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Category Archives: cooking

I make! Garbage stuffed cabbage rolls edition

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I’ve made these several times now, so I thought I might post about them.

You know how sometimes you look in your freezer and you see this random bag ground meat?  And it might be labeled something like “ground pork”?  And then you defrost it, thinking you can make something with ground pork and then realize that actually, it’s dumpling filling, as in, it’s ground pork already seasoned with sesame oil, soy sauce, ginger, and green onions?  No?  Well, it happens to me.  Because…my mother.

So, I take careful inventory of my freezer, fridge, and pantry because I’m not a fan of wasting food.  I mean, yeah it happens, but I try not to let it happen.  So when I came across the bag of ground pork and also had a cabbage on hand and also had all these cans of tomato paste to get rid of, I decided to make stuffed cabbage.

I say stuffed cabbage instead of sarma or golumpki or holubky, etc because I’m taking whatever I find in my fridge/freezer and stuffing them into cabbage leaves and then cooking them in a tomato based sauce.  It’s something inspired by the various regional dishes, but it really can’t be considered part of any one regional cuisine.  They’re garbage stuffed cabbage rolls.  This is just a way for me to get rid of food in a way that most people I know will eat.

So, when I realized the bag labeled “ground pork” wasn’t just ground pork but prepared ground pork, I went ahead anyway.  It turns out that what are essentially low carb dumplings in tomato soup are delicious.  I can also say that when you replace the prepared ground pork with what were supposed to be hamburger patties seasoned with hickory BBQ sauce and bacon and stuff that into cabbage leaves, the results are also quite delicious.  Random ground meat mixed with leftover rice, onion, and garlic, and other seasonings is pretty good too.

My sauce, really soup, is the only thing that hasn’t changed much throughout all of my experiments stuffing things into cabbage leaves.  Mostly because I’m also using this time to try and get rid of this giant box of tomato paste my mother brought home once.  I’ll mix a 6oz can of tomato paste with approximately 4 cups of chicken stock and then add Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, and sugar to taste and essentially poach the rolls in the soup, normally in the slow cooker.

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And it’s delicious.

I make! Chocolate fruit tart edition

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I’ve been really bad at this.  I know.  Sorry?

So anyway, I had family and such over a few weeks ago for a week long conference thing.  It was a pretty tight schedule for them and they needed to be fed with minimal fuss because I was still be commuting to and from clib.  It really wasn’t an ideal situation.  It meant that I had to make sure everything was prepped beforehand and I could just set things out and they would do the finishing work to actually make a meal.  Sugh.  This also meant that I made A LOT of different things that week but didn’t get pictures of anything because I was almost always away.  Except for this here tart.

I made the tart on the last day when I had some time.  It was dessert for when they came back that night.  I had been wanting to make a tart for awhile now with my fancy, new rectangular pan (ok, it is not fancy, but it is new).  I’ve decided I like the rectangular shape.  The tart itself was quite easy and it’s no-bake, so it doesn’t heat up your kitchen in the summer.

The crust is a recipe from Home Cooking Adventures.  I may have gotten a Costco box of Oreos just for tart making…maybe.

The filling is a recipe from Joy of Baking.  I’ve decided I like this waaaay better than pastry cream and I’ll probably be using this from now on.  My lemon tree also very kindly provided some of the hugest lemons ever so there was lots of zest and one lemon provided more than 0.33c of juice.

The fruit topping was just fresh blueberries, strawberries, and peaches, chopped, and some fresh raspberries.

My tart pan is 13.75″ x 4.25″ x 1″ with a removable bottom.  If you follow the recipes from the site, you’ll have enough crust and filling for two tarts of that size.  I’ve also decided that if I’m not serving the tart at home, it’s a better idea to line the bottom of the pan with parchment or foil or something so you can easily slide the tart off the bottom of the pan and onto your serving surface.  This is because while I might have a ceramic knife that won’t scratch the pan, there’s no guarantee that anyone else will and I would prefer not to ruin the bottom of my tart pan.