Lahanodolmades
The less-known cabbage variant of a nice Greek recipe. A fast version that precludes the wrapping is possible, but the wrapping does add to the dish.
Ingredients
Main
- 1 big cabbage, or 2 medium ones
- 700 gr mince (preferably beef, but pork also works)
- parsley, chopped
- 1 cup rice
- 2 onions
- 0.5 cup olive oil
- salt, pepper
- Dill (a bit)
- Anise seeds (a bit)
Avgolemono cream
- 4 large eggs
- 25 gr butter
- 3 lemon juice
Preparation
Boil water with salt in a large pot.
Cut a hole in the cabbage base to allow water to enter. Boil the cabbage for 5 min on one side, and repeat on another side. Remove from water.
Remove the leaves that easily come apart, and boil again if needed.
For each leaf, remove the hard base and but on the bottom of the pot, so that the dolmades do not burn. Cut the large leaves in half.
Prepare the mince. Combine parsley, onions, half the oil, rice, salt and pepper in a bowl.
Add mince to each cabbage leaf and close tightly. The aim is for them not to open when boiling. It is possible to stack 2 layers of the dolmades in the cooking pot.
Anise and dill go well in the soup too. Now would be the time to add them.
Once done, add water until they are all submerged, and add a plate on the top to stop them from unwrapping while boiling. Boil for 1 hour.
When done, add the avgolemono. It is made by combining its ingredients as if making an omelette. However it cannot be added immediately to the food as it will coagulate. Instead, keep adding small amounts of the liquid of the food into the mix while continuously stirring. Once it warms up this way, you can put everything back into the cooking pot and mix by moving the cooking pot around.
The food goes well with feta cheese.
Tip: if you have limited time, you can make the ‘bored cook’ version of the dish, which replaces individually wrapping pieces of meat with layers of cabbage and meat in a bit pot. The flavour is not significantly different and it is much faster to make.