Stuffed cabbage leaves

This is not the horrible stuffed cabbage that I found recipes for on the internet, that I remember from potlucks in the seventies; the mass of sodden leaves, of stodgy rice, smothered in a ketchup-like tomato sauce. I’m not sure where I remember this recipe from, but I saw a beautiful head of cabbage in the aisle of the grocery today and I thought to myself, by golly, you only live once. So I decided to try this one out blind. I wanted the cabbage parcels swimming in a delicate broth with a flavour of its own, not drowned in a sauce. Here I present the details of the successful experiment.

Take a large cabbage with plenty of dark green outer leaves; pluck the leaves off like petals from a rose and plunge them into a saucepan of boiling water. Boil them for a minute, then pour out the water and place them under the spigot with the cold water tap running over them. Steep dried mushrooms, preferably a mix of wild mushrooms, porcini, and morels, in hot water and leave to soak. In a large bowl, mix a generous amount of pork mince with two or three slices of old bread that have been pulverized in a processor or grinder. Cut several slices of smoked bacon into thin strips. Add all these together with some chopped chestnut mushrooms, two eggs and a generous amount of seasoning and mix well with your hands. Wrap the parcels by closing the cabbage leaves, stem side outwards, around a small baby’s fist of the farce and placing them in a shallow baking container or large saute pan. Thinly slice a handful of mushrooms and strew them over the parcels. Mix the steeped mushrooms and their dark brown water with a measure of chicken stock, and pour over the parcels until they are halfway or so submerged. Cover with aluminium foil or, if using a saute pan, a lid. Thrust into the oven and cook for forty minutes to an hour at 180 degrees. Ensure that the pork is cooked; the inside will remain slightly pink because of the saltpetre from the bacon. Serve with some good country bread: we had Poilane with the glorious Beppino Occelli butter from Italy. For dessert we had a mix of strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries, sprinkled with a capful of Grand Marnier, a squeeze of orange juice, and plenty of icing sugar.