Straight from the Motherland

Okay, it's not my motherland. It's my neighbor's. Her name is Fran. And it's technically her mother's motherland. Make sense?

Fran has a big heart and it comes from Poland. The motherland. She taught us how to say cheers in Polish. This guy down yonder can teach you how:

But I did not venture the 50 meters or so from my parents house to hers for a language lesson. The purpose of our meeting was for an entirely different lesson on its own. I wanted to know how these Polish women cook. Specifically speaking, how they cook gawompkes. Ga-what?!

Gawompkes.

Spelled in its most literal sense. Gah-wohmp-keys.

Gawompkes.

You probably have no idea what a gawompke is. I shall share the wealth of knowledge I have gained in a short day's time on this treat.

Gawompkes are cabbage rolls, primarily stuffed with beef and pork. Interested? Keep reading...

These little babies are a labor of love - the cabbage has to be hand-selected by said Polish woman and if said Polish woman does not approve of it's greenness, the gawompkes process is dismissed immediately and nobody can eat them and we are all sad.

Luckily for me, it's summer in the Americas and green heads of cabbages are bountiful!

There are four parts to the Gawompke process:
1. Boiling the cabbage
2. Making the meat mixture
3. Creating the sauce
4. Rollin' (in a non-illegal substance way, c'mon people)


Step 1: Boiling the cabbage

Like I said before, green heads of cabbage are essential. You'll want to find about medium-sized little guys like this one:

Size is also important (get your mind outta the gutter!) I say medium and not large because you'll want them to fit in the pot for boiling. The bigger they are, the more time they have to spend in the pot and the process is slower. You'll want to try to boil several at a time if your cooking gear can accommodate.

Cut out the core so that when the leaves cook, they can easily separate.

Get a big pot, and I mean GIANT pot, for the cabbage. Get the water raging and carefully drop the cabbage into the water.

Let the cabbage boil and slowly, ever slowly, the leaves will soften and separate from the rest of the cabbage.

Poke the middle vein of each leaf with a knife. If it feels soft and the knife can slide easily into the vein, it's ready! Take a pair of tongs and gently lift out of the pot and lay in a colinder for straining out any excess water. Continue this process of letting the leaves separate and poking for softness until you reach the white center. The cabbage has provided its bounty at this point. You may save the white part of the cabbage for another dish. Cornbeef and cabbage, plain, polish sausage and cabbage.

Ya dig?

At the end of the cooking process, save the cabbage water. Why? Because we will use it for the sauce. And also because your Polish mama says so!

Step 2: Making the meat mixture

Combine 1 cup chopped onion and 1 cup chopped celery and cook over a small skillet with butter and olive oil until soft. You will add this to the meat!

You'll want to get two pounds of pork and two pounds of beef. About 1 cup of cooked white rice will go into this mixture as well. Small grain rice works the best, we used the Water Maid brand. Combine onion/celery, meat and cooked rice into a big ol' bowl. Grab one egg and throw it in there too. I don't mean literally. That would be bad, heh.

Take your big Polish hands that you may (or may not) have and go to town combining everything. Aggression, stress or shit goin' down in life? This is the part of the recipe that you can take all of it out on the meat. It works. It's fun. I feel better.

Set that aside.

Step 3: Creating the sauce

The sauce is what brings this around town. It is the glue of the gawompkes. In a medium sized pot, mix 2 cans of tomato soup (we used Campbell's), 3 cups of cabbage water and 1 bottle of ketchup or about 26 ounces. You may add any seasoning to the sauce if you'd like but at the House of Fran, we did it her way. And simple is best. Bring to a simmer until all ingredients are combined.

Step 4: Rollin'

This is best done at the kitchen table. Get a work station set up - bowl of the cooked cabbage leaves, bowl with the meat mixture and a cutting board to work on.

Take one leaf and lay it flat on your cutting board. You may take a small knife and cut off the bottom part of the leaf to create a straight line. Fill the leaf with a large spoonful of the meat mixture. Fold over both sides of the cabbage leaf and roll up, just like a burrito. Make sure the leaf lays smooth and everything's tucked in.

There.

You just made your first cabbage baby! Aren't you so proud?

You'll make more babies - probably about 30-40. Yowza!

Keep rollin' and remind yourself to stop and take a sip of your Bloody Mary. Because those are also delicious and good cooks reward themselves with a good cocktail.

Line up the cabbage rolls and a large dutch oven roaster. Create one solid layer on the bottom and then stack on top as you go. Keep going til you run out of cabbage leaves and/or meat mixture. (Tip: if you have extra meat left over, these are great to make meatballs out of)

Grab the pot of sauce and ladle over the rolls. Save about 2 cups of the sauce to use towards the end of the cooking process.

Put the roaster in the oven at 325 for 3 hours. This is a low and slow deal. Polish lady told me so. Check on your cabbage babies every hour and ladle more sauce over the top to keep them from drying out. After 3 hours, pull out the roaster and let the babies sit awhile to cool off. But who am I joking, you'll want to immediately grab the first dish you see and load up on a few rolls.

Savory, tomato-y, meaty, Polish-y. Welcome to gawompke heaven.

Ingredients:
2 lbs. ground round 86% lean beef
2 lbs. ground pork
2 cans Campbell's tomato soup
26 oz. of ketchup
3 heads of green cabbage
1 cup yellow onion
1 cup celery
2 tbs. butter
3 tbs. olive oil