"Russian Cooking" - Pelmeni (Pasta Pouches with Filling) for a decidedly un-St. Patrick's Day, St. Patrick's Day

Date I made this recipe:  March 19, 2015

Russian Cooking by Vladimir Usov; Translated by Irina Avdeyeva

Published by:  Planeta Publishers

© 1996

Purchased at Eat My Words bookstore, Northeast Minneapolis ("Nordeast")

Recipe: Pelmeni (Pasta Pouches with Filling) with Meat Filling – p. 154-156

So.  Tuesday was St. Patrick's Day, a day I would normally "celebrate" – in a cookbook way - by making something Irish.  This year though, I decided to go rogue and make something completely different because:

1)     I'm not Irish.  Not one tiny drop.

2)     My collection contains only two Irish cookbooks and I've used them.

3)     My best friend, Carol a/k/a "Tall" died three years ago on St. Patrick's Day and that changed everything.

So I decided to honor her memory by making something from a Russian cookbook because:

1)     Although she traveled the world, she especially loved Russia and visited there twice before she died.

2)     In fact, shortly after her last trip, a church near her house changed hands and is now a Russian museum.  Coincidence?  I think not! (By the way, I still have trouble imagining a Russian museum in a very Mexican-looking building but real estate is real estate so....)

3)     The night before I flew to NJ to attend an aunt's funeral, I got together with two former Calhoun-Isles Community Band band members at a fabulous St. Paul Russian restaurant, Moscow on the Hill.  Carol was a founding member of my community band and she loved that restaurant.  'Nuff said.

4)     Speaking of band, I bought this book last year at this fun bookstore – Eat My Words – while attending a book signing.  The book – Ride Minnesota – was written by another former band mate, Cynthia Sowden.  Cynthia's book is a (travel) guide for 23 great motorcycle rides across Minnesota.  If you like "bikes" (as in motorized ones), you should buy it.  Anyway, Cindy's daughter, Beth, was at the signing.  Beth lived previously in Russia.  Years back, Carol and Beth spent some time chatting about Russia.  Small world, right?

5)     Per Beth, this cookbook is very representative of "real" Russian food. So I bought it.  And after sharing a huge bowl of today's featured recipe, Pelmeni, with my friends at Moscow on the Hill, I decided that this was going to be my St. Patrick's Day dish.

6)     Except as these things go, I made this dish on a Thursday instead of St. Patrick's Day which was on Tuesday.  Oh well.

So that's the long and the short of how I came to make my non-St. Patrick's Day meal. 

As to the cookbook, most of the recipes were relatively easy but a few posed challenges mostly because of ingredients, for example, a soup with nettles (Shchi with Nettles – P. 40); Rassolnik with Poultry Offal – so NOT going there – as well as several dishes for goose.  I don't really like goose plus where would I find it at this time of year?  A few of the dishes also called for pork fat and while I supposed I could have rendered a couple of slices of bacon, that was too much work.

Other recipes though, appealed such as salads, some beef and pork dishes (without the pork fat) and the pastries.  There's a Russian Orthodox Church at the end of my block that hosts two bake sales per year and honestly, I about bought out the place the last time I went.

But.  I had my heart set on the pelmeni and there it was.  Except, of course, that there was no way I could duplicate at home what I ate at the restaurant.  None.  At one point, when Andy and I were trying to seal up these little pouches, I jokingly threatened to bring everything over to Moscow on the Hill so they could do it for me!  I'm sure they would have been thrilled.

None of the recipes gave a serving size and had I realized how many this made, I would have halved the recipe as we still have a bit leftover.  In fact, this book seems very Russian – no narratives, no helpful hints, just straight-up recipes, ingredients and cooking times.  Beth wasn't kidding when she said it was very authentic!

And because the recipes were light on the tutorial, it took us a while to figure out just how big and how thin the dough should be for these dumplings. And even then, we ended up with some that were a bit doughy that might have been better served by boiling them longer...or not.  Hard to say.  So be en garde for inconsistent dough thickness.

As to the filling, I froze the leftover filling as the yield on that was also large.  I liked the filling but wished it had just one more ingredient for balance. I'm not sure what but honestly, I kept thinking "parsley!"  Maybe that's where the St. Patrick's Day green could have come in?  I also probably got a bit carried away "mincing" the meat mixture in the Cuisinart as it ended up to be more paste than minced and that might have also thrown the filling-to-dough ratio off.  In the end, I ate more filling than the dough but honestly, I do the same to ravioli as well.  And cupcakes.  I love the frosting, love any filling that's included but not so much the cake itself.  I am sure I am not alone in these preferences.

Now ever since I started this blog, I decided that in order to even attempt to make my way through my cookbook collection, I would need to limit my recipe selection to one per book.  And I make each recipe faithfully according to the directions.  Andy's only issue with my "one and done" method for cooking for the blog i.e. making the recipe once only, exactly as directed, is that I don't allow for tweaking which may (or not) vastly improve the outcome the next time around.  But as he knows, if I were to rework all the recipes I've tried out for this blog, I would never make my way through my collection even though I am already ridiculously behind, having cooked from only 527 of my 2,060 book collection.  But when the goal is to keep cooking and keep collecting, well then it hardly matters that I've only sampled a quarter of my cookbooks.

Prep time for this dish is estimated at 1 hour and 30 minutes and I don't think it took that long but you will need to reserve enough time to make the dough, roll it out and fill it.  The filling itself took minutes!

Pelmeni (Pasta Pouches with Filling) – serving size not listed

For the dough

2 cups flour

½ cup milk

1/3 cup water

1 tsp vegetable oil

1 egg

Salt to taste

For the filling (meat)

10 oz beef

10 oz pork

 1 onion

2-3 cloves garlic

2/3 cup milk

Salt and pepper to taste

Sour cream (optional) for garnish

Ann's Note:  it's unclear whether the beef and pork should be pre-ground or not.  I bought it (raw) already ground. 

Optional fillings (untried)

Pelmeni with Fish

1 lb filleted fish

1 onion

2 tbsp butter

Salt and pepper to taste

Pelmeni with Mushrooms (untried)

5-6 dried mushrooms

½ cup rice (cooked)

1 onion

2 tbsp butter

Salt to taste

To make the dough:

Heap the flour on the table, make a hollow on top, pour in the egg, water and milk, work into a dough. At the end, add the vegetable oil.

Roll the dough out thinly, cut out small rounds (about 2 inches in diameter), or divide the dough in three even portions and roll each into a plait about an inch thick, then cut crosswise to the size of a walnut and roll out the rounds from individual pieces.

To make the Meat filling:

Mince the beef, pork, onion and garlic in the food processor, season with salt and pepper, add the milk and mix well.

Place a teaspoonful minced meat on each round, fold over and pinch the ends together to make a half-moon.  Set the prepared pelmeni aside on a floured board as you go along.  Pelmeni can be stored frozen in the fridge, if not used immediately.

Lower the pelmeni one by one in salted boiling water; serve as soon as they surface, with butter or sour cream.

To make the other fillings:

Fish - Wash and mince pike, cod or other fish fillets in the food processor together with the onion, twice; add salt and pepper, spoon over the butter and mix well.

Mushrooms – Soak the mushrooms beforehand; cook, chop finely and fry lightly.  Add salt, the previously sautéed chopped onion and cooked rice.  Mix.

"The Cookbook of the United Nations" - Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic Borsch (for the Olympics)

Date I made this recipe:  February 22, 2014 (for the Olympics)

The Cookbook of the United Nations – 350 recipes from the 126 member nations of the UN by Barbara Kraus

Published by:  Simon and Schuster/New York

© 1970

Purchased from Etsy BountifulBooks

Recipe:  Borsch – p. 98 (from the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic)

And so we bid farewell to Sochi (Russia), host of the XXII (22^nd) Winter Olympics games and I have to tell you, it's not a moment too soon.  Given that the US, and particularly the Midwest, has been sucked into the Polar Vortex this year, it has been especially egregious to see the Winter Olympics being held at a summer resort in Russia. Worse, while our temperatures sank toward -20, their temperatures soared into the 60's, causing many skiers to practically strip down to bathing suits while on the slopes or the cross country runs.  I suppose the fact that it was a "balmy" -45 in Siberia should have cheered me, but nah.  I pouted.

So I pouted and harrumphed and because of that, I wasn't really interested in watching the balmy winter games while huddled in front of my TV set freezing to death.  And then, and I just have to put it out there, there are the events themselves.  The word "snooze" comes to mind.  I know, I know—all the athletes train and train and train but honestly folks...curling?  Really?  Curling is an Olympic sport?  Not only do I not get that event, but I do not consider it at all competitive.  For me (and hubby, too), it's akin to billiards or bocce and that means it is about as exciting as watching paint dry.  Now—if the Olympic committee allowed cocktailing while curling (catchy, right?) I might just get behind the event—might.  But probably not.

Other events elicited the same snooze effect:  luge (a silly sport), skeleton (a silly but scary sport), bobsledding, snowboarding and on and on.  Maybe it was just my foul winter-weather mood but probably not:  I'm really a summer sport gal and so swimming and track float my boat more than icy games. 

And then there's skating.  I learned to ice skate when I was five and for years, I wanted to be a competitive skater.  Unfortunately for me (or maybe fortuitously), although my small town had an ice rink, we did not have the opportunity for lessons so I taught myself what I could and that was that.  No emulating my hero, Peggy Fleming, no Dorothy Hamill (camel) hairdo, no gold medal,  no podium for me.  Bupkis. 

Still, for years, I watched skating on TV and at the Olympics until I got to the point where it too, annoyed me.  Instead of all this graceful skating, we had Yoga on Ice, with youngsters bending themselves into near pretzels, we had the ice version of The Flying Wallendas (trapeze artists) as male pair skaters threw their 2-pound partners across the ice at warp speed and then we had the individual competitions where grace, beauty and most importantly, skating to the music went by the wayside, replaced by yoga, more yoga and jump after jump after jump (jive and wail).  My musical brain cannot come to grips with this disconnect.  To me, skaters spend more time prepping for the jumps and twists and twirls than they do actually skating to the music.  Every time the music cues practically scream "Now!" they're still prepping to execute their triple flip/salchow/twist/jump...whatever.  Drives me crazy.

And speaking of twirls, can we talk for a moment about the Ice Dancing "twizzles?"  Say what?  Granted, I am not up on my ice dancing but this requirement that they include "twizzles" makes me snort.  But that said—given that ice dancers are the only ice skaters who actually perform a program to the music, I give them mad props and may just start tuning in to ice dancing competitions.

 Once the joke event of the Olympics (just like synchronized swimming in the Summer Olympics), ice dancing has now been elevated on the Verme-Event-O-Meter to "not half bad."  In fact, the 2014 United States gold medalist team of Davis and White made it all seem so easy that I wanted to break out my ice skates and test my memory of all the dance moves I learned.  But I think the operative word "break" is the likely result of that delusion and so best to just leave that event to the experts.  (That said, I can do a seriously decent back toe loop.  Just saying.) 

By the way, it may amuse you to no end that I took Ice Skating 101 for a PE credit while in college.  It was a last-minute addition (and my final PE credit) but I still missed the first day of class.  But no worries for me—the instructor told me skating forwards was the goal of the first class and session two, my session, was all about learning to skate backwards.  Did I know how to skate backwards, she enquired?  Yes, just a little bit. ;) In fact, I ended up assisting her with that session so there you go.  (I also taught several people how to skate while at college and to this day have no idea how one of my roommates, Julie, managed to skate over her thumb.) And by the time we got to ice dancing routines, I was practically a gold medal contender. 

Okay, and now back to mother Russia and this cookbook.  This edition, published in 1970, contains recipes from the 126 member nations of the United Nations.  Fifty one member nations ("member states") founded the UN back in 1945 and today, there are 193.  And as you can imagine, several nations have undergone quite the overhaul since the founding and since this book was published, notably our Olympic host nation, Russia.

So, follow along with me if you can:  Until 1991, Russia and the Ukraine, "home" of today's borscht recipe, were part of the former USSR, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.  According to this cookbook and UN records however, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (capital:  Kiev) was a separate nation and member state from the USSR (capital:  Moscow).  Recipes from each member state are included but I decided the Borsch recipe from the Ukraine best exemplified "Russian" food.  (I am sure I am missing some important steps in the whole "Back in the USSR" story but such is life.)

What I love about this cookbook is that it serves up recipes and acts as a history/geography primer all rolled into one as each country gets a one-paragraph write-up.  And let me just tell you how handy that is if you are a fan (like I am) of the TV show, Jeopardy!  (Because I really stink when it comes to geography.) 

Some countries in this book, like Russia, have, of course, gone through major turmoil and in fact, things in the Ukraine ("home of our borsch recipe) right now are absolutely explosive as the citizens try to topple their current president (who by all accounts, has fled the country).   I didn't put two and two together when I selected this recipe and am sorry to hear of all this.  The UN, of course, is urging a peaceful resolution of these conflicts.

Other countries, even though they are part of the UN, are not "enjoying" peaceful relations with the US right now:  Afghanistan; Iran; Syria to name a few.  Not on the list in 1970:  Korea (neither north nor south) and Vietnam.  The exclusion of Vietnam makes sense if you remember that the US was engaged in a long-term battle with Vietnam that ended in 1975 with the fall of Saigon.  And then there's countries that no longer exist such as Dahomey (now called Benin.  It's located in Africa.  I had no idea.) or the former Czechelslovakia which divided into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.  My mom's family lives in what is now Slovakia.

And so let's turn our attention at last to this neutral dish – borsch.  What I loved about this recipe is the combination of ingredients:  sugar and lemon juice and flour and sour cream.  Sounds like a cake, right?  Fortunately, all these flavors blended well with the vegetables used (cabbage, celery, onions, carrots and beets) resulting in a truly "spring"-like dish.  I had several servings.  You should, too. Nostrovia!

Ukrainian Soveit Socialist Republic  Borsch (Spring Beet Soup) – yield: 8-10 servings

1 teaspoon salt

¼ medium cabbage, finely chopped (Ann's Note:  I used red cabbage)

1 medium carrot, cubed

1 teaspoon chopped parsley

2 cups diced celery

1 medium onion, grated

4 cups water

1 pound young beets, peeled and grated

1 clove garlic, minced

4 tablespoons lemon juice

1 tablespoon sugar

1 tablespoon flour

1 cup sour cream

Salt

Black pepper

Add salt and vegetables, except beets, to water.  Simmer for 30 minutes or until vegetables are just tender.  Add grated beets and cooked 10 to 15 minutes.  Add the garlic and lemon juice to sugar; add to soup.  Blend flour with sour cream, add to soup, and bring t a boil.  Adjust seasoning.  Serve hot.

"The Yul Brynner Cookbook" - Stuffed Cabbage

Date I made this recipe: April 6, 2008

The Yul Brynner Cookbook – Food Fit for the King and You by Yul Brynner with Susan Reed
Published by: Stein and Day
© 1983
Recipe: Stuffed Cabbage – p. 14-15

My girlfriend, Mary, when describing my blog says “It’s totally Verme. It’s not just a recipe review it’s a recipe review…and a little bit more.” (Sometimes it’s a lot more—like today’s posting-- but why quibble?!)

And so, dear reader, today’s blog posting is going to be a primer on the selected works of composers Rodgers and Hammerstein…and then a little story about Yul Brynner and the recipe I selected from his book, The Yul Brynner Cookbook – Food Fit for the King and You.

My walk down Rodgers and Hammerstein lane began a few weeks ago when my community band started rehearsing music from their musical, State Fair. Now, I’ve never seen the movie State Fair (starring Pat Boone and Ann-Margaret—if that isn’t an interesting pairing, I don’t know what is) but I know the music well having played a lot of it on the piano when I was younger from my Rodgers and Hammerstein music book. And don’t you know, the week before we started rehearsing this music, I bought a used copy of The King and I from a local bookstore. Sometimes it’s just cosmic how one thing leads to another.

The King and I really had me waxing nostalgic because it was one of the few albums my parents purchased back in the day when albums cost a pretty penny. That particular release of the album was from the 1956 film version starring Yul Brynner (now is the time to have that “ah ha!” moment) and Deborah Kerr. It should be noted that as with other musicals, Marni Nixon was the actual singing voice on the album (and dubbed into the movie), not Deborah Kerr. (You get extra credit if you know that Mari also was the voice of Maria in West Side Story instead of Natalie Wood, as well as the voice of Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady instead of Audrey Hepburn. You get super dooper extra credit if you know that Richard Rodgers, prior to teaming up with Oscar Hammerstein, was a partner of the famous songwriting team of Rodgers and Hart. No points will be deducted, however, if you are too young to know any of this…and that’s why I’m going to lay it all out for you!)

So anyway, in addition to being a cherished album in my parent’s collection, I also had the opportunity to sing along to a couple of the tunes from the album while in Sacred Heart Catholic School back in the 60’s. We did a lot of performing while I was in school as there was always a feast day to celebrate (for a particular saint) or the priest’s birthday or a new pope…or something that caused the instructors to corral all the kids in my class (and sometimes, the entire school) to put on a show. The two pieces that we did were “I Whistle A Happy Tune” and “Getting to Know You.” To this day, I recall having to enunciate the phrase “My.cup.of.tea” with just the right articulation and spacing. The nuns were nothing if not exacting.

And so I fell in love with the music and when the musical finally made it to TV, I watched it over and over again through the years until I had half of it memorized. It was just that good.

Now I wish I could tell you that the nuns also instilled a love of the most popular Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals ever – The Sound of Music – but such was not the case. You see, when the movie came out in 1965, my parents brought us to see the movie and I can’t tell you how excited I was…until three of the nuns from our school came and sat directly behind us. Directly behind us! An entire theater of empty seats and they had to sit within breathing room of my neck. Those nuns had a lot of nerve! (And rosary beads that were so heavy and long that they could take you down for the count with one lasso in 30 seconds!)

Now for those of you who experienced Catholic Schools and the nuns in the 60’s, you’ll understand the complete terror I experienced with those nuns behind me. I was so fearful that any turn of the head, any sneeze, any laugh would be reported as a serious infraction (actually, back then, everything was a serious infraction) that I dared not breathe. I didn’t move a muscle. And so yes, Sister Rita, and Sister Charlotte and Sister James Charles, you are totally and completely responsible for the fact that I am about the only person on the planet to hate—and I mean hate -- that movie! I don’t own the CD, I don’t own the DVD and although my husband and I saw the home used in the movie shoot while in Austria on vacation, we did not contemplate for even one minute going on The Sound of Music Tour. That being said, of course the nuns ran us through several of the songs for various and sundry performance purposes and so the words are now stuck in my brain. They’re not bad tunes, but you won’t find me humming them around the house. So there it is.

Other musicals from R&H fare a little bit better: I love Oklahoma ("O-K-L-A-H-O-M-A…Oklahommmmmm-a! Yeah!”), particularly “I Cain’t Say No” sung by the character Ado Annie and “Pore Jud Is Daid” sung by actor Gordon MacRae who played Curly, with Rod Steiger who played Jud Fry, chiming in on “and see-rene.” It makes me laugh just thinking about it.

A little less palatable but still kind of fun is South Pacific. My parents loved that movie and when I dared suggest that it was kind of silly, they turned on me and gave me a look that said “You are not our child.” I assured them I was. (But for the record, "Happy Talk" is a stupid song).

Next in the lineup of musicals by R&H that I like is The Flower Drum Song. One of my favorite songs out of all of the ones they wrote for their musicals is “I Enjoy Being a Girl.” Who doesn’t like the way she sings “When I have a brand new hair-do, and my eyelashes all in curl, I float as the clouds on air do, I enjoy being a girl?”

One woman who didn’t exactly enjoy being a girl but loved being a princess is Cinderella. Although Julie Andrews played the lead role on Broadway, Lesley Ann Warren was the Cinderella du jour in the 1965 version of Rodger and Hammerstein’s musical Cinderella. That movie also starred Celeste Holm and Ginger Rogers and Stuart Damon as the prince (I didn’t know who on earth he was, but he was definitely handsome, I loved him, was going to marry him and that was all that mattered. By the way, I was all of seven at the time).

I’ll always remember Cinderella not for its musical numbers (although I still know the first verse of “In My Own Little Corner”), but because the day I was going to watch it, my mother made lamb stew. I took one whiff and decided I couldn’t eat it and wouldn’t eat it and that was that.

The next thing you know (“old Jed’s a millionaire”—sorry—couldn’t help but throw in a sound bite from The Beverly Hillbillies), I’m in my room, banished like Cinderella was banished to her corner, crying for hours and hours and, of course, starving. I eventually got to see it on reruns the following year but it was never the same. To this day, I am not a fan of lamb but I am somewhat a fan of this musical even though it’s been years and years since I’ve seen it. I eventually married my own prince but that’s another story.

But alas, one of the musicals that goes toe-to-toe with The Sound of Music in the “turn that thing off” department is Carousel. There’s not much to like about a musical that features a wife-beater in the form of character Billy Bigelow. Not only is he mean to her but he gets himself killed when she’s pregnant with their daughter and the whole thing just goes downhill from there. And then Jerry Lewis had to go ruin (in my humble opinion) a perfectly decent song, "You’ll Never Walk Alone," by blubbering through that song each and every year during his Muscular Dystrophy Telethons. Just like The Sound of Music, I can’t stomach that musical or that song another minute.

But speaking of stomachs (yes, we’ve arrived at the actual recipe review), once I got on this jag of thinking about The King and I, I knew I had to pull out my Yul Brynner cookbook. Yul, for those of you who don’t know, played the King of Siam in the movie version of the musical and was pretty much remembered only for that role until the day he died even though he was in other great films, including The Magnificent Seven.

Yul had an interesting background that is reflected in his cookbook—there are Russian recipes, Japanese recipes, Swiss recipes, French recipes and Gypsy recipes—and depending on what biography you read, he has bloodlines relating to all those ethnic groups and/or lived in those countries…or he didn’t. I played it safe by sticking to a Russian recipe since everything I’ve read indicates that he was definitely Russian even if all other details are sketchy.

Now, I don’t know why but I had a picture in my head of large bundles of cabbage doused with tomato sauce but that is not what this recipe calls for. The sauce is more along the lines of a sweet and sour mixture and is most definitely not red. I liked the sauce and liked the raisins; I used golden raisins even though the recipe didn’t specify.

One thing I didn’t like was trying to pull apart a cabbage that was sitting in boiling water. The recipe says if the leaves don’t separate easily, put the entire head of cabbage in boiling water and peel as you go. Yeah, right. One set of tongs and a fork later, and I pulled the whole thing out of the water and did the deed on my counter. You’ll thank me for that instruction because otherwise you are bobbing for apples (and giving yourself a facial--but basically bobbing for apples).

I also don’t know if I would use as much butter as called for but that’s your call, not mine. It didn't add to the flavor in any way and just made the whole dish rather greasy.

Otherwise, whistle a happy tune as you tuck in this delicious dinner fit for a king.

Stuffed cabbage – Serves 4
1 medium white cabbage (Note: I only found green or red but not white so I used green. If you ask me, white and green are the same thing)
2 tablespoons butter
1 medium onion, chopped fine
1 clove garlic
1 pound ground beef
1 teaspoon dill
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon black pepper
2 cups chicken stock
2 tablespoons tomato puree
3 tablespoons raisins
3 tablespoons vinegar or lemon juice
1 cup cooked white rice
3 tablespoons butter
1 cup sour cream (optional)

Fill a large soup pot with water, and place over high heat until water boils. While water is heating, remove outer leaves from cabbage, and cut out the cabbage core. Discard outer leaves and core. Separate the remaining cabbage leaves, taking care not to tear them (riiiight), and cook them for about ten minutes in the boiling water. If the leaves do not separate easily, put the entire head of cabbage into the boiling water. Peel the leaves away carefully as the cabbage cooks. (Please see my note above on how tricky this is). The leaves should be medium-soft and translucent in appearance when you take them out of the water. Set the leaves aside to cool.

In a large skillet, melt two tablespoons butter and sauté the chopped onion and garlic clove in the melted butter. Remove the garlic clove and add 1 pound ground beef, dill, salt and pepper. Brown the meat thoroughly and when it’s cooked, drain off excess fat and remove cooked beef from the heat. Combine stock, tomato puree, raisins, vinegar or lemon juice, and sugar in a sauce pan. Bring to a boil and then reduce heat so that sauce simmers. Mix the cooked rice with the cooked beef. Preheat oven to 350.

Stuff individual cabbage leaves with 2-3 tablespoons of rice and meat filling to form cabbage rolls. When stuffing the cabbage leaves, being by placing the filling about two fingers’ width from the thinnest edge of the leaf (top edge). Then cover the filling with that exposed top edge of the leaf, and fold in the sides of the leaf to prevent the filling from escaping. Continue rolling until the leaf from the top edge to the bottom edge. Trim off any excess part of the thick end of the cabbage leaf, once the roll is completed. Rolls should look like oblong cylinders. NOTE: When all else fails, read the instructions. This recipe started out with how to roll the leaves, followed by the ingredients list, followed by the instructions for how to put the dish together. I didn’t realize until I started to write this blog posting, that I should have rolled them differently and thus ended up with quite the mess on my hands when it came time to turn the cabbage rolls (below).

When done rolling the cabbage leaves, place the rolls in a single layer in a large, shallow baking dish. Pour the hot sauce over the cabbage, and bake covered for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, turn cabbage rolls, re-cover dish, and bake another 20 minutes. After 20 minutes, turn rolls once more, dot with 3 tablespoons butter, and bake uncovered for the last 10 minutes. Serve with sour cream to garnish, if desired.