Chou Farci, Sauce Tomate (Stuffed Cabbage with Tomato Sauce)
Tag : Art of Eating
R E C I P E S
Chou Farci, Sauce Tomate (Stuffed Cabbage with Tomato Sauce)
Stuffed cabbage, chou farci in French, is an essential part of the cooking of most of Europe — Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Hungary, Romania, Russia — not to get into Asian versions. It’s widespread enough among the regions of Italy that it may qualify as a national dish, a rare phenomenon in a gastronomically disunited country. Typically, individual leaves are rolled around a seasoned meat-and-rice mixture (onion is a unifying theme) and bound with egg. But in France, the starch is generally a small amount of bread, which keeps the meat tender and helps the egg to hold it together. Chou farci is often made in small packages (in French Canada they’re cigares aux choux), but the more impressive, perhaps original form is a large sphere: the whole cabbage is partly cooked and then hollowed out and filled, with the stuffing inserted in layers among the leaves; then it’s poached for several hours in broth.
Chou farci is especially popular in southwest France, but it’s made all over the country. I first took notice when a young baker in the department of Aveyron told me it was his favorite thing to eat, and if he hadn’t had to bake his loaves he was ready to take me to a restaurant right then to eat it. The meat is usually fresh pork or sausage, for which cabbage has a strong affinity, but it can be fresh or leftover meat of various kinds — duck is especially good. Chestnuts can appear. And Provençal recipes instead of bread call for rice along with, typically, diced salt pork or sausage, or beef plus sausage, and parsley, grated cheese, eggs, and olive oil; the cooking broth sometimes is, or was, mutton. The substantial version of Grasse, known by the local Provençal name of sou fassum, includes pork liver and optionally spleen, chard or lettuce, and, in season, green peas. (A very different but still French take on stuffed cabbage is the choux verts en paupiettes in Escoffier’s often Provence-tilting Ma Cuisine — he was the son of a Provençal blacksmith. For this hors d’oeuvre, tender cooked individual cabbage leaves are wrapped around rice, chopped anchovies, and chopped hard-cooked egg yolks, sprinkled with oil and surrounded by black olives.) Chou farci can be a humble dish cooked in water, but it’s equally a dish of the rich; it appears, for instance, in Les Soupers de la Cour (“Suppers at Court”) of 1760, one of the cookbooks by the otherwise unknown Menon. An haute cuisine recipe of Escoffier’s mentions adding fat from foie gras, but modest ingredients are more in the spirit of the dish.
A Savoy cabbage, though rarely called for in older recipes, is sweeter, milder, and more tender. For the stuffing below, you can buy sausage meat or mix your own: combine 700 gr (1½ pounds) chopped pork shoulder (roughly ¼ fat to ¾ lean) with 12 gr (2 teaspoons) salt, black pepper, a hint of nutmeg, and a finely chopped clove of garlic. (For more detail, see the recipe for saucisses de Toulouse.) The outside of the cabbage is sometimes protected with thin slices of pork fat, and while smoked bacon is not traditional for the purpose, it’s very good. The cabbage is served with a sauce based on its cooking liquid. This recipe of James MacGuire’s, in an innovation, replaces the usual poaching with baking.
— E.B.
2 onions, finely chopped (about 250 gr)
lard or excellent, fresh-tasting olive oil
1 head of cabbage, preferably Savoy, weighing roughly 1 kilo (2 pounds)
700 gr (1½ pounds) sausage meat (see note above), very cold
2 large eggs, very cold
125 gr (1 to 1¼ cups, depending on the fineness) white breadcrumbs from a loaf at least a day old
a large handful of chopped parsley, optional
1 large clove garlic, finely chopped, if there’s no garlic in the sausage meat
salt and pepper
5 or 6 thin slices fresh pork belly or bacon, unsmoked or smoked (in the latter case, just 4 slices), optional
up to 500 ml (2 cups) chicken broth or stock
1 or 2 ripe red tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and chopped, or 1 cup home-canned tomatoes, strained of seeds, optional
In a small, covered pot, cook the onions gently in a little fat, without coloring, stirring a few times, until translucent. Cool the onions and refrigerate them. The onions, sausage meat, and eggs should all be very cold.
Discard the tough outer leaves of the cabbage. Using a narrow blade, cut around and discard the central core, and remove 12 to 15 outer leaves, carefully keeping them intact. Take the leaves one at a time, place each face down and, holding a thin blade parallel to the leaf’s surface, carefully cut away the protruding portion of the rib to make it flush with the rest. Blanch the leaves in plenty of boiling salted water until they are just tender, 4 to 5 minutes; plunge the leaves into cold water and drain well. Slice the remaining cabbage into narrow strips. Blanch, cool, and drain, as for the whole leaves.
Put the onions, sausage meat, eggs, breadcrumbs, parsley (if you use it), and garlic (if you use it) in a large bowl. Season with salt and pepper, bearing in mind that the sausage meat is already seasoned. Knead until well mixed.
Of the dozen or more whole cabbage leaves, set aside the 4 smallest, and lay the rest flat with the concave side up. Take approximately half the stuffing, and divide it among these large leaves, placing on each, according to its size, an approximately plum-size piece. Pat out the stuffing until it reaches within about an inch of the edges of the leaf.
Squeeze the water from the cooked cabbage strips, and mix them into the rest of the stuffing. Grease the bottom of an approximately 12-inch-wide baking dish, and place the smallest remaining leaf in the center, concave side up. On it place the stuffing-cabbage mixture, and shape that into a roughly grapefruit-size ball. Re-create the shape and appearance of the cabbage by first covering the ball with the remaining 3 plain leaves, making sure the ribs rise from the bottom. Add the stuffed leaves, one by one, starting with the smallest, distributing them evenly all around the ball’s surface, stuffing-side in, and pressing them firmly into place.
Place pork belly or bacon slices (if you use them) on the cabbage, radiating from the center down the sides like the spokes of a wheel. Pour chicken broth or stock around the cabbage to a depth of about ½ inch (1 cm).
Bake the stuffed cabbage in a 325° F (165° C) oven until a skewer inserted in the center and then touched to your bottom lip is very hot or, if you have a thermometer, until the center reaches about 165° F (72° to 75° C). That will take 45 minutes to 1 hour, when the surface will be partially brown. If at any point so much liquid evaporates that the level falls below about ½ cm (¼ inch) and risks burning, add water or broth to the pan. Baste the cabbage once or twice toward the end of cooking, especially if there’s no pork covering.
Transfer the cooked cabbage to a warm serving dish. Pour the jus from the baking dish into a saucepan, scraping and deglazing what remains with a little water if necessary. Add tomato (if you use it), and boil as needed to reduce the liquid to a thin though not watery sauce. Taste and season the sauce if needed with salt, and pour it through a coarse strainer. At the table, cut the cabbage in triangular wedges/, and spoon the sauce over them. Makes 4 generous portions.
From issue 88
The post Chou Farci, Sauce Tomate (Stuffed Cabbage with Tomato Sauce) appeared first on The Art of Eating Magazine.