Stuffed Cabbage and the Love of the Meatball

I may be on a Hungarian-style culinary bender or it may be the fact that the farmshare bounty that keeps arriving on my doorstep (courtesy of a truly generous mother-in-law) contains more cabbage per week than most people see all year, but I decided to make stuffed cabbage for dinner.

Stuffed Cabbage was probably my favorite food as a child. I hardly noticed that a vegetable was as much a star of the dish as the protein. It was so good, I probably wouldn't have cared.

I love to make it as an adult because of the meatball. (Well, stuffed cabbage is really not much more than a softened cabbage leaf that steams a meatball of sorts enclosed inside.) Anyone who has worked with me knows I love to make meatballs.

Meatballs, you see, were the bane of my existence during a moment of my restaurant career. I had to make meatballs 20, 30, even 50 pounds at a time for a high-volume Italian restaurant. Each meatball had to be rolled to perfection by hand. When your prep list is 3 pages long, seeing 30 pounds of meatballs on your worksheet can be a real downer if you don't have the right frame of mind, because it is so labor-intensive it is most definitely going to slow you down. When you are still working your prep list after dinner hour has started you are really sunk...but a big batch of meatballs can put you in that awful predicament.

But I learned to love the meatball...by eating a perfect one. I don't even know now who made it, but it was seasoned correctly, shaped perfectly, and cooked to just the right tenderness. It was, in fact, a revelation, however humble its origins. I thought to myself: "My God...this is worth all the measuring and forming and rolling and shaping." I made it my quest to give everyone the same meatball experience I had. And with a little focus and love, I could make those meatballs faster and better than I ever thought I could. I was getting out of work on time to boot!

I know this sounds a little ridiculous, but it's true. If there is anything I put my soul into when I cook, it's a meatball. I want anyone I am serving to feel what I felt with that perfect meatball.

Back to stuffed cabbage.

I had some bastardized version of my mother's or grandmother's recipe the first time I made stuffed cabbage and my results were so-so at best. I was crestfallen. How could I fall short on my favorite childhood entree?? I HAD to get this right.

So I started looking at the stuffed cabbage as a trumped up meatball. I put some additional ingredients in that I feel are essential to an outstanding meatball experience. I streamlined the stuffed cabbage cooking liquid to include things that are really compatible with the flavor of a good meatball. I wrapped those meatballs in the cabbage with the same love a mother swaddles a new babe. Honestly.

And now I am quite sure my stuffed cabbage would make my grandmother proud, though it's just a little different from her version.

So much of good cooking is nothing more than focus and love. And there's not much I love more than a good childhood memory and a good meatball.