Week 46 - Seasonal

I love fall seasonal dishes, whether it's a warm, hearty stew or something often found on the table at Thanksgiving, like mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, or stuffing. I wasn't sure what to make for this challenge, but like some of the other challenges, somehow it found me instead. We had ordered delivery from Whole Foods, requesting a Napa cabbage to make some moo shu, and they messed up and sent us a green cabbage instead. Although we could have used it in the same dish, we had coleslaw mix left over from something else that worked better, so we were then left with a green cabbage. Not wanting it to go to waste even though we received it in error, what should we do with it? Cabbage rolls!

Cabbage rolls were one of those things we always thought about doing, but knew it would be a lot of work. We found a recipe on Pressure Cooking Today that seemed to make it a little simpler because it used the Instant Pot, but we knew this had to be a weekend project because it would take at least a couple of hours. (It took more than 3 hours.) Originally, I was thinking it could be a seasonal dish because it was warm and soupy and filled with comforting flavors, but after reading the Wikipedia entry, it seems like a common dish that many cultures serve near Christmas. Definitely appropriate for the seasonal challenge! Also, although cabbage rolls turn up in many cultures, these seem to line up most closely with the Polish version described there (meat and rice stuffed in a cabbage leaf with a tomato-based sauce), which is what we were thinking when we made it as well.

We only made a few variations to the original recipe, but no ingredients photo this time because we were just trying to get a lot of moving pieces going and didn't really have space on the counter with the Instant Pot already out. Also, even though I was sort of considering this for the seasonal challenge before we made it, I didn't actually decide on it until partway through. Anyway, the ingredients we used were:

For the cabbage leaves and filling:

- 1 box of Trader Joe's chickpea and red lentil risoni ($2.99)

- 1 large head of green cabbage (technically $0 because it was given to us in error, $1.77 if we had purchased it)

- 1 yellow onion, finely chopped ($0.79)

- 1/2 head of garlic, minced ($0.33)

- salt and freshly ground black pepper ($0.03)

- 1 package of Impossible Burger ($7.99)

- 1 flax egg ($0.08)

For the sauce:

- 2 tbsp butter ($0.18)

- 1 yellow onion, chopped ($0.79)

- 1/2 head of garlic, minced ($0.33)

- 2 cans (14.5 oz) of diced tomatoes with juice ($1.78)

- 8 oz can of tomato sauce ($0.50)

- 1/4 cup white vinegar ($0.10)

- large spoonful of chicken bouillon ($0.25)

- garlic powder ($0.03)

- freshly ground black pepper ($0.02)

- a tsp or so of Worcestershire sauce ($0.08)

- cornstarch and cold water ($0.10)

The total cost of the meal was about $18.14, which covered dinner for the three of us (although B didn't eat a ton of it) plus a bowl of leftovers for another day. Not the cheapest meal, but using Impossible Burger pretty much guarantees that since it's $8 by itself. Using ground turkey or some other ground meat would probably knock that total under $15, a more standard amount for our dinners, but we like splurging with Impossible Burger every once in a while.

To make the cabbage rolls, the first step was to get all of the components in motion. We made the risoni on the stove, cored the cabbage and then boiled it for 10 minutes, and then started on the sauce (melting the butter, adding the onion, then the garlic, then everything else other than the cornstarch-water mixture). This sounded simple, but as we expected it to, the cabbage preparation part took a while. Once it boiled (and cooled a little), we had to pull off the outer leaves. After boiling the rest some more, cooling and pulling off more leaves, some of the remaining leaves from the inside were chopped up and added to the sauce when it was done. That was the instruction from the recipe, although if I were to do this again, I would add all the remaining cabbage into the sauce. It came out so tender from the Instant Pot that I would definitely just throw it all in there if there were cabbage remaining. The last piece of preparing the cabbage leaves was something A picked up from YouTube, which was to pare down the stem a little bit to make them easier to fold and roll.

Once the cabbage leaves were ready, it was time to make the filling by combining about 60% of the risoni, the Impossible Burger, onion, garlic, salt, pepper, and the flax egg in a large bowl. When the filling was ready, it was time to roll! I don't know why I thought this would be the most time-consuming part. Once we got the technique down (add a couple tbsp of filling to the bottom stem part of the leaf, roll up once, roll both sides in, then keep rolling away from you, putting it seam-side down on a plate/cutting board when done), it went pretty fast. I also found it really meditative to do.

We didn't end up using all the filling in our 14 rolls, so the rest of it I just threw on the stove and made "burgers" to snack on while the Instant Pot worked. Since the filling was designed to be eaten inside cabbage with the sauce, it wasn't the most flavorful, and I probably liked it more than everyone else in the household. Maybe I just like the taste of Impossible Burger plain. Snack was that, plus some of the leftover risoni, plus some of the leftover cabbage which I just stir-fried for a little while.

Back to the cabbage rolls. It was time to fill the Instant Pot, and here, we followed the instructions carefully to make sure everything would cook correctly. We put the rack on the bottom of the pot, then added a cup of water, and put the first layer of rolls on the rack. It only fit six, but I did pick the six biggest ones. Next up was to cover them with about 1/3 of the sauce. The second layer of rolls was then added, alternating the direction from the first layer. The rest of the sauce was added on top and around the sides of the rolls, being careful not to go past the fill line. (We were close, but not past it.)

We set the Instant Pot to high pressure for 18 minutes, and then followed the instruction to unplug it and let it naturally release (although we did 10 minutes instead of 15) before doing the quick release. It took quite some time to come up to pressure, and the quick release sprayed more water out than usual, so maybe we should have waited the full 15 (but it was late and we wanted to get going).

Once the rolls were moved to a separate plate and the rack removed, the Instant Pot went back on, but this time on the saute function. The cornstarch-water mixture was added (twice, so no idea how much I used) to thicken the sauce while it boiled for about 10 minutes. We topped the cabbage rolls with the sauce, and dinner was finally served (near 11 pm)!

So, how did the cabbage roll experiment go? Really well, especially considering it was our first time making them. I think the only things we would do differently next time (besides starting earlier, as we're still getting used to estimating total time when using the Instant Pot) would be to: (1) season the filling a little bit more, maybe adding some garlic powder or other seasonings, and (2) add all of the remaining cabbage (chopped up) into the sauce. The tomatoes and cabbage in the sauce were so tender, and the flavor of the sauce was like tomato soup. So comforting for the season. The cabbage leaves were also super tender, and the whole dish really worked and would be so good with those two slight modifications. I don't know when we would make this again because of how labor-intensive and time-consuming it was (so I'm counting it for Poland for the AtWCC now), and also because B doesn't currently seem to be a fan of cabbage or Impossible Burger (has only really eaten it 1/4 of the time we've served it), but we (A&M) were really satisfied with the final product.