Plate of Cabbage Pudding
Originally uploaded by Manne.
Walking home from Canary Wharf last night I for some reason got this incredibly strong craving for "kåldolmar". Aka "Cabbage Rolls", aka "Hungarian pigs in blanket" (awesome sounding recipe to be tested later...).
To me Cabbage Rolls are right up there with classic Swedish dishes alongside Gravad Lax, Pickled Herring, Flygande Jakob and the intriguingly named Jansson's Temptation. Yes, Jansson's is that tasty.
As with so many "classic national dishes", there is nothing much Swedish about the classic Swedish dish Cabbage Rolls. The story goes that as our warrior king Karl XII was gallivanting around the Ottoman Empire (having fled a failed battle) he developed a taste for the dish "dolma" which is essentially meat wrapped in grape leaves.
Coming back to Sweden he brought his new culinary love with him and over time the dish evolved to meat wrapped in cabbage leaves, rather than the more difficult to find grape leaves. Hey, it is a cold country.
The marriage of sweet cabbage with pork mince works really well. Especially served with a slightly acidic condiment to add some tart freshness. In Sweden the obvious choice is lingonberry jam. Difficult to find in the UK, but you can find it at IKEA or at the glorious Scandi Kitchen on Great Titchfield Street in London.
Being lazy I opted for the quicker and less fiddly dish "Cabbage Pudding". Swedish: "kålpudding", learned the Swedish word for cabbage yet?
Despite the name of the dish it isn't an aberration of a dessert, in Sweden a "pudding" is a dish with egg in it, baked in the oven to make it set. Perhaps "Cabbage Casserole" is a better name in English. I'll stick to Cabbage Pudding though, just because.
It is a bit like a lasagne, but with cabbage leaves instead of pasta. Sometimes you also see rice in the mix, but me being a low carber I will stay well away from that.
Found a good and straight forward Cabbage Pudding recipe to start from at the excellent Swedish recipe sharing website Kokaihop.se.
No fancypants wrapping patties of meat in cabbage leaves or layering meat and leaves, you just mash all the ingredients up, whack it in a baking dish and bake it in the oven for a while. Less fuzzy, same wonderful flavours.
This is the LCHF variation on the recipe, so it is ridiculously rich. You might not want to serve this with potato or rice, no need and not very healthy. Go for steamed broccoli or cauliflower or just a few cherry tomatoes.
Ingredients (makes about 10 portions...)
1 kg white cabbage, shredded
1 kg pork (or beef, if you prefer) mince
1 large onion, chopped
3 dl cream
250 gr cottage cheese
2 eggs
1 tsp celery salt
freshly crushed black pepper
white pepper
5 dl vegetable stock
butter for frying
For the sauce
3 dl stock from pudding bake
3 dl cream
soy, salt, freshly crushed black pepper
Method
Fry the shredded cabbage on low to medium heat with butter in a frying pan or wok. This takes some time, you want the cabbage to go translucent and start turning a golden brown at the edges to bring out the sweetness (photo). Set aside.
Start your oven, set to 180-190 degrees Celsius.
In a large bowl (large, you need to mix all the ingredients in there) mix the mince meat, chopped onion, cream, cottage cheese and eggs. Season with celery salt, black and white pepper.
Add the fried cabbage and mix thoroughly.
Spread mixture evenly in a baking dish, cutting it up symmetrically in portion sized squares with a spatula to make it easier to serve later (unappetizing photo). In my case 3 x 4 squares made for good portion sizes.
Pour the vegetable stock in the dish. It will look like the pudding is doing laps in a pool (and not doing very well, photo...), but that's the way it should be. It will reduce in the oven, and we will use some for sauce.
Put the dish in the oven and bake for 45 minutes.
When 45 minutes have gone, carefully pour 3 dl of the stock into a small sauce pan, then bake the pudding for another 20 minutes. It is done when a lovely brown crust has formed on the peaks of the mince (photo).
While the Cabbage Pudding is finishing up, make a sauce of the stock and the remaining 3 dl cream. Add cream to stock in sauce pan, bring to the boil and reduce to about half. Season with soy, salt and pepper.
Serve with lingonberry jam and perhaps a few tomatoes. Or steamed broccoli stems and a pickled gherkin. Yum.
Actually came out tasting just as I remember it from my school days. Have a vague memory of the school version of this (which was a drab grey in colour and didn't look very tasty at all, but appearances deceived) being covered with cabbage on the top, like grated cheese on a lasagne.
While this version didn't look like my memories from school, and I sadly failed to find lingonberry jam around my flat (shocked and appalled), it certainly looked a lot more appetizing in colour and tasted absolutely delicious. Filled up my freezer too, at basically no cost. Excellent.
