Happy New Year

Happy New Year to you (both).  :)

I hosted a New Year's Day lunch for my siblings yesterday.  The main dish was cabbage rolls, with sides of black-eyed peas, candied sweet potatoes, fried okra, slaw, and garlic cheese biscuits.  The cabbage rolls were my own adaptation/combination of the many recipes I found, and I have been encouraged to write the recipe down before I forget what I did.  So, here goes:

Cabbage Rolls - makes 15 - 20 rolls

1 large head of cabbage
2 pounds of ground pork sausage (the breakfast kind)
1 box of Uncle Ben's 5-minute Wild & Brown Rice
1 tbs. olive oil
1 large onion, finely chopped
6 cloves of garlic, finely minced
1 stalk of celery, sliced
2 large cans of diced tomatoes
1 bay leaf


Oven 350
Boil a couple of quarts of water.  Remove the core from the head of cabbage.  Place the cabbage upside-down in a bowl.  Pour the boiling water over the cabbage and let it soak for 10 minutes, then drain it, right-side up so that the water runs out.

Meanwhile, sautee the chopped onion, garlic and celery in the olive oil.  Set aside to cool.

In a large bowl, combine the raw sausage, the UNCOOKED rice mix, and HALF of the sauteed vegetables.  I added part of the seasoning from the rice package, as well.

Peel off a cabbage leaf, pat it dry with a paper towel, and cut out the large, tough vein.  (If the leaf is large, you can cut it in half length-wise and make two rolls out of one leaf.)  Overlap the cut edges (if you're using a whole leaf from which you have cut the vein).  Take a little handful - about a scant 1/4 cup - of the sausage/rice mixture, shape it into a loose cylinder, and position it at the bottom of the cabbage leaf.  Roll the cabbage around the meat once, then fold the sides over the ends of the meat and keep rolling.  (Don't sweat it if the sides aren't wide enough to fold over the ends, just roll it up and move on.)  Lay the roll in a pan, seam side down so that it doesn't unroll.  Continue with remaining leaves/meat mixture.

Now make a tomato "gravy" to pour over it as follows:  Add the diced tomatoes, liquid and all, and the bay leaf to the remaining sauteed vegetables.  Simmer for 5 minutes or so, then pour it over the cabbage rolls.  Add enough water (or broth or stock or tomato juice) to almost cover the rolls.  Cover the pan with a lid or foil.  Bake for about an hour.

(Some recipes said that you can cook these entirely on top of the stove.)

When I took my rolls out of the oven, I uncovered them and dipped off most of the fat. 

I made these a day early - since it was an experiment, I wanted to give myself time to invoke "Plan B" if they turned out horribly - and re-heated them at 300 degrees for another 45 minutes before serving.  They were fine re-heated.