Gołąbki

Gołąbki - Polish dish

            The final cooking project inspired me to prepare one of my favorites dishes called "Gołąbki". This is a traditional Polish dish made from boiled cabbage leaves and stuffed with minced pork or beef, chopped onions and rice or barley. Usually, it baked in a casserole dish with a tomato sauce. Despite the fact that preparation of gołąbki is time consuming, this dish is pretty easy to make. On Saturday morning, I invited my friends for a dinner party, and I started preparation of this very tasty dish. Because one of my friend is vegetarian, I decided to modify the traditional recipe of stuffed-cabbage. I replaced ground meat with Portobello mushrooms and vegetables. 

Fresh fish - Whole Foods Market 

Union Sq Market

            The most challenging part of preparation was to find proper cabbage with large leaves. I went to Union Square farmers market, which is very colorful on Saturday morning. I saw many stands with fresh vegetables and fruits from local farms. I bought fresh herbs such as parsley and dill that were important ingredients for my dish.   Despite the fact that I purchased some fresh herbs and mix of green salad, I did not find any cabbages. One of the sellers told me that it is still  to early to  sell cabbage, simply because this vegetable have not grown enough to be harvested. Fortunately across 14th Street, there is a Whole Foods Market, where I found nice large cabbages from Florida. In Whole Foods, I also bought mushrooms, vegetables and jasmine rice.

Steamed whole cabbage

Gołąbki - ready to cook

            In early evening I started preparation of Golabki. I began my culinary adventure by cooking jasmine rice. The rice for filling cabbage should be sticky, therefore I used more water and I cooked it longer until the rice became to stick together. In the second pot I steamed  entire head of cabbage for about 15 minutes. The next step was preparation of stuffing. On the frying-pan I sautéed 2 chopped medium onions and 3chopped cloves of garlic in oil. Than  I added chopped Portobello mushrooms. After 10 minutes I added one cup of  mixed of fresh dill and parsley . Finally I mixed everything with rice. I added 2 rough eggs, salt, pepper, and a cup of bullion of "Vegeta".  I removed steamed cabbage from the pot and I started to separate its leaves. Finally I stuffed each of the leaves and wrapped them. In the large pot I placed layers of wrapped staffed cabbage and each layer I separated by leaves of cabbage. Finally I added juice from previously cooked head of cabbage and I leaved them to simmer for the next 30 minutes. The last task was to prepare sauce for the Golabki. I wormed up  3 spoons of butter on the frying-pan and I added one large spoon of  flour and I mixed until I got smooth texture. Than I added 3 spoons of tomato paste and cup of broth. I mixed everything until I had the texture of thick sauce. I added some salt, black pepper and a little bit of sugar.

           Diner table. Good food = happy people:)

            The dish was very successful. All my friends were impressed by the well balanced test of that dish. We served "Gołąbki" with "Albero" - sparkling white wine, made with organically grown grapes in Spain. In addition for dessert we made delicious refreshing fruit salad. All friends and myself, we had a lot of fun at this night, and the flavor of stuffed cabbage and nice atmosphere of that night will stay in our memory for very long time.

Sparkling White Wine