Cabbage a la Mode

Just what you need for the cooler weather. Stuffed cabbage is a fuss to make but it is nice hot or cold. You can prepare it well in advance and cook whenever and it responds very nicely to reheating. In short, the perfect dinner. Tasty, nutritious and heart-warming.

You can stuff a cabbage in many different ways and many different cabbages may be stuffed but I maintain that the bowl-mould is the best method and the honourable Savoy is the best cabbage to stuff mainly because its crinkly leaves are so robust and they absorb the flavour of the stuffing so well.

The stuffing mixture can be anything that you happen to fancy but nothing too heavy. I like to use a mixture of minced pork, vegetables and cold boiled rice. Italian sausages work well instead of the minced pork and you can add an egg to the mixture but I think that this makes it too heavy. You do not really need an egg to hold the cabbage together if you use the bowl-mould method. There are three stages to stuffing a cabbage; preparation of the leaves and the stuffing, moulding the cabbage and cooking the wee beastie.

Some say that long, slow cooking is best but I must disagree; all the ingredients are pre-cooked so all that is needed is 45 minutes steaming in a steamer to warm it all through, finish cooking the cabbage leaves and allow the flavours to develop and the aroma to waft around the house. The shorter cooking time makes for a fresher flavour. I cook everything in my wok.

Assemble the ingredients:
A nice cabbage with plenty of large outer leaves.
Rice, cooked or uncooked.
Minced pork.
An onion.
A leek or a couple of sticks of celery, maybe both.
Fennel seeds (to make friends with the pork)
Mixed dried herbs (or fresh)
Salt and pepper.
White wine or Sherry.

Preparation of the Cabbage Leaves and the Stuffing

Tear the leaves off the cabbage, you want around a dozen. Big, coarse green outer leaves and the smaller, more tender inner leaves. Boil loads of water in your wok and run some cold water in a bowl for we are to go a-blanching.

Boil your leaves in batches of 4 to 5 for around 4-5 minutes and then plunge them into the cold water. If your rice has not been cooked then bung it in the blanching water and it will be cooked by the time you have done all your leaves. Drain the rice. Shake the water off the leaves and drain. Cut a V shape into the foot of each leaf to remove the coarser section of the rib and set the leaves aside. Trim the cut ribs and then chop them finely.

Make the stuffing. Finely chop your onion and your leek or celery and get them frying in some oil, add the cut cabbage ribs and the minced pork. Let the ingredients brown; add some dried herbs, the fennel seeds and a splash of white wine or sherry. Salt and pepper and then add a bit of water, allow everything to cook through and the liquids to reduce then take it off the heat and add your cooked rice to the mixture.

The Moulding

Inspect your leaves and pick out a couple of prime green ones-the biggest is the first leaf in the bowl and the second biggest is your top leaf. Classify the other leaves into biggish ones and the not so biggish ones. Check that your bowl will fit into your steamer. There is no need to grease or oil the bowl.

The first leaf is a real beauty.

Lay the big leaf in the bowl and then line the bowl with the biggish ones leaving a flap of leaf sticking out (they will be folded over the stuffing) lay them with their ribs to the centre of the bowl.

Now place the stuffing mixture into the bowl, pressing down well. Any excess stuffing mixture may be donated to the dogs, who find it entirely acceptable (woof!)

Lay your second biggest leaf over the top of the stuffing, fold the previous leaves over this and then wrap the top of the mould with your not so biggish leaves, pushing them well down the sides.

Press the moulded cabbage into a dome shape with your hands.

Cook whenever, 45 minutes in the bamboo steamer over the wok is good for me. Salt and pepper and splash a bit of white wine or sherry over the cabbage before cooking. Enjoy. When the cooking is done either serve the cabbage by cutting wedges out of the bowl or turn out the whole mould onto a large plate whereupon it will look like a big, green steaming alien brain.

Some eat the dish on its own; I say that it is best with a few boiled or jacket potatoes and some nice, sweet carrots. Red wine goes very nicely.

I really could not recommend stuffed cabbage to those who do not like cabbage but it may be used to convert the unbelievers.