Mystery Meal Recipes

On my blog, I posted this culinary mystery:

Which one-dish meal could feature a glossily green head of cabbage and red currants? Can you guess what I made, and if you have time to comment, what would you make with these two ingredients?
 

I used these ingredients to make holishkes, which is Yiddish for stuffed cabbage. This is a loosey-goosey endeavor so you don't need to follow the recipe exactly.

HOLISHKES  (serves 4)

Ingredients:

a big head of green cabbage

For initial saute mixture (this will be part of the filling):

about 2 cups of the following blend of chopped or diced vegetables: onion, garlic, carrot, a little ginger (the size of the tip of your thumb)

1 lb ground beef or turkey or chicken (I used turkey thighs because they are more flavorful than turkey breasts)

For the rest of the filling:

Additional vegetables: anywhere from 1 cup's worth to 2 cup's worth, depending on how many vegetables you want to use.
I used chopped scallions for greenery and because I had them on hand, but you could use green pepper, mushrooms, chopped cabbage from the innards of the cabbage head, broccoli. tomatoes.

Cooked grain: you could use brown or white rice, but instead of rice, consider quinoa, bulger wheat, barley, or kasha (buckwheat groats). The amount could be anywhere from 1/2 cup to a cup and a half, depending on how much starch you want to use, or how much leftover grain you have in your fridge or freezer.

Tomato sauce (you'll need about a cup for the filling, and about 2 or 3 cups more to pour over the stuffed cabbage rolls). Consider using a can of whole roma tomatoes for this--the texture of whole tomatoes is nice poured over the rolls.

Broth (you'll need about a cup for the filling and then about a cup to pour over the stuffed cabbage rolls).

1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

2 eggs (optional but this is traditional, and it's a good thickener, and gives you easily absorbable iron if you include the yolks).

1 cup of currants (fresh would be best, but if you only have dried currants, or raisins, plump them by soaking them in warm water for at least 10 minutes). You could also use diced apricots or dates, but if you do that, just use half a cup.

Optional flavoring: about a tablespoon of lemon; about a teaspoon each of cumin, garlic salt, ground cloves, and red or black pepper. If you have a salt tooth, add coarse salt.

Directions:

1) Cook the quinoa or whatever grain you choose to use. [Though stuffed cabbage provides such a forgiving cooking technique that I just added in the quinoa dry to my saucepan, after I'd sauteed the vegetables and meat. I poured more stock in the saucepan than I otherwise might have, and put a lid on it, and crossed my fingers that the quinoa would cook as the rest of the ingredients simmered. The simmering only cooked the quinoa halfway, so I got nervous, but once the whole dish had been in the oven for n hour, the quinoa had cooked fully to perfect tenderness.

2) Preheat oven to 350.

3) Boil the cabbage, then let it cool, so you can remove the outer leaves without ripping them overmuch. Don't drain the boiling water out--just remove the cabbage with tongs or some kind of utensil that will keep you from burning yourself. Because you'll want to keep the cooking liquid boiling, since as you remove the outer leaves, you will have to stick the cabbage back in the boiling water so the inner leaves can soften, and you may need to keep doing this as you unpeel leaves down to the core. I didn't worry about the leaves becoming totally soft because I knew they would bake in the oven. Don't discard the core, it is edible once you boil it enough and it is delicious chopped even if you don't need all of it for this recipe.

4) Brown the vegetables listed above under "saute mixture," and also brown the turkey. I did this in the same saucepan.

5) Add the rest of the filling ingredients including the cooked grain--but remember not to use all the broth and tomato sauce in this step, because you'll need more liquid to pour over the rolls before they go in the oven.

6) You can simmer the filling ingredients with saucepan lid on till you have a good-looking, thick filling to put in the cabbage leaves. But you don't have to do this summering stage (unless you put in dry quinoa like I had done, because I'd forgotten to cook the grain beforehand!) If you don't do the simmering stage, just plan on baking the dish longer than one hour, but check on it after an hour.

7) Grease a baking dish with olive oil. Put some of the cabbage leaves in this dish, and some on plates, and put the filling onto the open cabbage leaves. Roll the leaves closed and put them seam side down in the dish. [This is sort of a lazy way to wrap the rolls, because some people tie them or use toothpicks, but when I just rolled them seam-side down, they looked and tasted great once they came out of the oven. But they didn't stay closed into perfect rolls when I plated and ate them. Deigeh nisht.]

8) Pour the rest of the tomato sauce and broth over the rolls.

9) Cover with lid or foil, and bake an hour at 350, but I have a feeling you could bake it longer.

Notes:

The finished dish will be soupier the more liquid you pour on. If you don't want it soupy, and if you want the tomato sauce to have a little bit of crust even, take the lid or foil off the top of the dish about 45 minutes into the cooking time so the top will brown a bit. For thicker sauce, use less broth on top.

You can eat this as a one-dish meal, but it would be very nice with egg noodles or kasha varnishkes, and apple sauce, and a simple salad.

You can double this recipe, and freeze some, but if you do that, don't use scallions in the recipe because for some reason I've read they freeze really badly, but this might be some old huzzbands' tale.

Ess gezunterhait!