Polish cuisine is unfortunatelly pretty heavy on the meat side. Yet, if you are willing to put some thought and efford into it, most of the dishes can be turned vegetarian or even vegan. I've had a head of cabbage sitting in my fridge for longer than I care to admit, and today, during a conversation with my Mum (hi, Mum!) I got a great idea, what to make with the poor, forlorn cabbage: cabbage rolls! Traditionally, Polish cabbage rolls (originally called: gołąbki - little pidgeons - don't ask my why!), are made with rice and minced meat. Naturally I went for no minced meat, or any other meat for that matter, a nice mix of rice hubs bought me on Monday (long grain pointed rice from Italy, red camargue rice from France and wild rice from Canada; an all organic mix) and some veggies: champignons, onion and sweet pepper. But step by step:
Ingredients
200 g of rice mix
4 tablespoons of olive oil
1/2 onion
ca. 15 champignons
1 red bell pepper
salt and pepper; powdered hot pepper
2 eggs
a small head of cabbage
salt
Boil the rice until soft acc. to your choice's packaging instructions. Mine took 40 minutes, so I had a lot of time to prepare the rest of the ingredients.
In this meantime you can chop the onion, champignons and bell pepper. Heat up the oil in a frying pan, add onion, let saute for some time, then add champignons and bell pepper. If your rice is ready, drain any water left over and mix with the sauted veggies. Season with salt, pepper and powdered hot pepper. Don't be stingy - remember that rice taste dull by itself. Crack in two eggs and stir well to connect all the ingredients. Warm up a bit if necessary for the the eggs to set a bit.
Now the fun part comes. Throw out any ugly leaves of the cabbage, cut the hard part on the bottom generously off and try to delicately get off as many leaves as you need (or manage) ideally without breaking them. Some people, including my Mum, suggest boiling the whole cabbage, but I prefer to do it that way, and keep the more delicate inside for a salad. When you have your leaves, boil a large pot of water, salt well and boil the leaves for a couple of minutes - you'll notice they get a bit translucent - it mean they're ready. Let them cool. Now cut off the hard parts. Not out - off. Like this:
When your leaves are ready, take each of them, place some stuffing at the middle of the leaf and roll it together. I try to make them hold, but I use an old trick as well - I wrap each roll in some thread. They look like that:
Now you need to boil them, to set the stuffing. Normally there's meat inside, so this step is very important, but for the non-meat version, I just boiled them for ca. 5 minutes, to further soften the cabbage. And it's basically done. What you can still make and what we make in my family, is a tomato sauce. I did not have fresh tomatoes, so I used some concentrate, many different herbs and spices (tarragon, cumin, lovage) and some left-over pesto (I know). I carefully removed the thread off the boiled cabbage rolls, placed them in a slightly oiled casserole, poured the sauce over them and put them into the oven (175C) for ca. 30 minutes. Ready! And yummy!
Hope you'll try them one day! Do you change your country's traditional recipes? Do tell!
Have a nice evening!
