cabbage rolls

[kylie1]

Viewing cooking as a creative process, I immersed myself in making a huge
batch of cabbage rolls yesterday. Nothing gets my fires started like company
but yesterday it was just the two of us and ...34 cabbage rolls. Polish
cabbage rolls, that is. It's too damn cold outside to do anything so I decided
to see if I can find an easier technique to speed up the wrapping ( I am
called "mamma rapper" here). It wasn't easy. Generally, it's a very laborious
process. That's why we don't have cabbage rolls very often but when we do I
make enough to freeze some for later. It's worth it and we love them.

Now, here is the question I have for you guys...any cabbage roll experts here
perhaps?
The only way I know how to peel the outer leaves is by immersing the cabbage
in hot water for a few minutes until the leaves are pliable and easy to work
with. I peel those and dunk the rest of the cabbage back into the steaming
pot. However, it takes forever. Does anyone know of an easier/faster way?

What can I say. It is still cold out but we have to keep the windows wide
opened....cabbage causes my husband gastric distress. Today he should be the
poster boy for "Purple Flatulence Weekly".

[ianek70]

kylie1 napisała:

> Now, here is the question I have for you guys...any cabbage roll experts here
> perhaps?

I'm not really an expert, but I do know cabbage rolls.
If you push it down a hill.

[tjbazuka]

Glab sie wykraiwuje i potem glowe kapusty wrzuca sie na wrzatek i delikatnie
szczypcami wyjmuje sie lisc po lisciu. Musza byc jeszcze "crunchy" zeby zmiekly
podczas gotowania w sosie.
Smacznego.

[marcus_anglikiem]

i don't speak from experience, as i have never made golabki myself - now
there's a new year's resolution for me - but, i wonder, wouldn't it save you
time to put the leaves into a bowl of water and put it in the microwave until
theyr're flexible enough to wrap around the nadziewanie?

[marcus_anglikiem]

my (ex-)fiancée, who has some previous experience of cooking golabki, says the
trick to keeping them with some 'bite' whilst at the same time allowing the
flexibility necessary for wrapping is to take the cabbage, whole, cut out the
middle, and to blanche in 2-5cm of water with a lid on, so it steams, for about
15minutes... et voila!

[kylie1]

Thanks, marcus and tj but that's what I do. See, the thing is that when you
blanch the cabbge you can only peel a few leaves at a time. Underneath you will
still have uncooked and unblanched cabbage. So each time I peel a few leaves, I
end up putting it back in the pot of boiling water to repeat the process. A real
pain in the a...

[kylie1]

> Glab sie wykraiwuje i potem glowe kapusty wrzuca sie na wrzatek i delikatnie
> szczypcami wyjmuje sie lisc po lisciu. Musza byc jeszcze "crunchy" zeby zmiekly
>
> podczas gotowania w sosie.
> Smacznego.


Now, what did you call me?!

[kylie1]

> I'm not really an expert, but I do know cabbage rolls.
> If you push it down a hill.

Now, that's a start!

[varsovian]

How can anyone have an (ex-)fiancee?
She's either an ex-fiancee or she's a fiancee, surely it's somewhat akin to
being slightly pregnant?

[usenetposts]

varsovian napisał:

> How can anyone have an (ex-)fiancee?
> She's either an ex-fiancee or she's a fiancee, surely it's somewhat akin to
> being slightly pregnant?

You can be engaged and break it off. That means you have an ex-fiancee.

I have an ex-fiancee.

When I was reliably informed that she was pregnant by another man, (a Ghanaian,
thankfully, so she never would have gotten away with it, which is likely why
she 'fessed up easily) and she confessed to this, at that point she became my
ex-financee. She was more than slightly pregnant, and that kid will be 17 now,
and likely as not enjoying all the glorious benefits a small town in Southern
Russia has to offer its black community.

[usenetposts]

I asked my wife, and she tells me she boils the cabbage for 120 of her minutes.

[kylie1]

boils it for 2 hours, Dave? Doesn't it turn into mush?
Just wondering..

[usenetposts]

It doesn't turn to mush, it only softens it, makes it easy to eat.

[mafketis]

I asked the cook who makes the best cabbage rolls I know. The answer:

You should of course cut the bottom off the cabbage core the heart out so that
there's a cone shaped hole in the bottom.

The thing is you need a _big_ pot so that the cabbage (hole side up) is floating
(pływa) in the hot water (you can turn the heat down some after it reaches a
boil the first time). There's no need whatsoever to take the whole cabbage out
of the water, you can easily peel off the outer leaves as they cook with a
couple of forks or tongs. You can cool off the leaves in cold water for a second
if they're too hot to work with but this might make them mushier later on so
it's better to resign yourself to almost getting almost burned a lot of the time.
You also want to cut off the bottom outside of the big vein in the middle of the
leaf so that the leaf will fold easier.

Extra tip, use paprika paste to give the sauce some extra zing and slop some
sour cream over the cabbage role and sauce before you eat it (as they do in
Hungary).

[kylie1]

Thanks, mafketis.
The green cabbage I buy here has leaves that are usually tighly packed so it
would require a lot of "fork finesse" on my part to do the whole peeling inside
the pot. I think it's worth trying but I am a little worried about that.

I love the Louisiana hot sauce! We put it into everything. Apparently it makes
you eat more...

[marcus_anglikiem]

is that why - so i read recently in, i think, the Guardian (i no longer read
that) - that the residents of Louisiana are the heaviest in the whole USA ?