2 Cabbage,
3 onions, .
.83 kg hamburger,
6 cups cooked rice, (Cooking the rice tonight [in advance] is not a bad idea.)
ground black pepper,
2 28 oz cans of whole tomato
2 10 oz cans tomatoes soup.
-Use casserole dishes. No metal. I start with the Emile Henry first and the extra goes in the lesser dish.
-Combine stove pot, water, cabbage and heat. Bring water to boil and then turn down to a really hot, simmer/ boil. You want the cabbage to be swimming!
Note: specifically adding "stove" to the recipe is Canadian humor!!! I know, it's sad but..
-Before putting cabbage in pot, cut off the core. This is the only part of the cabbage you won't use.
-You don't want to over or under cook the leaves. Cook them too long and they turn to mush. Too long and the are not pliable enough to roll and the cabbage rolls are not tender.
-As the outer leaves become pliable you will take a fork and a knife. This maybe difficult because your right brain is telling your left hand to restrain the cabbage and your left brain will be telling your right hand to cut the vein from the core. And yes you can keep the leaves until tomorrow. Just put them in the refrigerator.
-You don't need to hover over the cabbage. Just check it out ever 5 or so minutes until you become one.
-When you think there might be 2 or 3 layers soft enough, I take the cabbage out and remove the leaves that are limp (insert locker room joke here, Melania). Remember hot leaves will still cook a bit even out of the water if several layers come off at once.
-When the leaves come off the cabbage, I do a preliminary sort, high quality leaves cooked just right go on one plate, leaves that tear or are soggy go on the other plate. If a pull a leave off to soon, then I put it back into the water until it passes my pliable standard. If you are a scientist, this would mean that if you held a leaf in the middle with a knife the leaf would droop like ExxonMobil stock price.
- I use the best leaves for rolling in the Emile Harris pan and then I have a pan of seconds.
-As you remove the leaves I add water to keep the pot full. There are some thermodynamics at play here but it is sufficient for you just to know it works better.
-As you move to the center of the cabbage, the leaves are thicker, the cabbage is of greater density, so it all takes a bit longer to cook.
-Between cabbage I change the water. It helps to reduce the cooked cabbage smell.
-It's a challenging course to teach. Next step is to organize your cabbage leaves. No burly veins, #1 quality, #2quality leaves and scrap, but don't through out the scrap.
-Dice onions. Mix with hamburger and rice.
-Pepper in the meat mixture. Garlic salt on top of everything.
Note:
Rice is cooked. Hamburger and onion raw. Ratio is 1.1:.98:.56:.0004 or there abouts.mill a bunch of pepper into the hamburger mixture
-Organize your leaves, raw hamburger and pan.
-With your bare hand left hand grab. #1 leaf and have it in your palm. With your right hand grab a dollop of the hamburger mixture, squeeze it a bit to create shape, put it in the center of the leaf and roll it into a joint. A nice roll is maybe around 1.5 inches thick maybe 3 inches or so long. Put it in the pan. The rolls are not self reliant yet, so each roll, helps keep its neighbors shape. I make a couple of rows, squeeze some in the corners, pat them down a bit to fill the voids.
-Sauce is raw. Can of tomatoes and soup blended per pan but I adjust per eyeball to make it all proportional. Pour it over the rolls. Roughly blend them. And I use it all. Much of it will evaporate and be absorbed into the roll.
-[Now] Take the left over leaves and cover the cabbage rolls.They do double duty, retaking moisture and allow evaporation.
Note: My mom used aluminum foil, but the acid from the tomato caused the aluminium to dissolve and make me stupid.
-Oven 350F. [2 hours]
-When the cabbage rolls go in the oven, I like to partake in vigorous outdoor activities. Bike ride, x country ski, etc. When you enter your house the rolls smell great and the cocktails are best.
[Serve with perogies]. For the perogies you will need chopped bacon, fried onions, & sour cream.
