Stuffed Whole Baby Savoy Cabbages

Savoy cabbage is milder tasting than its green or red counterparts and baby ones are milder still, compared to their grownups. If you are serving folks who aren’t crazy about cabbage, but do like greens, give Savoy cabbage a try. The baby ones are also adorable. 

Our elder daughter is dating a delightful young man that is not only a talented type designer but, bonus, he cooks and bakes beautifully. Every weekday he creates lunch for his office mates as part of his contribution to the team. It’s a brilliant arrangement, by which, as I understand it, he gets a discount on his share of the office rent and everyone gets a healthy, freshly prepared, delicious meal every day. So smart, these young people! I’ve been wanting to try one of his specialties (from an original recipe by Jacques Pépin) a whole stuffed cabbage that is cooked then cut into wedges for serving. But when I came across baby Savoy cabbages in my local grocery store and I couldn’t resist them. Some day I'll make the big guy.

The week’s Sunday Supper theme is Stuffed, Rolled and Wrapped so the individual stuffed cabbages are perfect! They may seem a little fiddly to make but I assure you that the baby Savoys are fairly hearty little cabbages and you can stuff your filling in with confidence. The stuffing and the simple tomato sauce they cook in is what my mother made whenever she made cabbage rolls as I was growing up.

Ingredients
4 small Savoy cabbages – about 2+ oz or 55-60g each

For the filling:
12 oz or 340g ground beef
4 oz or 115g ground pork
1 medium onion (about 2 1/2 oz or 70g
1 egg
1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup or 45g raw rice
1 teaspoon fine sea salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

For the sauce:
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
1 can ( oz or 400g) whole tomatoes – buy the best quality you can afford. I like the Italian ones for best flavor.
2 cloves garlic
2-3 sprigs fresh thyme plus extra for garnish, if desired

Method
Mince your onion very finely and then mix it together thoroughly with the rest of the filling ingredients.

Divide your filling into reasonably equal portions.

Gently open your little cabbages and start filling from the middle, closing up the leaves over the filling until you have used all the filling allotted to that baby cabbage. Repeat until all four are filled.

Separate all the leaves and start stuffing in the middle.

When the area is full, close the leaves around the filling.

Keep adding stuffing and closing the leaves.

When you get to the outer leaves, put some stuffing on them and squeeze them up against the inside.

Finally, put the last of the stuffing right in the top and close up.

So cute, right?! 

Cut four pieces of foil and wrap them around the cabbages so that they hold their shape, leaving a hole at the top of the foil.

Puree your canned tomatoes with a hand or regular blender, along with the garlic, salt and sugar. Use the tomato can as a measuring device and add a full can of water to the mixture and stir to combine.

Put the four stuffed cabbages in a pan that has a tight fitting lid, hole side down and pour the tomato garlic sauce in the pan with the foil-wrapped cabbages.

Bring the sauce to a boil and then put your lid on the pan and simmer for about an hour or until the internal temperature of the stuffed cabbages reaches 160°F or 71°C.  (While the “safely cooked” temperatures have been reduced for cuts of pork, they haven’t changed for ground meats.)

Meanwhile, pull the leaves off of your fresh thyme sprigs and mince them.

When the cabbages are cooked, remove them from the pan, unwrap your little foil bundles and arrange them on your serving dish.

Add the minced thyme to the sauce and check seasoning, adding more salt and pepper, if necessary. Cook the sauce down until it thickens slightly.

Pour the sauce on and around your stuffed baby cabbages. Garnish with some extra thyme, if desired.

Enjoy!

How they look on the inside.

Do you like your food stuffed, wrapped and rolled? Check out the 54 links below to everything from appetizers to desserts!

Starters and Snacks

• Endive Stuffed with Blue Cheese, Walnuts and Honey by Shockingly Delicious
• Filipino Turon (Banana Lumpia) by Killer Bunnies, Inc
• Arepas de Queso by A Kitchen Hoor’s Adventures
• Chicken Tinga Taquitos with Avocado Cream by Savvy Eats
• Eggy Rice Wraps by Jane’s Adventures in Dinner
• Puff Pastry and Prosciutto Wrapped Asparagus by The Girl In The Little Red Kitchen
• Onigiri by Brunch With Joy
• Stuffed Pierogie Shells by Seduction in The Kitchen
• Scotch Eggs with Sriracha Dipping Sauce by Run DMT
• Celery Root Lettuce Wraps with Beluga Lentils by The Wimpy Vegetarian

Entrees and Mains

• Rouladen by The Not So Cheesy Kitchen
• Stracci di Antrodoco by Manu’s Menu
• Eggplant Rollatini by MealDiva
• Chicken Cordon Blue by The Foodie Army Wife
• Stuffed Whole Baby Savoy Cabbages by Food Lust People Love
• Chicken Taco Egg Rolls by Table for Seven
• Shrimp Tempura Roll by Small Wallet, Big Appetite
• Lemon and Herb Stuffed Salmon by Nosh My Way
• Tamales de Rajas y Requeson (Roasted Poblano Tamales) by La Cocina de Leslie
• Bademjan Shekam-por by Culinary Adventures with Camilla
• Mascarpone Blueberry Stuffed French Toast by gotta get baked
• Korean-style Meaty Stuffed Potatoes by kimchi MOM
• Strawberries and Cream Pancake Roll by Curious Cuisiniere
• Creamy Goat Cheese Quinoa Stuffed Tomatoes by Take A Bite Out of Boca
• Greek Rolled Meatloaf by Kudos Kitchen By Renee
• Shrimp Burritos Con Queso by Cooking On The Ranch
• Bee-Bim Bop Sushi Rolls by NinjaBaking.com
• Angel Hair Shrimp Lettuce Wraps by Family Foodie
• Genoa Salami and Kalamata Olive Calzones by The Texan New Yorker
• Zucchini Boats by Confessions of a Culinary Diva
• Girl’s Camp Breakfast Burritos by Hot Momma’s Kitchen Chaos
• Crab Louie Stuffed Chicken by Cindy’s Recipes and Writings
• Rustic “Wrapped” Tart with Ramps by Delaware Girl Eats
• Potato Roll Stuffed with Ham and Cheese in Red Sause by Basic N Delicious
• Ham, Turkey and Cheddar Turnovers by Magnolia Days
• Crispy Chipotle Shrimp Burritos by Bobbi’s Kozy Kitchen
• Caprese Stuffed Chicken Breasts by Peanut Butter and Peppers
• Pizza Pockets by girlichef
• Ham and Cheese Crescent “Roll” Stromboli by Rants From My Crazy Kitchen
• Beef Wellington Braciole by Cupcakes & Kale Chips
• Greek Salad Wrap by The Messy Baker
• Cabbage Venison Lettuce Wraps With Fresh Herbs by Sue’s Nutrition Buzz

All Things Sweet

• Easy Apple Dumplings by Hezzi-D’s Books and Cooks
• Carrot Cake Cinnamon Rolls by Chocolate Moosey
• Chocolate Hazelnut Rugelach by Desserts Required
• Chocolate Cake Roll by That Skinny Chick Can Bake
• Cannoli Stuffed French Toast by Momma’s Meals
• Lemon Poppyseed Swirl Cookies by What Smells So Good
• Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Egg Rolls by Melanie Makes
• Raspberry and Lemon-Curd Mascarpone Stuffed French Toast by La Bella Vita Cucina
• Chocolate Chip Banana Sweet Rolls by Big Bear’s Wife
• Orange Chocolate Swiss Roll by Noshing With The Nolands
• Salted Caramel Chocolate Cookies by Alida’s Kitchen
• Flourless Peanut Butter and Jelly Cookies by Pies and Plots
  
  
  

Crockpot Borlotti Beans with Smoked Pork

Cream and burgundy Borlotti beans are sometimes called cranberry or French horticultural beans but they all seem to come from the same original new world source, the cargamanto bean first cultivated in Colombia. Near as I can figure. 

Strangely, or perhaps not so strangely considering how small the world has become these days, I first discovered Borlottis (or one of their close cousins) as fresh beans in a small vegetable stall in Kuala Lumpur. They were already shelled but their distinctive red marks attracted me immediately. This was years ago (2007, in fact) when Nigella was still doing her quick dinners on television. She was home alone and had pan-fried a thin steak to eat with some mashed white beans as her side. I tried some version of her recipe with the fresh borlottis and fell in love with them. Nowadays, I can’t find the fresh ones so I make do with dried. But, you know what?  They are also fabulous. Maybe I’m just a bean person. Are you?

I made this one-pot dish in my crockpot a while back and I’ve been wanting to share it with you. I love the slow cooker for busy days when I can’t be standing around stirring a pot. Fill, turn it on and walk away! Come back in a few hours and you’ve got dinner. If you can’t get smoked pork neck steaks, by all means use whatever you’ve got. A smoked ham hock would be great, as would any kind of sausage.

Ingredients
2 medium onions
2 handfuls cloves garlic (Let’s not get anal about how many. You like garlic? Hum more in.)
2 lb 3 oz or 1 kg smoked pork neck steaks
Sea salt
Black pepper
1 lb+ or 500g dried Borlotti beans
2 bay leaves

Method
Slice your onions and lay a third of them at the bottom of your crockpot or slow cooker. Add a third of the garlic cloves.

Top with a third of the smoked pork steaks or whatever meat you are using. Sprinkle with sea salt and a few good grinds of fresh black pepper.

Add on one third of your Borlotti beans.

Keep layering, onions and garlic, pork steak, salt and pepper then beans until you get to the final layer of beans.

Add water to cover the beans by at least one inch or two centimeters.  Add another few grinds of pepper, if you are so inclined and tuck a couple of bay leaves into the water. Cover the pot and turn it on low.

Totally forgot to take a photo with the bay leaves but they did go in!

You’ll have beans and pork ready to eat in six to eight hours, depending on how old your beans were to start. Older beans have dried out more so they take a little longer to cook. Check them in around four to five hours and add more water, if necessary. You don’t even need to stir.

When they are done, I like to take a half cup or so of beans out and mash them with a fork.  I add the mashed beans back into the crockpot to thicken the broth beautifully.

Serve with rice or a crusty loaf to sop up the broth and, if you are me, some pepper sauce.

Enjoy!

Ceviche - As it should be

Many a thing is called ceviche out in the world of restaurants. Some add tomatoes or avocado or mango or other abominations. I’ve even seen grapes! This dish is made exactly as I remember it from my childhood time spent in northern Peru, with fresh seafood, fresh lime juice, purple onions, cilantro, salt and chili peppers. That’s it. And boiled yucca on the side. 

About a year after my parents divorced, my father moved from Venezuela where we had all been living together, to a small oilfield company town in northern Peru called Negritos. If you’ve been in the mountains and the rain forests of Peru but never ventured to the northwestern coast, you might be surprised to find sand dunes to rival those in my current home, the United Arab Emirates. Negritos is set near the most western point of mainland South America, Punta Pariñas, with a beautiful coast in front and a massive desert at its back. I spent every summer there for several years, until Daddy moved again.

I don’t know that it was much of a place for being an adult but it was heaven for a child. I’d take off for hours, exploring rocks and sand dunes and crevasses, finding shells and fossils, building forts with the neighbor kids and “tightrope” walking on the pipes between the enormous town water tank and, well, town. (Shhhh! Don’t tell my father – the pipeline was strictly off limits.) My older sister and I shared a little blue Honda 70 motorbike and sometimes I’d ride the dunes on it, but most days, exploration was on foot and I’d often carry pen and paper, in case inspiration struck and I needed to write something down. I was deep into my Harriet the Spy phase then. Returning home, I’d drive my stepmother to distraction by taking off my shoes and socks and making two little piles on my bedroom floor with the sand that had accumulated in them. It was fun to see how big the piles were some days, as if it told me how far I had walked somehow. In retrospect, I must have been a strange child.

A big treat - I’m telling you it was a small town! – was to go to the small airport in the next town over and eat in the restaurant there. I’ll let you absorb that. We went to the airport just to eat. Watching the planes take off and land was a bonus. I always, and I mean always, without fail, ordered the shrimp ceviche. It was perfect. A healthy plateful of shrimp, swimming in lime juice with lots of sliced onions and just enough chili. The resulting liquid is called leche de tigre or tiger’s milk and when all the shrimp were gone, I’d sip it with a spoon and nibble on the boiled yucca that was always served alongside.

My father’s company also had a very rustic, open plan brick house on a beautiful beach called Punta Sal, which we were able to use on weekends and holidays. It was even farther north, in fact, about halfway to the Ecuadorian border. There we’d make our own ceviche, with fresh grouper hooked from the water by a local fisherman called Polo. Burnished and wizen by too many years in the fierce sun, Polo lived in a makeshift shanty right on Punta Sal and made his living fishing off of a raft of old logs bound together by frayed rope and luck. He'd come door-to-door with his daily catch and often let the more adventurous boys (my husband among them) "help" him fish.

When I eat this ceviche and I close my eyes, I can hear the waves crashing, smell the sea breeze and feel the dried crusty salt left behind by the water, tight on my sunburned skin. Hope you do too. (Sometimes I even smell jet fuel, but that one's probably just me.)

Ingredients
6 -7 limes or more if yours aren’t very juicy. You need about 1 cup or 240ml juice.
13 oz or 370g fresh firm white flesh fish – I used Hammour or local grouper
1 large purple onion (about 3 1/2 oz or 100g, before peeling)
1 teaspoon flakey sea salt or to taste, plus more for boiling the shrimp
1 large bunch cilantro or coriander leaves (About 1 3/4 oz or 50g)
1-2 hot red chili peppers (I used two!)
12 1/3 oz or 350g fresh shrimp, already cleaned and deveined

To serve: The traditional accompaniment to a bowl of ceviche is yucca, boiled till tender in lightly salted water. Try to get your hands on some – it’s called different things in a variety of countries: Manioc, cassava, mogo, manioc and aipim, just to name a few. Peel it and wash it well before boiling. Once boiled, split it down the middle and pull out the fibrous threads before serving. Its flavor is somewhere between a potato and a parsnip and the mild taste and starchiness counterbalances the acidic, spicy ceviche.

Method
Juice your limes and put them in a non-reactive bowl. Glass does nicely.

Remove all the bones and cut your fish up into bite-sized pieces. I use jewelry pliers to get the pin bones out.

Immerse the fish in the lime juice and stir well.

Wash the cilantro thoroughly with cold water. Sometimes it takes more than one rinse to get rid of all the dirt but it’s worth taking the time to make sure it’s completely grit free. Spin the cilantro dry in a salad spinner or tied up in a dish towel. You can discard the stems but as long as they aren’t really thick and hard, I like to mince them very finely and use them. Chop the leaves roughly and set aside.

Slice your onions as thinly as you can manage and mince your red chilies.

Add the onions and the chilies to the fish along with the sea salt. Give everything a good stir and use your spoon, preferably a wooden one, to poke the pieces of fish back into a single layer under the lime juice.

Pile your chopped cilantro on top of everything but don’t stir yet. Just let it all hang out.

Bring a pot of water to the boil. Add a little salt, just as you would do for boiling pasta.

Add the shrimp to the pot and turn the heat off. Put a lid on the pot and set a timer for about three minutes. This parboils the shrimp but they will finish "cooking" in the lime juice.

When the time rings, remove the shrimp with a slotted spoon. Let them cool slightly and then add them to the bowl with the fish.

Now you can give it a good stir. Poke the bits of fish back under the lime juice.

Cover the whole bowl with cling film and refrigerate, stirring occasionally, for several hours or until the fish is completely opaque and “cooked” by the lime juice. I left mine overnight because it was going sailing with us the next day. If you are traveling with ceviche, make sure to keep it on ice until you are ready to serve it.

Serve with boiled yucca for a traditional treat. (See note with the ingredients list above.)

Enjoy!