UNSTUFFED CABBAGE

One of the ubiquitious recipes synonymous with good Hungarian cooking is stuffed cabbage. Gefilte Krote. Holoptzes. Choose your language. Come Tishrei or Adar, the aroma of tomato juice and cabbage fills the stairwell of many a building as the neighbors wonder, Wow, who is so geshikt that she is ALREADY COOKING THE KROTE?

In my family it was a longstanding tradition that my grandmother, my mother's mother, would cook the krote for her for Simchas Torah and Purim. It smelled and tasted HEAVENLY. It wasn't that my mother couldn't cook it herself; it was one of the small things my grandmother did for us year after year and it made her feel good and important.

As is inevitable with all of us, my grandmother started getting on in years and simpler dishes became too difficult for her (or so she thinks; I suspect she is still capable of cooking but lacks motivation like many elderly women do). In a common role reversal, my mother began cooking the krote for my grandmother instead. My mother's stuffed cabbage tastes exactly the same as her mother's, which is what I love about Hungarian cooking; it tends to be so steeped in tradition and genetics that you can eat the same tasting food in three generations of homes.

I don't love cabbage. When cooked, no matter how much tomato juice is in the pot, it feels tasteless and flat to me. But I do love the filling. And so do my kids. Every Simchas Torah or Purim seudah finds me unrolling the carefully rolled cabbage leaves and just eating the insides. Ditto for my kids. At some point - I don't know when - my mother gave me this recipe for UNSTUFFED cabbage. It has the same tomatoey, ground-meaty goodness of the gefilte krote filling, and has the lingering taste of cabbage, without actually tasting like cabbage. The pieces of shredded cabbage are served as a delicious side dish with the meatballs. My kid, who are pretty finicky eaters. LOVE the unstuffed cabbage balls. They like it a LOT better than meatballs. It's a bigger job than just throwing ground meat and onions together and boiling it in tomato juice, therefore I rarely make it. But when I do, I have enough for four containers to freeze. It's simple to defrost and serve on a day when there's no time to whip up something new.

Writing about this recipe has made me nostalgic - and hungry. I'm thinking that next week might be a good time to make another batch of this....

Choose your own combo of ground chicken and/or turkey. In my family, I use a pack of dark chicken, pack of ground chicken breast, and pack of dark turkey.

Here we go.

UNSTUFFED CABBAGE

INGREDIENTS:

FILLING:

3 onions
4 pounds ground chicken and/or turkey
4 eggs
2/3 cup rice
2 Tbsp sugar
salt & pepper to taste (I actually hate recipes that call for salt & pepper 'to taste'. I have no idea what I normally do. I think a big handful of salt and a sprinkling of white pepper)

SAUCE:

Head of fresh cabbage (the ready bagged mix will NOT TASTE AS GOOD)
1 Large can/bottle tomato juice
1 small can tomato juice
1 medium can tomato sauce
1/2 cup water
3 tsp sugar
Salt to taste
Turkey or Chicken Bones

INSTRUCTIONS:

Sautee 3 onions in oil until golden/beige in color

Add rice with 1 1/4 cup water. Bring to a boil, lower and cook for the usual rice time, which is about 20 minutes.

Once the water is down and the rice is cooked allow to cool slightly (so the eggs and meat don't start cooking!), add spices, eggs, and ground meat. Mix well with a large spoon or with gloved hands. You can refrigerate the mix if you think it will make it easier to form the balls later.

While the rice is cooking, carefully check the cabbage leaves for bugs, rinse off and shake off the water. In my 8 qt pot I found that I could only accommodate half a head of cabbage. So if you have a larger pot, use an entire head. If you use an 8 qt pot, half a head will suffice. Pile the cleaned cabbage leaves and cut into small squares - Don't shred it; squares of about 2 inches wide and 4 inches long are perfect, but no need to measure with a ruler - just cut and go for it.

Place the cabbage pieces with the tomato juice, tomato sauce, 1/2 cup water, salt to taste, and the chicken or turkey bones (which you should PLEASE place in a mesh bag or the sauce will be full of chicken bone grime and you won't be able to fish out the bones between the cabbage pieces!) in a large pot - I use the 8 qt and it's cramped!

While you start boiling up the tomato juice, form balls with the meat/rice mixture. They don't have be perfect, they just should form some kind of coherent shape.

Bring to a boil and lower flame. Cook for 2 - 2 1/2 hours.

Throw out the bag with the chicken bones. Serve the Unstuffed Cabbage in sauce, with cabbage pieces on the side. Pairs well with a baked potato or even spaghetti. IT'S DELICIOUS!!!

Let me know how yours turns out!!!