Stuffed Cabbage In The Troô Style
This recipe originally appears in Jane Grigson’s Vegetable Book. I first found it in Tamasin Day-Lewis’s Good-Tempered Food.
Yield: 2-3 servings; may easily be increased by using a larger cabbage and more sausage.
Cooking time: 90 minutes-2 hours, depending on the size of your cabbage.
1 2-pound cabbage: Dutch or Savoy
1 pound best-quality plain sausagemeat (about 4 sausages, if in skins)
butter
salt and pepper
Preheat oven to 300 degrees F.
Shred the cabbage finely into a large bowl. Both Grigson and Day-Lewis advocate blanching the cabbage in boiling water. As I live in drought country, I skip this step, and find the dish doesn’t suffer a bit.
If your sausages are in casings, remove them and crumble into a bowl. If your sausages stubbornly refuse to part from their skins, just slice thinly into coins, add to said bowl, and move on.
Wash your hands. For the next step you’ll need a 3-4 quart casserole–enameled cast iron, Pyrex, whatever. Ideally this vessel has a lid. No lid? Foil is fine.
Lightly butter the bottom of your pot.
Now make the stuffed cabbage. Make a layer of cabbage, then a layer of sausagemeat. Salt and pepper lightly. Remember your sausage may be salty.
Continue until your ingredients are used up, finishing with a layer of cabbage (or chard, in my case: see note, below).
Dot with butter, cover, and slip into the oven.
Cook 90 minutes for a smaller cabbage, up to 2 hours for a larger one. The dish is done when a spatula slices easily through the layers and cabbage is completely soft.
Day-Lewis suggests serving with mashed potato, though we find it quite the meal in itself, wanting nothing more than some bread to sop up the delicious juices. To that end, I served it with homemade rolls, baked from the Middle Eastern Yogurt Bread recipe–follow up to punching dough down for the second rise. Using a knife, bench scraper, or scissors, cut or slice the bread into equally-sized rolls; I got seven pieces, kneading in a teaspoon each fennel and cumin seeds. Roll gently in your palms to make rounded shapes. Don’t overhandle the dough. Place on baking tray and cover with oiled plastic wrap. Allow second rise of 45 minutes. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Bake for 20 minutes. Be happy.
Leftovers reheat well in the microwave or oven.
Note: This recipe really wanted to backfire on me. Not only did the sausage cling to its skins, the cabbage was too small. I considered stopping until I could purchase fresh ingredients and start over.
And then I thought: WWJD?
Julia would have kept her wits, adding a little butter and finishing the dish. I had some chard–also a brassica happy to be cooked a long time–so I used it to bulk out the cabbage. And it worked fine. That’s what you see in the photo: a chard blankie over all, smeared with a little butter. Life is what happens when you’re making other plans.