Hello again culinary fans,
Please excuse my brief absence from this blog over the last couple of weeks but after all, it is summer. I love to grill and in the summer, we do A LOT of it. We go through the standard fare of hamburgers, brats, Italian sausages, steaks, chicken, pork chops, etc. I even have a few specialties that I could (and will in future posts) share with you but today, because we had some rain and I COULDN’T grill, I made an old standard comfort food dish that I really love, Stuffed Cabbage. I believe it was originally a Jewish dish, but my version has more of an Italian flare so let’s just say it’s J-Italian. Here’s how my version goes:
Ingredients:
Tomato Sauce –
1½ cups chopped onion
1 or 2 cloves of fresh garlic – minced
2 Tbsp WildTree Garlic Grapeseed oil
28 oz can crushed tomatoes
15 oz can fire roasted diced tomatoes
¼ cup red wine vinegar
½ cup light brown sugar
½ cup raisins
salt and pepper to taste
Sauté the onions in the Grapeseed oil until translucent, about 8 minutes. Add the garlic, crushed and diced tomatoes, the red wine vinegar, brown sugar, salt, pepper and raisins (yes, I said raisins). Let this simmer on the stove while you prepare the meat mixture.
Meat Mixture –
½ lb each of spicy (hot) Italian sausage and ground sirloin
2 eggs – slightly beaten
¼ cup Italian seasoned bread crumbs
½ cup diced onion
½ cup uncooked rice
1 tsp minced thyme
½ of the tomato sauce prepared earlier
¼ cup grated parmesan cheese
½ tsp salt
¼ tsp pepper
Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl until equally combined throughout and set aside.
Cabbage
Blanch the cabbage in a large pot of boiling water for a couple of minutes. Using a tong (because this puppy is HOT), gently peel off each leaf of cabbage and set on a cutting board. You’ll need a total of 8 – 10 cabbage leaves. Take a paring knife and cut a triangle about 2 inches long from each leaf removing the largest part of the cabbage rib.
PREPARATION:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease a baking dish. Put ½ of the remaining tomato sauce in the bottom of the baking dish.
Spoon about ½ cup (I use a heaping ½ cup) of the meat mixture onto the cabbage leaf just past the area where you cut out the rib. Fold each end in and roll the cabbage leaf around the meat mixture and place in the baking dish seam-side down. Repeat until your meat mixture is gone and your baking dish is full. Pour the remaining tomato sauce over the top of the cabbage rolls and cover the baking dish.
Bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes. Serve with a tossed salad and garlic bread (if you so choose). YUM, Enjoy.
Well, that’s it for now, thanks for listening.
lvtocook
Chuck Schuele
