Cabbage Rolls in Olive Oil
The winter roll: blanched cabbage leaves around spiced rice, cooked with lemon.
- Time
- 100 minutes
- Serves
- 6
- Level
- Hard
- Cuisine
- Turkish
Cabbage rolls are the winter counterpart of the vine leaf. Where vine leaves are seasonal and depend on brining, cabbage is fresh all winter; across Anatolia the same filling is therefore wrapped in whatever leaf the season offers. On the Black Sea coast it is kale-like black cabbage, in Central Anatolia and the Aegean white cabbage.
Two things separate it from the vine leaf version: the cabbage leaf is thicker, so the cooking time stretches to fifty-five or sixty minutes, and its flavour is more neutral, so the spicing of the filling comes through more clearly. The same filling, a different dish.
Directions
- Core the cabbage and blanch the whole head for 10-12 minutes; separate the softened leaves one by one.
- Shave down the thick ribs of each leaf with a small knife.
- Soften the onion and pine nuts in half the olive oil; add the rice and stir for 3 minutes.
- Add the currants, spices, salt and sugar; cook with half a cup of hot water until absorbed. Stir in the dill.
- Once cool, place a teaspoonful on each leaf, fold in the sides and roll tightly.
- Line the pan with spare leaves and lemon slices, then pack the rolls in snugly.
- Pour over the remaining oil and lemon juice, add hot water to cover and set a plate on top.
- Cook over low heat for 55-60 minutes; cool in the pan before serving.
Tips & storage
Core it first, then blanch. Blanch a cabbage with its core still in and the outer leaves collapse while the inner ones are still stiff. Hot water entering through the cored centre evens that out.
Shave the thick rib, don't cut it out. The central rib should be pared down flat with a knife; cut it out and the leaf splits in two and cannot be rolled.
Halve any oversized leaf. A roll made from a leaf bigger than your palm turns clumsy, and its inside and outside cook at different rates.
Roll firmly, not tightly. The rice will swell; a roll with no slack bursts, a loose one unwinds. The point where the leaf just begins to resist is the right one.
Long time, low heat. Cabbage is thicker than a vine leaf; the fifty-five to sixty minutes is a genuine requirement, and cutting it short leaves the leaf tough.
Storage. Four days in the fridge; at its best on the second day.
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