Stuffed cabbage, cabbage rolls, dolmades -- they all say the same thing: Yummy! Typically, cabbage rolls stuffed with a meat and rice mixture, smothered with a thick avgolemono sauce are a standard winter food. But during Great Lent this dish offers challenges. We wanted to find a way to make cabbage rolls appropriate for our fasting requirements. We asked several aunts who make Lahanodolmades, and each one of them gave us a different recipe, different ingredients, and a different idea. So, we decided that we needed to see the recipe in writing, and went to one of our cookbooks and found the amounts needed to make this dish.
In the cookbook Easy Greek Style Cookery, the author makes dolmades with grape vine leaves, but the recipe had the ingredients we wanted in the filling, so we substituted cabbage leaves for that recipe's grape vine leaves. So, you know you can put this filling in grape leaves or cabbage leaves, and both work well.
For this recipe, you will need the following:
1 head of cabbage (green cabbage or savoy cabbage)
1 onion, chopped fine
3 TBSP pine nuts (also known as pignoli)
1/4 cup oil
1/2 cup rice (any long grain or short grain)
2 TBSP raisins (or currants)
1 cup water
2 TBSP mint
3 TBSP tomato paste
2 teaspoons lemon juice
Cinnamon (a dash)
Salt and pepper
The first step after gathering your ingredients is to steam the cabbage and make the leaves soft and pliable. If the cabbage leaves are raw, they will not roll or bend, and will likely crack and not give you the rolls that you want. So, remove the core of the cabbage. We put the tip of our knife in next to the core, and made deep, angular cuts into the centre of the cabbage head. We went all the way around the core doing the same thing, making slits into the centre of the head. The cabbage core popped out, and we were ready to steam it.
Make sure that the pot is covered and the water is boiling. You can add a little salt to the water, which will prevent you adding salt to the filling. But, this is not necessary, and you can adjust the seasoning in the filling. Steaming the cabbage should take about 15 minutes. You have to make sure that the core side (the cut side) is in the water. This is one instance when you want the water and steam to reach in between the layers and soften the entire leaf. While this is cooking, prepare the filling.
Chop the onion and the mint, both into fine pieces. We have, in the past, discussed rolling the herb leaves into a cigar shape and then cutting. Do that with the mint. If you are using dried mint, which is less intense in flavour, increase the amount by 1/2 Tablespoon (2 1/2 TBSP total).
Now, make the filling. Saute the onions in the oil. It seems as if it is a lot of oil, but by the time the rice is added to the pot, all the oil disappears. So, heat 1/4 cup oil and saute the onions. Add the mint, the pine nuts, and the raisins. Mix everything well in the pan to assure that everything is coated with the oil. Then, add the cinnamon, tomato paste, and lemon juice. Mix again to get all the ingredients covered with tomato paste. The contents of the pan will be red, and turning slightly brown while the tomato paste cooks. That's when you know to add the rice.
Add the rice to the pan and mix very well. The ingredients should all have the same colour, and should be fully coated with oil and tomato paste. Keep mixing until that happens. Then, turn off the heat and let the filling sit for a moment while you prepare the cabbage.
Now that the filling is made, and the cabbage is steamed, it is time to separate the cabbage leaves. In the pan, you may see some of the outer layers begin to fall off the head. That's fine. What you want to make sure is that you have full leaves, without tears or holes. Separate as many leaves as you need, making sure that each one is whole, complete, and pretty. Lay the leaves out side by side on your table or work surface.
Now, take a large spoonful of filling and place it at the base of the cabbage leaf. We started with a soup spoon, but found that we needed two spoonfuls, so we switched to a serving spoon. One spoonful using a serving spoon gave us enough filling in the leaf. Don't crowd the stuffing because there is rice in there, and rice will double in size. Also, the raisins will gain some water and some volume, and expand in the filling. So, make sure to leave yourself adequate room for the expanding filling.
Get the leaves set with the filling, and then it is time to roll the cabbage.
The first step is to fold up the bottom edge of the cabbage leaf. The bottom edge of the leaf should fully cover the pile of filling.
Next, fold in the one side of the cabbage leaf. The edge of the leaf should come across almost all the way to the centre line. Do the same with the other side of the cabbage leaf. The two sides do not need to touch in the centre. They do, however, need to make closures at both ends. Make sure there is no stuffing falling out of the sides of the cabbage leaf.
With the two sides folded, roll the filled part of the cabbage leaf toward the unfilled part, turning once or twice to reach the end.
When the leaf is completely rolled, you will have a cigar-shaped roll, or a cylinder. Put this in a pan, with the seam facing down on the bottom of the pan. Arrange all the cabbage rolls in the pan, making sure that the seam faces down. You can put a second layer on top of the first, but make sure to stagger the piles so no roll is directly on top of another. We had only one layer of cabbage rolls, but if you are making cabbage rolls for more than 4 people, you may have more layers.
Next, prepare the tomato paste and the water. You need enough water to cook the rice. So, in a cup of water, dissolve two tablespoons of tomato paste. Mix it the best you can before you pour this over the cabbage rolls. You will notice that when you pour this mixture on the cabbage, there will be some tomato paste sediment at the bottom. Don't worry about that, because the water in the pot will dissolve that tomato paste as it cooks. Pour all over the cabbage and try to spread out the tomato paste. You may think that you need more water, but wait until the cooking process starts and determine if you need to add more as you go.
Now it is time to cook the cabbage rolls. Put a lid on the pot and put the heat on a medium. You want this to simmer, but not really boil, so medium heat will allow that to happen. By simmering, you will allow the cabbage to cook the rest of the way, and the rice will have a chance to cook in the middle. You don't want crunchy rice! Simmer until most of the water has been dissolved.
You can check to see if the rice is cooked by either opening one cabbage roll and checking the rice, then re-rolling the cabbage and placing it back in the pot, OR, you can see if there are any loose pieces of rice floating around and check done-ness from those pieces. We opened one of the rolls, and decided that we needed just a little more cooking, so we added one more cup of water with another 2 TBSP of tomato paste, and put the covered pot back to simmer for a while more. We allowed this to cook for a total of 1 hour, which made perfectly soft and tender lahanodolmades (cabbage rolls).
Then, your stuffed cabbage rolls are ready to serve. We chose to serve with a little extra cooked tomato sauce, but you could squeeze a little lemon juice and oil, use just the cooking liquid in the pan which is less tomato and more water. You can garnish them as you like, too. But, the one thing we are sure of is that you will not have leftovers! Our cabbage rolls were gone before we knew it. Our plan of one per person, and two leftover for lunch the next day turned into one and a half or two per person and a peanut butter sandwich for lunch the next day. We are sure that you understand! So, enjoy the variety of flavours and textures in this dish. Let us know if you found a way to have leftovers from this meal!
John 6:45
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