Cabbage rolls.
Put literally a whole cabbage in a pot,
cover it with water, and let it boil about 15, 20 minutes.
When the leaves start to naturally pull away
from the cabbage, you can say,
okay, cool, let's get you out.
And I took 16, large leaves.
I took kitchen scissors.
Okay?
And I cut the tough vein
from each of these larger leaves
so that they're easier to wrap and roll.
For the sauce, we're making a tomato sauce.
It's actually two onions that I started with
and six cloves of garlic.
I've added salt and pepper as you can see
and I've added a cup of water.
So, this is nice and loose
and it literally turns the onions and the garlic to mush.
If you're like my family and you like it a little bit hot,
you can add about a tablespoon of Calabrian chili paste
or sprinkle a teaspoon or so of dried chili flake.
What I wanna tell you is I started with two onions
and six cloves of garlic
because I cooled them in this large mixing bowl, half of it.
So, this is cooked onions and garlic with just salt.
I haven't added pepper yet.
And I added one egg to this bowl as well.
And as you can see a little bit of the water
from cooking out the onion and the garlic.
Raw rice one cup
to two pounds of meat.
So, this is two pounds combined
and you can mix and match any kind
of meat or meat substitute you like.
To this mixture I'm adding about two tablespoons
of tomato paste,
one 28 ounce can of crushed, chopped, or diced tomato,
and a full jar of Passata or tomato puree,
which is three cups.
And then we're going to just let this thicken up a bit
and reduce a bit.
20 to 30 minutes.
Just let it kind of gently bubble away there.
For our meat and rice mixture we're going to use
a palm full of oregano.
We're going to add some pepper
and about a palm full of paprika,
your choice of a pinch of clove,
or about an eighth of a teaspoon
or a fatter sprinkle of allspice.
And then you're going to use two teaspoons of fennel pollen
or a tablespoon of fennel seed.
I'm gonna use fennel pollen, just blends easier.
I just give it a shake.
And I always, well usually, with ground meat add
a little Worcestershire, fat splash, about a tablespoon.
About a cup of graded parm.
Before I started rolling our cabbage rolls,
I scored the meat.
In other words, with the side of my hand, I said,
okay, that's going to be eight.
This is going to be eight.
We're making 16 rolls.
Then you score the meat across.
That's so every single time you pull meat from the bowl,
you know it's relatively the like shape and size
as the rest of your rolls.
So, as I said to you guys,
we're making three small casseroles instead of one big one,
but we put some of our tomato sauce at the bottom
and then we fill it pretty snugly with our rolls.
Two left here.
And we top it with more sauce.
And it's going to bake at center oven
at 400 degrees for about an hour and a half.
About 90 minutes.
Snug 'em in there.
Last one.
Here are our three different casseroles or one giant
of our stuffed cabbage.
There's moms.
There's Maria's.
This one is for Susan and Peter.
I'm just chopping up the parsley
to garnish everybody's dish.