Cabbage Fever

I recently posted on my Instagram page a series of pictures of making a huge batch of cabbage rolls, a traditional Finnish delicacy, and was happy to realize the rather time-consuming, handicraft dish has lost the bad rep it had when I was a kid hating the horrible cabbage smell and reluctantly picking at the one sad, solitary roll on my plate before tiring out my parents and being excused from the table.

Now, people were thrilled to see me make them, and if Instagram was a delivery service, I wouldn’t have had any left by the time we were done making them.

And I don’t blame ‘em: in the mouth of a grownup, they do taste delicious, like home, like our childhoods; like it took three to four hours to make them, including the trip to the store in the middle of the preparation process, because I was being lavish with the stuffing and ran out of it during the first oven sheet, and father was like “I’ll go, I’ll go right away!” and me and my mother were like “Great, we’ll just hang out and have some white wine while we wait” – because when one is back underneath the parents’ protective wing, it isn’t only the table manners and tidiness that fly right out the window, but also speeching skills (Yes, Lorelai Gilmore) and the correct use of language. But now I’m getting ahead of myself.

Last year, in the midst of selling my beloved childhood home, my mother made cabbage rolls as a mandatory fall dish one day, but I was so busy being angry at my family I completely missed out on the feast. I guess it is a testament of sorts of how mad I was at them really, thus leaving more for my sister and my parents, of course, but it has peeved me ever since to have missed out on our yearly traditional eating of the cabbage rolls, and I have whined at mother for months now to not make them under any circumstance this year if I’m not there.

So, this time, we made a date of it. I was to go to my parents' during one of the busiest weeks at work on my days off just for the specific reason of making the rolls together. My sister was informed of the date and time, and though she had to work that day, she promised to come and check them out right after her shift. The wonder of the cabbage rolls moves people like you wouldn’t believe.

Mother had already made all the necessary arrangements, so basically all we had to do was to get cracking. Because of the magnitude of the labor involved, I recommend you go crazy like we did and make a whole day of it.

And here’s how it goes:

We had two enormous human heads all ready for the boiling, I mean cabbage heads, why not, and my first task was to take a knife and make small but deep cuts around the foot of each head, the neck part, if you will, to ensure that once the leaves have softened, removing them one by one won’t be the most difficult task of the whole undertaking here. The idea is not to remove the neck, but just cut neatly around it so that when it is time, one can easily peel the leaves unharmed, without tearing the soft tissue, for use.

Mother, who has done this numerous times before, was already two steps ahead of me, and while I was performing my little knifehappy surgery on the poor cabbage heads, she already had the maggots I mean the rice boiling nicely on the burner. We cooked rice to feed the entire neighborhood, and still it wasn’t enough, so we needed to prepare more, and therefore I can’t really give you any real cuppa-cuppas here. As you know, it is an ingredient for the stuffing, and if you are into it, by all means, cook a lot of it. We prepared I believe two small kettlefuls of it, and used it all.

Then, the cabbage. Having learned a lesson or two from previous mishaps and hazardous attempts to lift the soaking, dripping, extremely hot and heavy heads with a pair of wooden spoons or tongs or whathaveyou from a deep pot, this time we used a large, wide wok. It made all the difference, believe me, because we were able to easily go back and forth with the two heads, softening the other while using the other, with minimum damage on hands and face and the rest of the body, because lifting the produce from a shallow dish is way different from trying to fish it from the depths of Khazad-dûm. I mean if John Rhys-Davies were to emerge in his LotR getup along with the head from inside, I would not object at all, but for whatever reason, he never has.

So a large, wide wok, and a pair of steady hands to throw in for seasoning I mean to pick up the head without dropping it and splashing boiling water all over the place. It doesn’t matter if the water doesn’t completely cover the cabbage, use a lid and let the steamy hotness do its work.

And talking about steamy hotness, enter the brain matter I mean the minced meat. If you are saving the planet this week (see Environmentally Yours), go ahead and use soy crumble or split fava beans or nothing but rice if it catches your fancy, and when discussing the recipe at work this week one of my workmates asked if one could use grated carrot and onions or zucchini and garlic or the like in the mix. Of course you can! What are we, kitchen nazis? I mean Julia Child, I love you, I really do, but sometimes a little creativity is the key to a successful dinner, not to mention more fun than being anal with the order and amount and specificity of what goes where, and – oh, I guess this is why I can’t really boast with my baking abilities. Sorry, Julia, you are absolutely right. 

But so was my workmate Ricci. Try new stuff if meat isn’t your thing! But as for my family, meat most definitely is a thing, and far be it from me to start bitching about the planet when I hardly ever see the lot of them anymore, and let’s face it, perhaps I was running a little low on the protein intake that week and was dying for some Evil Dead on the table. Whatever the underlying philosophy and connotations and contemplative reasoning, minced meat was what we had and used.

So, while the head is softening in the wok and the rice is done and rinsed with cold water – or not, if you feel like burning your fingers after all, clear a space, the kitchen table is where I did my rolling of the balls, to paraphrase the Queen, Kate Bush. Preheat the oven to let’s say 200 C/390 F. Take out the oven sheet, or sheets, if you are going for quantity, and if you have two heads, quantity is what you are going for, and make room for the rolling procedure - because I was the self-appointed Holy Roller that day I most definitely needed room to roll - and get a large batter bowl.

Dump the brain matter I mean the meat, raw, in the bowl. Ditto the maggots I mean the rice. Season. Because we wanted to make the rolls the traditional way this time, we only used salt and black pepper, but once again, the sky is really the limit here. Chili it up, or curry, or herb, chop those onions, or cloves of garlic, if you want. Then, with clean hands, dig in. If you want to be Mr. or Ms. Fancy Pants, I guess you can use a spoon, but I kind of love the feeling of the meat batter in my fingers, and besides, it does mix better if you are not afraid to get your hands dirty. And it gives you the perfect excuse to get away from having to loosen the leaves from the cabbage head. You know, my hands are all covered in meat, dad, you do it.

And this is really where it comes in handy to have at least one other person around to help make this dish. Me, mother, and father made three, and what we did was form a bucket brigade from the burners to the kitchen table, where I was ready with the batter bowl and wrapping board and oven sheet. Father was the Cabbage Head Remover and Replacer from and back in the wok, mother gently peeled the leaves and one by one handed them over to me, and I was the Stuffing Girl.

I am nothing if not a great packer, some of you know I have moved close to twenty times in my lifetime, so, I am extremely proud to say, my cabbage rolls were so tight and tidy we didn’t need any toothpicks or string to bind the bundles. In case you are not a professional bundle maker, the tooth pick way is a great alternative. The string, though; I think we can leave that particular method to the late grandparents. At least to me it made absolutely no sense at all, and listening to mother tell the story of my grandmother’s unnecessarily laborious cabbage-on-a-string rolls I was laughing so hard I needed to stop wrapping for a while. This I say with the sweetest and adoring love possible for the incredible woman; it is just that times, they have a-changed, fortunately, and maybe I was a little high on the chipper family time anyway, not to mention the glass of wine I was having – the Chef’s Glass with Each Task, the chefs of the world know all about this.

When you’ve got the oven sheet full of neat cabbage rolls - be sure to place them side by side by the way; like sardines, or codependents, they don’t need any space – and the oven is hot, slice a few nice chunks of butter on top of the rolls. Also, traditionally, this is when one would pour the syrup on top of them. Alas, syrup, like red wine, is on my list of forbidden stuff after my not-so-brief stint with prescription drugs a few years ago when I was suffering from the meanest case of insomnia known to man. The heartburns, the residue from the sleeping pills, my gift with purchase if you will, are to this day so bad I have forsaken everything that even hints at them, and, for this dish, used slug slime I mean liquid honey instead. You can leave the whole sweetening part out if you want, but I have tried it, and I think it is a mistake.

So, liquid honey and butter chunks, and in they go for about an hour. Point: the idea is to pour the syrup or honey freely on top of the rolls, not exactly baste them or bathe them in it so that you end up making a version of oven-made dumpling soup out of cabbage rolls. In moderation is enough. When the leaves are beginning to brown, in about half way through, take the sheet out of the oven and turn the rolls over. See now this is where the capability to make tight and neat bundles is tested. The roll is not supposed to come undone when you have it upside down on the sheet, but to hold its form.

Also, there is no need to add butter or honey, unless you absolutely feel like it is what you want to do. Turning them over and getting the sheet back in the oven is plenty, although I am sure there are other cabbage roll makers out there who are enraged by my skimping. I don’t know. Maybe I am just growing old I mean mature and trying to at least save some of my arteries for future use instead of just letting it all go completely. Of course, one can quote Julie and Julia here and argue that one can never use too much butter in anything, and I guess there is a truth of sorts there, too, but once more, dear Julia, to each their own, and if the rolls aren’t exactly lousy with deadening richness, one can consume more of them at once and not feel totally hung over after dinner.

I should know. I ate eight huge rolls in one sitting once they were done.

Traditionally, one serves the rolls with plenty of blood I mean lingonberries or lingonberry sauce on the side, and this is how we ate our dinner, too. And after all the hard work, one really deserves to take in the delicious taste of the dish in all its subtleties: the sweetness and richness of the rolls contrasting with the crisp and sour taste of the berries. This is not something to whip up in twenty minutes. It will take time and patience, but it is worth it. 

Preparing the dish took us even longer than usual this time, since, as I hinted in the beginning of the story, or not so much hinted as plain said, we ran out of stuffing after the first sheet was ready to go in the oven, and we still had the other cabbage head waiting in the wok to be peeled and used, so father ran to the store to get more hamburger while mother cooked another batch of rice and I, Stuffing Girl, lounged with my Task Glass and watched the world go by. Since cooking rice is really a no-brainer, mother was able to quickly join me on the couch, and there we potatoed, smelling of cabbage and happy feeling, when father returned triumphantly with another half-kilo of meat.

My sister arrived at dusk, a while after we had already eaten, but she marveled dutifully and with great enthusiasm at the beautiful neat rolls and complemented us for a job well done, commenting even on the fantastic, overwhelming cabbage smell that filled the whole apartment, and ended up having a couple of rolls with her coffee, since we had waited to have dessert coffee with her, and mother having momentarily misplaced the bag of eyeballs I mean cookies intended as dessert, what else was there to have? (We later found the cookies from behind the coffee maker under some discarded, ragged cabbage leaves, the chocolate icing having deliciously melted a little, and it turned out it was really I who had misplaced the bag in my frenzied cabbage rolling rampage, but let’s not get dwell on every single detail.) 

So there we sat, the fabulous set of cooks and eaters, stuffed and sanguine and tipsy, like a true family of vampires after a blood-sucking fest for the ages, and in my sister’s case, a roll in hand and coffee mug in the other, just the way Gilmore Girls intended, with a huge Tupperware container full of rolls to go on the coffee table in front of her, because this was why we had made so many of them: to share. Father estimated that by inducing from how many rolls were on the untouched second sheet, we had made about forty cabbage rolls. From enormously large cabbage leaves. Now that’s a lot of rolls.

Father kept complaining that his email account kept freezing and was there something my sister could do about it, and she said he really needed to report to the twenty-first century and just get a damn smart phone already. Mother produced her needles from the basket and continued on a sock, asking me if I had shopped for anything this fall at the Stockmann grand sale week. I kept changing positions on the sofa, playing dead in various ways, asking my sister if she had tried Kiehl’s Night Eye Cream because it kicked ass and chiming in on the smart phone thing when my tongue wasn’t lolling out in a death grimace and answering mom that I hadn’t even stepped inside Stockmann this year, go figure, and I didn’t even mind that no one was paying any attention to my wonderful Dead from Overeating -scenes and continued to create them anyway just because I was having fun.

The leisurely murmur of our voices, the rare moment of family intimacy after such a long time of difficulty and fighting. Did cabbage rolls save my family? Yes, I believe they did.

To quote a few of my favorite family movies here like a good vampire: Great! The blood-sucking Brady Bunch! Bon appetit! It’s finger-licking good.

A Halloween Special. I was asked to share the recipe of the cabbage rolls on Instagram, so one may say this is, in a way, a requested piece. Have a great time making the rolls, friends!

Kathryn Bigelow, Near Dark, 1987.

Joel Schumacher, The Lost Boys, 1987.

Nora Ephron, Julie and Julia, 2009.