A Rosh HaShanah Miracle

 While our tzimmes cooked I steamed the leaves off of two cabbages.

I stored the unfurled leaves overnight in the fridge.

I probably ought to have been more careful in how I stacked the leaves to put them away but many of them were broken when I went to make the cabbage rolls.

The cabbage leaves are filled with chopped beef, rice for the starch, and much to the chagrin of my dear friend Ann, raisins. Ann's Polish Catholic grandma also used raisins in her stuffed cabbage. Ann is completely baffled by the idea of sweet meat. Frankly, I think that it is Eastern European by way of the Ottoman Empire. The raisins showed up in my mother's cabbage so they show up in mine I am a stickler for not too sweet in my stuffed cabbage.

In my experience, most commercial stuffed cabbage is far too sweet. I creat the balance of sweet and sour with brown sugar, crushed tomatoes and sour salt.  Yes, the meat itself is spiced, although if you put a gun to my head right now I'm not sure that I would tell you exactly which spices I put into either the chopped meat or the sauce. 

I thought about my mother as I rolled up the meat in the cabbage leaves. I thought about how she lay a bed of shredded cabbage under the first layer of cabbage rolls she put into the pot. I also thought about how she probably would have cursed a blue streak if she had discovered like I did that a disturbing percentage of cabbage leaves were badly torn.  I didn't curse, not even once, and not even in my head.

Instead, I did the best I could with what I had and turned the last bit of meat into unwrapped meatballs.

I cooked the cabbage covered on a low slow heat in the oven for several hours lifting the heavy pan in and out of the oven to redistribute the juices and to be sure that the rice was actually fully cooked.

Cooking tzimmis is fairly easy. There is minimal prep and most of the work is done by your oven while you go about your life.

Stuffed cabbage is a big and pesky job. You can only make it for people you love.

I plated two cabbage rolls and a  couple of meatballs

so you could see the end result.

My plan was to make enough to give one quart of tzimmes and one of cabbage to each of the six households that make up our usual Friday night Zoom cohort.  

When I portioned out the dishes for our friends and family each it felt like a Rosh HaShanah miracle. Despite my not measuring out the ingredients at all. Despite my not sitting down with pencil and paper to figure out exactly how much I needed to buy and make so we would each end up with a quart-- I put out six-quart containers and put a ladle-full of tzimmes into each one until the big pot was empty and the quart containers were all full. I did the same for the cabbage, six full containers, and not a drop left in the pot.