Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
For once, I did not futz with the recipe
For tonight, I made Tyler Florence’s recipe for galumpkis (stuffed cabbage). And now that I think about it, I did futz with the recipe: I used a pound of lamb and a pound of pork, no beef. Otherwise, yeah, everything was the same.
Quite good, although the sauce came out watery. I suspect the only fix for that is to cook down the sauce (in the earliest stage of the recipe) until it’s like mud. The meat and cabbage give up too much liquid, so I suspect that’s the only way to deal with the problem.
Oh, and I’ve decided I like working with grape leaves far more than cabbage. Cabbage is a pain. On one of the comment threads (perhaps on someone else’s stuffed cabbage recipe), one person claimed that if you froze and thawed the head of cabbage, the leaves will come off perfectly. Hmm. I can tell you it was impossible to remove the leaves from a fresh head without a lot of tearing.
Happy New Year, everyone! Here’s hoping it will be better than 2011. At least up until that end of the world thingie.
D.
I seem to recall someone in the family (mother, grandmother)pre-cooked the cabbage leaves before stuffing them.
I peeled them off, then boiled them, then used them as wraps. Perhaps I should have boiled the whole head of cabbage? Hard to imagine that affecting any but the outermost leaves.
It shouldn’t be that hard to remove cabbage leaves, but I doubt anyone boils the whole head of cabbage since as you said, it’s likely only the outermost leaves would be affected. On the upside, your filling sounded really good. Perhaps the freezing technique is worth trying.