Polish cabbage rolls with buckwheat and mushrooms: meat-free, for Christmas Eve, in tomato-mushroom sauce
The Lenten version of gołąbki, traditional on Christmas Eve in eastern Poland: cabbage leaves wrapped around buckwheat with button and dried forest mushrooms, braised in a sauce of tomatoes and mushroom soaking water. There is no meat, and no shortage of flavour. Twelve pieces, for Christmas Eve or an ordinary winter dinner; better still the next day.
Your own work in that: 1 h.
- Mushrooms soaking 30 min
- Cabbage 20 min
- Filling 25 min
- Rolling 15 min
- Braising 60 min
Step by step
0 / 8 done
Soak the mushrooms and cook the buckwheat
Cover the dried mushrooms with 300 ml warm water and leave 30 minutes. Rinse the buckwheat, add 600 ml salted water, bring to the boil, cover and cook over the lowest heat 10 minutes, until the water is absorbed; take off the heat, uncover and loosen with a fork. It should be loose and slightly firm: it finishes cooking inside the rolls.
Ingredients: 300 g buckwheat groats · 30 g dried forest mushrooms · 400 g button mushrooms · 2 pcs onions · 40 g butter · 1 pcs egg · 1 tbsp dried marjoram · 1½ tsp salt · 1 tsp black pepper
TipBuckwheat cooked until soft collapses into mush during the braise. Al dente is no whim, it is the condition for rolls with texture.
Mushrooms in water, buckwheat loose
Blanch the cabbage
Cut the core out of the cabbage with a knife, 5 cm deep. Lower the head into a large pot of boiling salted water and cook 3–4 minutes; as the outer leaves soften and loosen, lift them off with tongs onto a colander. Repeat until you have 12–14 large leaves plus a few smaller ones to line the pot.
Ingredients: 1 pcs white cabbage · 1 tbsp salt
TipA cabbage frozen for a day and thawed has soft leaves without blanching. On Christmas Eve, when every pot is busy, that trick is worth remembering.
Core out, leaves come away a few at a time
Shave the leaf ribs
Lay each leaf on a board and shave the thick rib at the base with a knife, cutting flat, almost level with the leaf. A thick rib won't roll and stays hard after an hour of braising.
Rib shaved flat, the leaf rolls
Make the filling
Lift the dried mushrooms out of the water and chop finely; keep the water, poured off above the sediment. Chop the button mushrooms finely, dice the onion. Soften the onion in the butter 5 minutes, add both kinds of mushroom and fry over high heat until the water evaporates and the mushrooms brown, about 8 minutes. Mix with the buckwheat, egg, marjoram crushed between your palms, salt and pepper. Taste: the filling should be boldly seasoned, because the leaf and sauce tone it down.
Ingredients: 300 g buckwheat groats · 30 g dried forest mushrooms · 400 g button mushrooms · 2 pcs onions · 40 g butter · 1 pcs egg · 1 tbsp dried marjoram · 1½ tsp salt · 1 tsp black pepper
Mushrooms browned, buckwheat, egg, marjoram
Roll
Put about 3 heaped tablespoons of filling (about 100 g) on the lower part of a leaf and shape into a log. Fold the sides in, then roll tightly from the base upwards. Set seam down. This amount makes 12 large rolls.
Sides in, tight, seam down
Pack the pot and add the sauce
Line a wide pot with the small and torn cabbage leaves: they protect the bottom from catching. Pack the rolls in tightly, in one or two layers. Mix the passata with the stock, mushroom water, bay leaves, allspice and sugar, pour over the rolls so the sauce comes nearly to the top. Cover with the remaining leaves.
Ingredients: 500 ml tomato passata · 500 ml vegetable stock · 2 pcs bay leaves · 4 pcs allspice berries · 1 tsp sugar · 100 g sour cream, 18 %
Leaves underneath, rolls tight, sauce nearly to the topBraise slowly
Bring to the boil, then lower the heat to minimum and braise covered 60 minutes. Or in the oven: 180 °C, covered, 75 minutes. The leaves should be silky soft and the sauce thickened. At the end you can stir the sour cream into the sauce.
TipCabbage rolls don't like stirring: once packed, they stay put. Only check that the sauce hasn't dropped; if it has, add hot water down the side of the pot.
Serve
Hot, with sauce spooned over, with bread or potatoes. They keep 4 days in the fridge and are even better the next day; they freeze very well in their sauce. Reheat in a covered pot, not the microwave.
With sauce, even better the next day
Before you start
In mushroom sauce only
Without passata: 1 litre of stock with the mushroom water, thickened at the end with a spoon of flour stirred into the sour cream. A paler, more mushroomy version, served this way in many homes in eastern Poland.
With rice or pearl barley
Rice cooked half-firm or pearl barley 25 minutes instead of buckwheat: a milder flavour, for those who find buckwheat too strong.
The leaves tear
They were blanched too briefly, or the rib was not shaved. Keep the cabbage in the boiling water a minute longer and shave every rib to the thickness of the leaf.
Nutrition
per 100 gStep photos are computer-generated from the recipe.
