And zack, already it goes back to the girls kitchen! I hope you can handle a bit of cabbage. Because what I bring you today is really a blast! The common theme is simply cabbage rolls and I’ve spent weeks wondering what fancy creation I could make of it. I got the wildest ideas, the craziest tastes and I just could not decide. Until last week I held the current issue of the Effilee in my hand and just stumbled in the back, in Mr. Paulsen’s German lesson about a simple yet so brilliant dish by Stevan Paul for classic cabbage rolls. That was it! Finish with fancy stuff and crazy ideas, to the good old classic!
Granted, it’s not 100% classic. I modified the recipe a bit for my taste. With dried tomatoes and porcini mushrooms, the Sößchen is the absolute umami dream, but is not quite what Grandmother might have cooked. In contrast to the original recipe I also preferred to use mixed minced meat instead of pork. I like it very much, even if it is no longer THE classic cabbage roulade. Rind loosens it up a bit and adds some sophistication. The mixture gets fat and spicy enough anyway due to the additional amount of pig fat. I also did without the originally used white wine and instead blanched the gravy with white wine vinegar and poured some of the cabbage.
The result is truly gigantic. Served with small parsley potatoes in butter, this is the perfect Sunday lunch. Granted, the rolling up is a bit tedious and annoying, especially because I had a rather small cabbage, but it’s really worth it. The highlight of the dish is also that you do not have to stick or tie the roulades – a thick slice of pancetta provides the necessary hold and closes the roulade while searing.
- Bring water to a boil in a very large pot and add a tsp of salt. Remove the woody stalk from the cabbage, if necessary, also remove the outer leaves. Put the whole cabbage in the boiling water. After 1-2 minutes, the leaves are easily peeled off. In total, carefully remove 8 leaves. Use the remaining cabbage elsewhere. Cook the cabbage leaves in salted water for about 5 minutes, then remove with a slotted spoon and allow to cool in cold water. Keep 100 ml of the cooking water.
- Season the pork, mince, white bread and mustard to a smooth dough, season with salt and pepper. Divide the mass into 8 equal portions.
- Remove the hard stem of the cabbage leaves, place a portion of the meat mass in a leaf, smash the edges left and right and roll the sheet into a roulade, place it on the seam. Wrap each roulade with a slice of bacon, with the bacon ends overlapping at the seam of the roulade. As the bacon becomes smaller during frying, the ends should overlap for at least 1-2 cm, so that they close tightly and hold the roulade.
- Pre-heat the oven to 200 ° C top and bottom heat. Peel the potatoes and place in a pot of salted water.
- Heat 2 tablespoons of clarified butter in a large roasting pan to a medium high temperature. First fry the roulades with the seam side down, then turn them so that they have taken good color from both sides. Carefully remove from the roasting pan and set aside on a plate.
- Peel the second onion and finely dice. Peel the garlic clove and cut into thin slices. Fry the onion cubes and garlic slices over medium heat in the remaining cooking fat until they take on color. Add the tomato paste, dried tomatoes, porcini mushrooms and sugar and stir well. Add the cumin, marjoram and bay leaf and deglaze the mixture with the vinegar. Add the set aside 100 ml of the cabbage cooking water and stir thoroughly, allow to cook gently. Add the meat broth, carefully place the roulades in the roasting pan and push it into the lower third of the preheated oven on the grid. Cook the roulades with the lid open for about 40 minutes, turning them twice, each time after 15 minutes, gently turning the roulades.
- After the first turn of the roulades, bring the potatoes to a boil and simmer for about 20-25 minutes, until cooked. Keep warm afterwards.Finely chop the parsley and place in a bowl. Slide the potatoes from the pan into the bowl and pan thoroughly to distribute the parsley all around.
- Place a large saucepan of the sauce on a deep plate, put 1-2 cabbage rolls on it, add the parsley potatoes and serve directly.