Stuffed cabbage leaves, this is a weekend dish unless you are just hanging about at home with nothing better to do than make really good eats.
Aquire a good head of cabbage, make sure the slugs haven't gotten to it if you are taking it from the garden, slugs make holes in the leaves.
Boil the cabbage in salted water until soft. Drain and seperate the leaves then set aside.
In a dutch oven melt one big tablespoon of bacon fat or butter, bacon fat rules.
Mix up the following meats, or some thing kind of close, it's your call
2 pounds each, venison, elk, buffalo, beef or what ever you have on hand, if you use bear use four pounds and forget the pork. with out bear add 2 pounds of pork , pork sholder is good. and two pounds of veal or other lean ground meat. Turkey may be a good choise.
add two fine chopped onion, I like red spanish onions. 1 good sized clove of garlic, about 2 inches thick- thats a lota garlic.
Salt, any kind of salt will do just remember the finer the grind the more salty your food will be.All in all salt is just salt, nothing special with salt from the sacred salt mines of Tibet it is all NaCL.
Pepper to taste, do not use that preground canned stuff left over from the Civil defence package issued in 1962. Use fresh ground.
and a teaspoon of Paprika, try to use fresh if it's that old can that you got from late aunt Marthas house when you cleaned out the cupboards just toss it out and forgo the paprika.
lets cook
Place two heaping tablespoonfulls of meat mixture on a cabbage leaf. Fold cabbage around the meat securely. Place cabbage rolls in bacon fat fill the bottom of the dutch oven with cabbage rolls. Simmer on low heat on stove top, Brown moderatly now cover with the following.
1 can of tomatos, chunked, squished or smashed
1 12 oz can of tomato juice
1 #2 can of sauerkraut, or one quart of your best home made saurkraut, no juice
and one to two tablespoons full of sugar
mix and pour evenly over the cabbage rolls add another layer of cabbage rolls and repeat until pot is full. simmer at least 2 hours on low heat.
The left overs are even better the next day reheated.
Serve with good boiled spuds or home made noodles and a crisp green salad. I am making my self hungry.
Bullwnkl.
