed" cabbage soup because that's the beauty of the recipe--much faster and equally delish!

Ingredients

One medium onion

1/2 head cabbage

Three carrots

1 pound ground beef

1 teaspoon smoked paprika or 1 1/2 teaspoons regular

1 32 ounce box beef broth—make this high quality and not terribly high sodium

114.5 ounce jar diced tomatoes

One 8 ounce cup tomato sauce

Half cup of water

Half a cup brown rice

1/2 tsp salt or to taste

1/4 cup honey

1/4 cup lemon juice (one medium lemon)

One Bay leaf

1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

Brown the beef and drain most of the grease off. Chop the onions and carrots and add these to the ground beef with the paprika to sauté until soft. I chopped the vegetables in my food processor and didn't fuss too much about size and uniformity.

Add the broth and stir to scrape up any browned bits full of flavor. When this is simmering, add the tomatoes, tomato sauce, rice, Worcestershire sauce, and water. Bring to a boil.

Add the chopped cabbage, reduce to a simmer, and cook for half an hour to 45 minutes until the cabbage is soft and the rice cooked through.

Stir in the lemon juice and honey. Add raisins if desired. Simmer a few more minutes and serve. Oh my goodness, this was so good that we ate it two nights in a row! 

Lucy Burdette writes the Key West food critic mysteries! 

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My Tweaked Version of Jane Brody’s Stuffed Cabbage, #lowsodium @LucyBurdette

LUCY BURDETTE: I've been making Jane Brody’s stuffed cabbage from her Good Food Cookbook for years. It takes some time to put it together, but it makes a huge pot that can be eaten for several meals. Or eat some now and freeze the rest for later. 

It's perfect for early March, a hearty dish not quite ready for spring. Of course I made my low-sodium tweaks, using no salt tomatoes and low salt sodium chicken broth, but it was really pretty darn good. 
The only tricky part is the cabbage leaves. My advice is to boil the whole head of cabbage until the outer leaves get soft. Then cut them off, return the head to the simmering water, repeat. To make the rolls behave, cut out the vein. You don't have to worry  about making the rolls perfect, as they'll all come together in the end.

 
Ingredients

one head green cabbage
2 onions, one half finally chopped, the other 1 and 1/2 thinly sliced
16 oz can chopped tomatoes
1 pound ground beef
3 Tbsp uncooked rice
3 Tbsp water
1 egg
2 cups low-sodium chicken broth
1/3 cup raisins
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
1/4 cup honey

Directions

Bring a large pot of water to boil and drop the cabbage in. Cut off the leaves as they soften, returning the head to the pot each time. 


Combine the ground beef, uncooked rice, egg, finely chopped onion, water and mix this together well. Take about two tablespoons of the meat mixture and roll it into a leaf. 
 





Continue until the stuffing is gone, and then chop any remaining cabbage. 


Meanwhile, sauté the onions until soft, and then add the tomatoes and broth and bring to a simmer.

Nestle the rolls in sauce along with any leftover cabbage and simmer 1 1/2 hours.

Add the lemon juice,honey, and raisins and simmer another half hour. Serve in soup bowls. Mmmm, I've made myself hungry!

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Golabki (or Golumkies or Golumpkis—oh, heck: Polish Cabbage Rolls)

by Sheila Connolly

You might have an inkling that I am not Polish, nor have I any Polish blood upstream.  I have been to exactly one Polish restaurant that I can recall:  the late Warsawa on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, a long time ago (it was across the street from Chez Panisse, if that tells you anything).

Anyway, fast forward a decade or three.  When I was in Albany for the mystery conference Bouchercon, a group of us went to a restaurant there called the Albany Pump Station (the “pump” part refers to the water pumped from the Hudson River to a local reservoir in the 19th century, not to the excellent brewpub that now occupies the building).

On the eclectic menu, buried among the ribs, meatloaf, scallops, shrimp and so on was “golabki.” I am ever game to try new things, so I ordered it—and I liked it.

The Pump Station version, with pierogies

So of course I had to try to make it myself.  Hmm—no Polish cookbooks.  Let’s try the Internet.  Hmm again:  plenty of recipes, but no two alike (although more than one person claims that it was their grandmother’s favorite Sunday recipe).  But I don’t give up easily, so here is my Irish-American interpretation of this much-loved Polish dish.

Golabki

This recipe should serve six, but you can easily double it.

The wrapping: 6 large whole cabbage leaves

 

If the leaves can be removed easily from your head of cabbage, peel off 6 (keep peeling until you get six that aren’t torn!) and blanch them briefly in boiling water to soften them.  Then set them aside while you make the filling.

The filling:

1 small onion, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
½ lb ground beef
¼ cup pork sausage or ground pork
½ cup cooked rice
1 egg
1 Tblsp whole milk
Salt and pepper to taste

Note:  various recipes suggest adding other herbs or spices, such as a bit of cloves or basil.  Or celery or carrots or mushrooms or grated apples—you get the drift. Throw in whatever you've got that tastes good.

In a sauté pan, add a tablespoon of oil (not olive oil) and sauté the onion and garlic over medium heat for a few minutes, until soft.  Add the meats and cook until they are no longer pink (this does not have to be cooked through because the rolls will cook when they’re assembled).  Drain off any grease.

In a large bowl, combine the meat mixture, the egg, the milk and the spices and mix.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Spread out a cabbage leaf and place 1-4 Tblsp of filling in the middle (how much you use will depend on how large your cabbage leaves are). Tuck the edges under, then roll the roll to firm it up so it won’t fall apart as it cooks.

Place each roll, seam side down, in a greased baking dish.  Continue until you’ve used up your filling (you should have at least six).

The sauce:

Here’s where the widest variation among recipes occurs.  You can make your own favorite tomato sauce, or use a canned one.  You can use the liquid from baking and add some tomato paste. Most recipes agree in adding some brown sugar.

I’ve opted for a sort of hybrid:

¼ cup red wine
1 cup beef broth
3 Tblsp brown sugar
Salt if needed (depends on your beef broth)

Mix the liquids, stir in the sugar, salt if needed, and pour around the cabbage rolls (this will not submerge them).  Cover with foil and bake in the preheated over for 40 minutes.

 

Remove from the oven and remove the foil.  Pour your tomato sauce (or even chopped tomatoes) over the rolls and bake, uncovered, for another 20 minutes.  If you wish, you can either mix in or garnish with sour cream at the end.

The restaurant served them with pierogies (like ravioli stuffed with mashed potatoes); other people recommend serving the rolls with mashed potatoes on the side.  You can decide!

And if you happen to be Polish, you can tell me how far wrong I am. 

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