“This recipe was the very first idea I had for this book. It was inspired by memories of a Christmas spent in Jura, France, with the rough recipe sitting in one of my notebooks for years. Impressively beautiful, chou farci, or stuffed cabbage, is such a humble show-stopper. While chou farci may have originally been created to use up leftover roast meats, mine uses sausage meat instead.
“The earthiness of the porcini really ties everything together and the sausages are just so full of flavour. The preparation may seem a little intimidating, but once the cabbage leaves are blanched and the vegetables sautéed, it really is rather quick. It is one of my favourite things to prepare in winter, when savoy cabbages are easily found and I want something ever so comforting. I make mine in a round copper pan, but even a round cake tin works well. Smaller individual parcels can be made, too, although they will need to be wrapped in twine and baked in a dish where they can fit snugly together. Chou farci is wonderful served with mashed potatoes or simply with some crusty bread on the side.”
Serves 4 – 6
Ingredients
1 savoy cabbage (approximately 800g–1 kg)
10g dried porcini mushrooms
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, plus extra for greasing and dotting
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
2 leeks, white and pale green parts, roughly diced
1⁄2 teaspoon fennel seeds, toasted and crushed
Sea salt
Large handful of parsley leaves, finely chopped
Black pepper
6 Continental pork sausages, casings removed
Recipe
Preheat the oven to 180°C fan-forced. Grease a 20cm round, deep-sided ovenproof dish with butter.
Keeping them intact, remove eight of the nicest, darkest outer leaves of the cabbage. Weigh the remaining cabbage (you will need 500g) and roughly chop. Set aside.
Blanch the cabbage leaves in a large saucepan of salted boiling water for 3–4 minutes or until bright green and pliable. Remove carefully and drain on clean tea towels.
Place the porcini in a small bowl and ladle in just enough of the hot cabbage cooking water to cover them. Soak for 10 minutes, then remove from the liquid, roughly chop and set aside. Reserve the soaking liquid.
Warm the butter and olive oil in a large frying pan over a medium heat. Add the leek, fennel seeds and a pinch of salt and cook for 6–7 minutes or until the leek begins to soften and colour. Add the chopped cabbage, stir to coat and cook for 2–3 minutes. When the cabbage begins to collapse, add the porcini and the reserved soaking liquid and cook until all the liquid has evaporated and the cabbage is quite tender, around 8–10 minutes. Stir in the parsley, season to taste and allow to cool.
Choose your nicest blanched cabbage leaf and place it in the base of the dish. Place three or four more cabbage leaves on top of the first leaf, rotating their direction to ensure they line the base and come up the side of the dish.
Spoon half the leek and cabbage mixture into the dish and even out with the back of a spoon. Take half the sausage meat, flatten it out to form a large patty-like shape and place it on the leek and cabbage layer. Repeat this layering process with the remaining leek and cabbage mixture and sausage meat.
Cover the meat layer with the remaining cabbage leaves and bring the overhanging leaves in towards the centre to enclose the parcel. Dot a little extra butter over the cabbage and roast for 45–50 minutes or until the cabbage is deep golden in colour and the centre is hot. To test, poke the centre of the parcel with a knife; if the knife feels hot, it’s ready.
Allow the stuffed cabbage to rest for 10 minutes, then invert it onto a large serving plate, being careful as it will be hot and juicy.
Good Cooking Every Day (Pan Macmillan Australia, RRP $44.99) is available now at such great Victorian bookstores as Readings, Books for Cooks and Hill of Content.