Thursday, August 02, 2007

THE FLIP

Success! I made a DELICIOUS meal last night, using leftover ingredients from my botched dinner earlier in the week.

What you might not know is that I'm really a ninety-year-old Jewish retiree and my taste in food often reflects this. Yes, I actually ENJOY gefilte fish (even from a JAR), and growing up one of my favorite foods was my paternal grandmother's stuffed cabbage. I still love stuffed cabbage, but I refuse to order it at a restaurant and so I rarely eat it anymore. Until last night, when I made a lazy-man's vegetarian version that was so delicious I think (I mean I know) that I will do a repeatsies on this one for sure.

First, I put on my apron, because I like to be cute for myself. Then I sauteed finely chopped mushrooms, garlic, and onions in olive oil and added a little bit of sherry wine to reduce it. While that was happening I browned some spicy vegetarian sausage that I picked up at Whole Foods out of a weird, but not misguided, curiosity. It didn't crumble as easily as ground beef, but it was seasoned well and after browning the texture was approximate enough. I added this to the mushrooms and a heaping portion of chopped Napa cabbage. To this I also added a small can of Hunt's tomato sauce, which I like for recipes like this because it's a little bit sweet. Then I added some fresh ground pepper, covered the pot and let it simmer.

I knew things were going well because my apartment smelled GREAT. After about 10 minutes I checked on it and voila: done. If I had had white rice I definitely would have dumped spoonfuls of the cabbage/fake-meat mixture over it, but I didn't, so I didn't. Instead, I ate the "stew" from a little bowl, and was really impressed with how much it evoked that old-world stuffed cabbage taste I was craving, and how quickly I was able to achieve it. Again, I had A LOT of leftovers and I briefly entertained the idea of going over to my new neighbor's door and asking him if he'd eaten yet and would he like to try my concoction, but then I realized that no, I'm not that folksy and yes, he would think I was weird. So I did what any Nana would do and I stuck the extras in the freezer for another time.

4 Comments:

Blogger Kim said...

I can't get past the fact that gefilte fish seems like it's packed in SNOT.

Your veggie stuffed cabbage sounds dee-lish, though. Some of my best recipes are the result of off-the-cuff "concoctions."

6:14 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

In the excitement of researching the health benefits of cereal eating - a typical Saturday night exercise, I stumbled upon your journal. I've never read a blog before - in fact the word blog bothers me for some reason - but the content of yours did no such thing. You are a very entertaining writer. I'll read again. Thanks.

10:18 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Must be the new neighbor?

11:49 PM  
Blogger deraz said...

موقع المحترفون
صيانة منازل فى دبى
صيانة فلل فى دبى


6:27 PM  

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