baba lessons

{kitchen window frost ferns}

Yesterday my mama & I made holubchi with my uncle, out at the acreage. We never made any cabbage rolls for Christmas last year, the last time we made any my baba was still alive. She couldn't make them, then, but she could direct us, observe us -- just as she'd sit in a chair in the garden and watch us pick the cucumbers and dig the potatoes, we'd hand them to her & she'd brush the dirt off, admire them.

It was so good to talk about her yesterday, standing in the kitchen at the acreage, sun on snow, listening to my mama and uncle tell stories. About her, her cooking, their youth. We knew we had made the cabbage rolls properly because soon the house smelled just right, just as if we had recreated her kitchen... warm rice & onion, & buttery bacon for the rolls that won't be eaten on Christmas Eve... & from peeling the sour cabbage my hands still smell a bit like vinegar & spices. Baba hands, folding up the wet papery leaves into fat little nestly pigeons, holubchi.

This is what I mean by living memory. How this kind of active reminiscence -- the conscious remembering of a person's tradition -- is a sort of continuous resurrection. I feel so grateful for for this nourishment, physical & spiritual.

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Holubchi (Cabbage Rolls)

This is a recipe that has never been written down before, but I shall try to explain how my baba made these tasty morsels. If you believe that you don't enjoy cabbage rolls, it's likely because you have happened upon either a commercially made variety or a homemade but sadly misguided little holubchi that was made boiled limp without sour cabbage or love. Those are not my baba's cabbage rolls. You will like these, because they are tangy & comforting & decidedly un-soggy winter food of goodness.

I will describe how to make enough to feed a small army, but you can easily half this recipe.
For the filling, you will need about 4 cups of rice to about 7 cups of water, in a very large pot. You should do about half water, & half chicken/vegetable stock for the best flavour... You can cook the rice the way you normally do it, but for a little less time -- it should be slightly undercooked, a bit crunchy, so as not to get too soggy when the rolls themselves are heated.

While the rice cooks, mince two onions and sauté in butter until nice & translucent. Once the rice is (under)cooked, mix it with the onions in a very large bowl.

When made without meat, holubchi are one of the 12 dishes of Sviata Vechera, the Ukrainian Christmas Eve Holy Supper. If you like to eat meat &/or these rolls won't be eaten for Sviata Vechera (which is meatless to honour the sacrifices of farm animals), feel free to add bacon. You can get what my mama says are 'bacon ends' or you can get 'normal' bacon and cook it up in butter until it's not too crispy, then crumble it up & add lots of fresh ground pepper to the mix.

You should also have procured two nice-sized heads of sour cabbage. Apparently some people are afraid of sour cabbage, & like to steam a normal cabbage til it is just soft enough to peel -- you can do this, but I highly recommend the sour one, which you can find in grocery stores fairly readily. Around here you can get a brand called Kissel which is suitably tangy. Usually the core is removed too, but if not, you should do that first. Then, start peeling off the leaves, rinsing them in cold water to remove excess vinegar. If the leaves tear, don't worry. You can 'patch' them up as you're rolling. Put any tiny pieces aside for 'scrap', and then cut the larger leaves in two so they are palm-sized, & trim the hard stem-part off. Let the leaves sit in a colander til you're ready to roll. (That's a bad pun, yes, but my family loves bad puns, so I'm keeping it there).

Rolling holubchi is a fine art. If you do it well, your skills will be celebrated far & wide, you know. (People still rave about my great-aunt Nancy's tiny, elegant holubchi). However, even larger, more unwieldy cabbage rolls still taste delicious. Take a cabbage leaf in the palm of your hand (most leaves curve a little, let the curve fit with your hand). Place a heaping spoonful of filling in the middle & roll the leaf tightly around it, folding & tucking in the sides. (You can also spread the mix thinly over the whole leaf & then roll it). Place the roll in an oven-safe dish with the ends of the leaf tucked down. Repeat until all your cabbage is gone. If your cabbage leaf has holes or tears in it, just place a small thin piece (from your scrap pile) on the inside of the role to cover it up. (Save any other cabbage scraps -- you can chop them up, fry them in butter with any leftover filling & fresh chopped tomato...)

Now, you can take your holubchi & immediately freeze them to oven-bake later, or you can cook them right away. You'll need to make some sauce -- my baba used tomato soup from a can, slightly thinned with some tomato juice. You can use stewed tomatos, too. Season your sauce with more ground pepper & some Hungarian paprika, & pour it over your cabbage rolls. Preheat the oven to ~350 degrees fahrenheit & cook covered for about 1 & 1/2 to 2 hours til the cabbage is nice & tender. I todi, ïzh, ïzh! Na zdorovia!