Stuffed Cabbage Rolls for Dinner

It’s no use boiling your cabbage twice… ~ Irish proverb

Stuffed Cabbage Rolls! Boil them once, bake them once, and enjoy a beautiful and wonderfully delicious stuffed cabbage dish. You can also try stuffed summer squash. Or grape leaves. Anything you can think to stuff with this addictively tasty filling.

Oh, those beautiful cabbages, the red one, the green one. The humble cabbage turns out to be one of my favorite veggies. I make red cabbage slaw, green cabbage slaw, potato and cabbage soup with fresh dill, cabbage steaks with mustard sauce…and tonight I’m making stuffed cabbage rolls.

This is an easy recipe as well as delicious. I use this filling in other stuffed veggies as well — grape leaves, summer squash, peppers. It has happened on occasion that the filling never made it into the veggies, but tonight I’m determined.

Stuffed Cabbage Rolls

Ingredients 

• Cabbage, one head
• Brown Basmati rice, 3 cups cooked
• Mushrooms, sliced and pan roasted, 1 lb.
• Salt, 1/2 tsp.
• Za’atar, 1-1/2 tsp. (Za’atar is a Middle Eastern mix of herbs, available in bags at Butera, Garden Fresh and online – substitute with thyme and oregano to taste)
• Olive oil, 1/4 cup
• Tomato juice
• Lemons, juice of 1-2

Directions

1. Cook 1 cup of dried brown Basmati rice (which will make 3 cups cooked)
2. Pan roast the sliced mushrooms until the liquid cooks off.
3. Put the rice, mushrooms, 1⁄4 cup of olive oil, seasonings and lemon juice to taste in the processor, and pulse a
   few times.
4. The mixture should be gravelly and cohesive.

To prepare the cabbage:

1. Bring water in a large pot to simmer.
2. Cut the core out of the cabbage and place the whole head in the simmering pot for 2-3 minutes.
3. Take the head of cabbage out, remove outer leaves carefully and set aside to use.
4. Place the remaining head of cabbage back in the pot for a couple of minutes, and again take out and remove leaves. Repeat this process until you have removed all the good-sized leaves.
5. Chop the remaining cabbage to add to the bottom of your cooking casserole.

To make up the rolls:

1. You can shave away some of the thick rib to make the cabbage leaves easier to roll.
2. Place 2-3 Tb of the filling across the base of each leaf, and roll from the stem end up tucking in the
   edges along the way.
3. Place in casserole with seams down.
4. Add tomato juice to almost cover the rolls.
5. Squeeze lemon over the rolls
6. Cover withfoil, and bake 350°F for 45 minutes.
7. Garnish with a bit of parsley.

Other CSA veggies this week

If you make a double batch of the mushroom and rice filling for the cabbage rolls, you’ll be able to stuff the summer squash with them as well. Middle Easterners use an apple corer to hollow out the middle of the squash lengthwise, which makes a very pretty dish.

This week we’ll receive kohlrabi again. I’ve tried it now stuffed and as a low carb “potato” salad — and I’ve pickled it. I think my favorite way to eat it is just sliced and used to dip into delicious Middle Eastern spreads like hummus or Muhammara.

The bok choy made its way into a delicious stir fry my son made for us — and a soup with soba (Japanese buckwheat noodles).

Save up your garlic scapes for more of that pesto recipe I gave you a couple of weeks back. Use lots of basil with it and some summer greens.

Speaking of greens, we’re still enjoying our summer chard omelets, and we can’t get enough of those greens like kale and kohlrabi greens — even cabbage and sometimes bok choy — in our morning smoothies. What a wonderful way to start the day!