Doris and Jilly Cook » vinegar

Stuffed Cabbage (or, Cabbage and Pork, Part II)

dorisandjilly — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 15:50:44 +0000

Y’all know I love my cabbage and pork. Once again, the picture doesn’t really do this meal justice. Imagine succulent cabbage melted onto the form of a giant pork meatball, equally sweet and sour. This recipe had the additional advantage of using up a variety of items filling my refrigerator, freezer, and winter pantry: homemade canned tomato sauce, frozen ground pork, eggs, cabbage, onion, garlic, thyme, rice, and lemons of dubious age. The lemons came from the local vegetable truck; the rice from Whole Foods; everything else either came from the CSA or I grew it myself. (OK, I bought the sugar and vinegar and salt.)

Now that I feel all virtuous in the sourcing, there is a guilty confession. This recipe was adapted from Sharon Lebewohl and Rena Bulkin’s The 2nd Ave Deli Cookbook. This is a decidely Jewish cookbook—and my use of pork makes it decidedly treif. What can I say? I like my pork. Let’s think of it as an “eastern European” recipe and move on. My apologies to my in-laws. Aside from the pork, the only other change is the use of the pressure cooker rather than the nearly two hours their version needs to cook on the stove.

Stuffed Cabbage in the Pressure Cooker

For the stuffing:
1 lb ground meat (preferably beef or lamb, or, if you’re obsessive, pork)
3/4 c. uncooked rice
1 c. chopped onion
2 eggs, beaten
1/2 c. water
2 cloves garlic, pressed
2 t. salt
1/2 t. pepper
some thyme

For the cabbage:
1 large cabbage, cored

For the sauce:

2 c. tomato sauce
1 1/2 c. chopped onions
1/2 lemon, chopped into large pieces
1 c. white or brown sugar
1/2 c. white or cider vinegar
1 c. water

What to do:

1) Core the cabbage by making a series of cuts with a long, sharp knife:

2) Bring a very large pot of water to boil. Plop the cabbage in. Boil it for a few minutes, remove, and carefully peel off as many outer layers as you can and set the leaves aside. Repeat until you have at least 12 whole cabbage leaves. Then set the rest of the cabbage aside.

3) Meanwhile, while you’re bringing the water to a boil, combine all of your stuffing ingredients in a large bowl. Combine the sauce ingredients in a separate bowl.

4) Cut out the hard part of the central spine from a leaf of cabbage and place 1/4 of stuffing in the middle. Roll it up:

5) Place your cabbage rolls in your pressure cooker:

6) Chop up the remaining cabbage, add it to the sauce mixture, and pour over the cabbages.

7) Close and lock the lid. Cook at 15 lbs of pressure for 10 minutes. (For a refresher on pressure cooker basics, see this post.) Let the pressure drop of its own accord.

You’ll be eating it for days. It’s shockingly filling but utterly delicious.

Vinegar Update

dorisgoat — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 00:50:41 +0000

Loyal readers may recall that one of our earliest posts dealt with making your own vinegar. I have been remiss in posting the promised update. As you can see, the gallon jug on the left contains a slightly opaque substance that used to be apple cider. It’s hard to see in the picture, but there’s a thin layer of bacteria about the thickness of a sheet of plastic wrap floating on top of the liquid. This is the mother: a thin layer of bacteria that eat alcohol and produce acetic acid, or vinegar, as a byproduct. It’s starting to smell a lot like vinegar, but the taste test says that it’s not quite there yet. I must confess that tasting it was a leap of faith, but I am happy to report that it tasted actually tasted pretty good—just like a sip of hard apple cider seasoned with some vinegar. Give it another couple of weeks, and we’ll have vinegar.

Now, the jar on the right is a true experiment, inspired by a recent post on Local Kitchen and another blog that I unfortunately have misplaced (if it’s yours, please speak up!). I’ve been told that you can make vinegar not only from fruit juices, but also from fruit scraps. So, last weekend when I made apple chutney, I saved all the peels and cores and stuck them in a giant jar with about a quart of filtered water. The first stage of fermentation (from fruit juice to alchohol) requires anerobic bacteria, so I’ve sealed the jar. Once it stops bubbling, I’ll assume that the alcohol production is done and will move to a cheesecloth cover, as the vinegar-producing bacteria—unlike the alcohol-producing bacteria—require air. This apparently may take many months, so stay tuned.

When Good Cider Goes Bad

dorisgoat — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 00:25:50 +0000

What you are looking at is the sludge at the bottom of a gallon of cider I found in the back of my fridge. Tasted great while it lasted, but we weren’t quite quick enough to enjoy it. It turned the corner from fizzy to hard to ornery some time ago. Jilly tells me, however, that I should embrace the disgusting gunk. Apparently it even has a name—it’s a “mother”—and is chock full of good bacteria that will turn my cider into vinegar, if I let it. She advises me to just cover it up with some cheesecloth and wait anywhere between two weeks and two months. When it smells like vinegar, it’s done. Updates next week.