On a roll

 

I was having lunch with a friend on my last trip east, and spotted a menu item I hadn’t seen in a long time. Stuffed cabbage.

It was a nasty, rainy day — kind of like it is today, as I write this. So I had to order it.

It’s one of those dishes I think of as Grandmother food. It takes you right back to peasant roots in warm kitchens in the old country. Sitting at the worn wooden table while Nana imparted her wisdom, and taught you how to form the rolls just so, and lined them up in the old, chipped ceramic baking dish that you still cherish …

Who am I kidding? This is clearly somebody else’s childhood I’m channeling. Or possibly I’m remembering it from one of those lovely ethnic memoir cookbooks that I’ll never be able to write.

I grew up in a typical American post-WWII suburban house, where vegetables came frozen in square boxes and soup came in cans. My mother was a very good cook, but her recipes were from cookbooks and magazines, not learned at her grandmother’s knee. She was the youngest of five, with a brother in college while she was in diapers. By the time she came along, her mother was busy running the family store, and very tired of children and meal preparation. Grandma died at a ripe old age when I was 10, without ever giving me a single cooking lesson.

My other grandmother — who I gather was a “roast beef on Sundays prepared by the help” kind of a cook — died when I was three. Our only remaining close relative from that generation was my father’s aunt, who couldn’t afford “help,” so came to our house for the roast beef. I’m sure I must have eaten at her home, but if so, the food was unmemorable.

Which is not to say we were entirely bereft. Our next-door neighbor was Russian, and her mother, who had also emigrated, often came and stayed with her daughter’s family for weeks at a time. She became unofficial grandmother to my sisters and me, along with her own grandchildren. Everybody called her Bobbie (a Russian version of “grannie”). When not at her daughter’s, she lived in New York. When I was in college there, she used to invite me for dinner in her small, cramped very Russian apartment.

Unfortunately, she was a terrible cook.

One of my favorite dishes (favorite being a relative term) was her stuffed cabbage, which was basically hamburger wrapped in cabbage leaves, cooked in canned tomato sauce, with a lot of dill thrown into the sauce. It was fairly edible, once you piled sour cream on top of it.

In fact, I even made it a couple times myself, in my poverty-stricken graduate school years, but eased it out of my repertoire once I developed taste buds.

So my expectations weren’t high when I spotted stuffed cabbage on the menu. It just sounded right for the weather. Plus they were pairing it with mashed potatoes, the ultimate winter comfort food. So I took a chance.

And what a revelation it was! This version clearly came from someone with a lot deeper ethnic roots than mine — and a lot better kitchen skills than Bobbie’s. The sauce was a little sweet, a little sour — and rich, hearty and flavorful. Miles removed from my childhood memories, and infinitely better.

I came home determined to make it myself. Googling brought up zillions of variations, plus endless blog chats arguing about country of origin, ingredients and names. I was overwhelmed, and not sure where to start. So I bought a cabbage, some hamburger and a can of tomato sauce, figuring I’d try to spruce up Bobbie’s recipe.

Fortunately, before I started cooking, I was chatting with my friend Daryl, and mentioned my current quest. Lucky girl, she actually had a grandmother who cooked! And stuffed cabbage was one of her specialties. Her version was included in the cookbook put together by the ladies of her synagogue that she had bequeathed to her granddaughter.

Without much prodding, Daryl dug it up and copied out the recipe for me.

It was really good. With a little tweaking (when did I ever not tweak a recipe?) it was really great. Better even than the restaurant’s version, a fantastic winter comfort food that took me back to my childhood as well as to hers.

Even my mother would have liked this recipe. One of the secret ingredients is canned tomato soup.

 

* * * * *

 

The other secret ingredient in this recipe is stranger than the soup — it’s gingersnaps! They add body as well as flavor to the sauce, so don’t leave them out. You could skip the soup in favor of more tomato sauce or another tomato product, though for nostalgia’s sake, I don’t. The meat in the original recipe was very bland and boring, so I added some flavor to it with onion and dried herbs — dill in memory of Bobbie; mint and basil to balance it and add some sweetness.

If this dish isn’t in your repertoire, start a tradition — make this with your kids or grandkids, and let them help roll up the leaves.

 

Sweet and Sour Stuffed Cabbage

 

Sauce

4 onions, sliced

4 beef soup bones

1 cup raisins

8 gingersnaps

1 can (15 oz.) tomato sauce

1 can Campbell’s tomato soup (the concentrated kind)

6 cups water

Juice of two lemons (or more, to taste)

1/4 cup sugar (or more, to taste)

Salt, to taste

 

Cabbage rolls

1 large head of cabbage

2 lbs. lean ground beef

1 cup cooked rice

2 eggs

1 onion, grated

1 Tbsp. dried dill

1 Tbsp. dried mint

1 tsp. dried basil

Salt (1-2 tsps. at least) and pepper, to taste

Plain (not dyed) wooden toothpicks

 

Combine all the sauce ingredients in a large, ovenproof pot with a lid. (A Le Creuset-type large enameled pot is ideal.) Bring to a simmer and cook while preparing the cabbage rolls.

With your hands, mix together all the remaining ingredients except the cabbage.

With a sharp knife, carefully cut around the core of the cabbage, to help loose the leaves. Bring a large, deep pot of water to a boil. (A stockpot is ideal for this.) Add salt, and drop the head of cabbage into the water. With tongs, pull off the leaves as they loosen, laying them on a pan or counter to cool. They should be soft, but still somewhat firm.

If you like, you can cut off the remaining stem on each leaf, to ease rolling (but I don’t find it necessary to do this). Starting with the largest leaf, form the meat mixture into lozenges about 1 1/2 inches thick, matching the size of the lozenge to the leaf. Place the meat on the leaf, fold the stem end over it, and roll up, folding in the sides as you roll. Use a toothpick to hold the roll together. Repeat, until all the meat and leaves are gone. If you have extra meat, form it into meatballs.

Taste the sauce and correct the sweet-sour balance, to taste, by adding more lemon juice or sugar, and more salt if needed. Carefully place the rolls (and meatballs, if any) into the sauce, pushing them down to make sure they are all covered. Simmer, covered, on the stove for two hours. Then, heat the oven to 300 F and cook uncovered in the oven for another 1 1/2 to 2 hours.

Serve, remembering to remove the toothpicks from each cabbage roll. (Otherwise, someone may have a nasty surprise.)

Serves 6 – 8