Melt butter or fry bacon soft and chop. Add apple and onion and cook till soft. Mix in cabbage. Add rest of ingredients and cook until cabbage is tender, about 12 minutes. Servings: 4
Make a stock with the soup bones, beef, clove-studded onion and salt, enough to render 1 quart. When meat is tender, add beet and cook until tender. Remove the beet and grate coarsely or cut into cubes.
Return to pot and bring to boil. Add cabbage leaves and potatoes. When they are almost tender, add lemon juice, sugar and seasonings.
Beat the egg, add lukewarm milk and a little hot soup, beating with a fork. Slowly blend in more of the hot soup as you beat, until all is added. Serve with sour cream.
1 cabbage, shredded
1 T wine vinegar
2 oz. fat
1 pint sour or double cream
1 large tomato
3 or 4 green peppers
2 tablespoons flour
salt and pepper
1 teaspoon caraway seeds
Cook the shredded cabbage in very little salted water with the quartered tomato, the seeded and sliced peppers, caraway seeds and seasoning. Cook till all vegetables are tender. Make a light roux with the flour and fat and mix it into the cooked vegetables. Stir in the cream and heat through before serving.
Hungarian Cabbage Noodles
Place grated cabbage in a large bowl and sprinkle liberally with salt. Allow to sit for an hour or two. Squeeze out excess water.
In large, heavy frying pan, heat oil and add cabbage. Cook over moderate heat, stirring, until cabbage is well browned, adding more oil as needed. Some people sprinkle on a teaspoon or so of sugar to help brown the cabbage without actually sweetening it. Season with extra salt and pepper to taste.
Cook noodles, toss together with cabbage and serve in liberal quantities.
Many recipes for Hungarian Cabbage and Noodles also call for a small, finely chopped onion to be fried with the cabbage. I haven’t tried that version but I have added one small, crushed garlic clove and just a pinch of crushed, dried basil just before tossing the cabbage together with the noodles, and it’s one of my favorite taste treats.
* The recipe calls for lots of lard or oil, and the cabbage seems to sop up whatever grease you throw at it. However, I have several times used only the minimum of oil (avocado oil or any other mild, unrefined vegetable oil will work) to keep the cabbage from sticking and burning, and it has come out fine, albeit drier than the traditional version. I’ve used grated cabbage and coarsely shredded cabbage, and the coarser cabbage tends to hold the moisture better. I’ve even used the dry cabbage pulp left over from making cabbage juice in my masticating juicer. It works, too, although, since the pulp is super fine, it is also much drier.
This recipe was inspired by Mom’s Stuffed Cabbage Rolls, which were a staple in our home when we were growing up. Now that I no longer eat animal products, this version made with beans and Portobello mushrooms, completely satisfies the urge for some of Mom’s home cooking, especially when topped off by rich Cashew Sour Cream. Just like the original Cabbage Rolls, they’re always better the next day!
Have ready the 12 trimmed and blanched collard leaves (you can use cabbage leaves if you’d prefer).
In a large bowl, mix together the cooked rice and beans.
In a skillet, fry the onion, peppers, and celery in a little olive oil until soft. Add to the rice/bean mixture along with the diced Portobello mushrooms Season with salt and pepper, the sage, chives, and optional nutritional yeast and kelp powder. Combine well. If it’s sticky, so much the better.
Set a collard leaf,, stem-end toward you, flat in front of you and heap a tablespoon or two of filling near the bottom edge. Roll forward, tucking the sides in as you roll, and finish rolling, leaving the final edge underneath the roll so the weight of it holds it closed.
Spread a thin layer of tomato sauce (below) on the bottom of a 9×13″ oven-proof dish and nestle the rolls together on top of the sauce so that they hold each other in place snuggly. Pour enough of the tomato sauce on top to cover the rolls and fill in some of the spaces. The sauce will keep your rolls moist.
Place in a pre-heated 350 F (180 C) oven for about 45 minutes, until much of the sauce is absorbed and bubbly.
Remove rolls carefully with a spatula onto serving plates and top with dollops of Cashew Sour Cream (below). Top with extra heated tomato sauce at the table if you’d like the rolls moister.
Seasoned Tomato Sauce:
Combine all ingredients over low to medium heat and cook for about 15 minutes to meld flavors.
Blend the cashews, tofu, lime/lemon juice, vinegar, avocado (or oil) and salt to taste in a small food processor or blender until smooth and fluffy. This will make a thick, stiff cream that will easily keep in the fridge (covered) for a couple of days should you have any left over.
Cook onion slowly in butter until golden. Add cabbage, water, salt, and potato. Cook until tender (15-20 minutes). Add cream and reheat, but do not boil. Serve sprinkled with minced parsley and a dash of paprika. Servings: 6
A thick, very rich version of Russian beet soup melded with potatoes and other vegetables, butter, and cream..
For years, various members of the family have lived in an area of British Columbia, Canada, into which many Doukhobors (a sect of Christian Russians who practice what is called “radical pacifism”) settled after emigrating to Canada from Russia in the early 1900s to escape persecution. One of the mainstays of the Doukhobour diet, which is vegetarian, is their particular style of borscht, or beet soup, which is thick with potato starch and heavily laden with butter and cream. It is a full-course meal in itself.
Prepare the mashed potatoes, reserving the water in which the potatoes were cooked. Set the mashed potatoes aside. Add 3/4 of the cabbage, the diced beet, carrot, and green pepper to the hot potato water in a large soup pot and cook for 15 minutes.
Melt the butter in a skillet. Add the chopped onion and garlic and stir until transparent, and then add the rest of the cabbage. Fry to brown slightly.
Toss the fried cabbage in with the other vegetables in the potato broth. Empty the tomatoes into the skillet and add the basil. Heat well and throw into the soup pot. Add water as needed and continue simmering. Add the mashed potatoes and dill. Stir in cream (use as much as your taste buds dictate and your conscience will allow) and heat but do not boil. Season.
Serves 8.
This recipe for cabbage rolls is the basic Eastern European version that we knew as kids: a savory melding of rice and ground meat rolled in cabbage leaves and smothered in thick tomato sauce. It was always served with sour cream.
Mom would make a whole turkey pan full of cabbage rolls, enough to feed the six of us and more for at least two or three sittings. As the leftovers sat and aged in their sauce over the next few days, the taste intensified and filled out… I always preferred leftover cabbage rolls over freshly made ones.
There are endless variations of cabbage rolls. One Ukrainian version is pickled cabbage leaves (sauerkraut style) stuffed with fried onions, ground meat, and buckwheat and baked in a meaty broth instead of tomato sauce. Similar cousins are rice and lamb stuffed grape leaves in Middle Eastern cuisine.
Core cabbage. Place in large pot of boiling water with a splash of vinegar. Cook 5 minutes. Remove from heat, drain and let stand 10 to 15 minutes to cool. Sauté onion in a little butter. Mix together the ground beef, onion, rice, salt and pepper. Separate cabbage leaves. Shave off the ribs. Put a large spoonful of meat mix at the base of each leaf and roll up tightly. May fasten with toothpicks. Place in an oiled oven pan, nestling the rolls together so they won’t unroll. Mix together the tomato juice, catchup, and water. Pour over cabbage rolls. Bake, covered, at about 325 F for 1-1/2 hours.
These are best removed from the oven and let sit to settle and thicken the sauce a bit before serving. Place bowls of thick sour cream on the table, and mound a large tablespoonful of the cream on each cabbage roll before eating.
* Mom always swore by Aylmer’s tomato soup instead of tomato puree for making real Cabbage rolls., but it wasn’t always easy to find.
