Hearty winter recipes with a Lithuanian flavour
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A few weeks ago we introduced you to celebrated Lithuanian foodie Nida Degutiene, well known blogger and cookbook author with a social media following of more than 75,000.
Nida is currently living and working in Canberra alongside her husband who is the first Lithuanian Ambassador to Australia and you can read her story here.
This week we thought we would share two of her most distinctively Lithuanian dishes, which also happen to align perfectly with the winter freeze and our collective desire for hearty home-cooked food. Please enjoy Nida’s Stuffed Cabbage Rolls and Lithuanian Honey Cake.
Stuffed Cabbage Rolls
Balandeliai sulesiais
Ingredients
- 1 large of cabbage
- Olive oil
- Good knob of butter
- Half an onion, peeled and diced
- 2 carrots, peeled and diced
- 2 celery sticks, diced
- 2 bay leaves
- 4-5 peppercorns
- 2 tablespoons of tomato paste (or according to taste)
- Salt
Stuffing
- Olive oil
- Half an onion, diced into small dice
- 500g minced beef
- 500g minced pork
- 1 cup cooked rice (leftover from a day before is the best)
- 1 or 2 garlic cloves, grated or finely chopped
- 1 egg, lightly beaten with a fork
- 2-3 tablespoons of freshly chopped herbs (dill, parsley or mixture of both)
- Salt and pepper, some sugar
What to do
Boil water in a large pot. With a sharp knife make incisions along the hard stem of a cabbage, releasing the leaves from the stem but keeping them intact. Carefully lower the cabbage to the boiling water. After about 3-4 minutes, once outer leaves soften, start peeling them carefully using thongs. Try not to break the leaves when peeling. Place hot leaves on the baking tray and continue cooking and pealing the cabbage until all leaves of a suitable size are ready (I use the remaining cabbage for other dishes – soups, stews, etc). Do not discard water where cabbage was blanching. When leaves are cooled down cut part of the tough end of each leave (thinning that part of a leave will make easier to wrap a cabbage roll).
Prepare the stuffing
Heat some olive oil in a small pan and fry onions until soft and golden. Transfer fried onions to a bowl. Add both minced meats, rice, grated garlic, egg, chopped herbs, salt and pepper and mix very well using your hands.
Take one big blanched leaf of a cabbage and lay it flat on the big plate (or a chopping bord) so that the bottom (stem) part of a leaf is closer to you. Add a big handful of stuffing and roll a leaf tightly the same way as you roll spring rolls. Set aside in the tray. Repeat with the remaining leaves and stuffing (if there is smaller leaf – you can either connect two small leaves to make a bigger surface or make a smaller size cabbage roll).
In a big pot (ideally in a cast iron oval dish) heat some olive oil and fry cabbage rolls until they are browned on all sides. You might need to do it in batches. Remove from a pot and set aside.
Add good knob of butter to the same pot and fry onions along with carrots and celery until they start caramelising. Return cabbage rolls to the pot placing them neatly next to each other on top of a layer of fried vegetables (they will ensure that cabbage rolls will not stick to the bottom of a dish). You might need to put two layers of rolls, depending on your pot size. Add the water which was used to blanch the cabbage, so that water is about 2-3 cm above the rolls. Add bay leaves, peppercorns, salt to taste and a pinch of sugar. When water starts boiling, reduce a heat to minimum, cover the pot and allow to simmer for 45-50 minutes.
At the very end, mix tomato paste with few tablespoons of hot water and pour to the pot. Allow to simmer few more minutes, then check the seasoning.
Serve cabbage rolls with boiled potatoes, sauce from the pan, some cooked carrots from the bottom and generous dollop of sour cream.
As with all stews – this gets better after spending some days in a fridge or reheated the next day.
Lithuanian Honey Cake
Medaus tortas
Ingredients
- 100g unsalted butter
- 100g natural honey (can be thick, not runny)
- 170g brown sugar
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- ½ teaspoonfreshly grated nutmeg
- ½ teaspoon ground allspice
- ¼ teaspoon ground ginger
- ¼ teaspoon ground cloves
- 3 large eggs
- About 600g all purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
Cream
- 1kg sour cream
- 180g white sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- Zest of 1 lemon and 3 tablespoons freshly squeezed juice (or according to taste)
- 250ml double cream (very cold)
What to do
Add butter, honey, sugar, salt and all spices to the pot and start heating on medium heat. Stir often and keep heating until all butter is melted and sugar dissolved. Take the pot off the heat and put aside until cooled to room temperature. Pour butter and honey mixture to the mixing bowl, add one egg and beat until it is fully incorporated. Add remaining eggs one by one and beat again until smooth and fully incorporated.
In a small bowl mix flour and baking powder. Add flour mixture in batches to the wet ingredients mixture, each time mixing well until no flour lumps are visible and the shiny elastic dough will be formed. Divide dough to eight equal parts (it is a good idea to use kitchen scales to ensure even size), form each piece of dough into thin disc, wrap each disc in the cling film and leave in the fridge at least for an hour (ideally for a night or even longer) until hard.
Heat oven till 180C. Cut eight pieces of baking paper and use a base of your spring form as a guide to draw circles on the baking paper (for instance, 22-23 cm in diameter).
Take one dough circle from the fridge, unwrap it and place on the baking paper, at the centre of the circle. Lightly dust the dough and a rolling pin with flour and roll the dough thinly so that it is about 1cm exceding the edges of the drawn circle (do not worry if the edges are rough and uneven – you will cut them later). Transfer the baking sheet with the prepared dough on a baking tray. Prick all surface of a dough with a fork and bake in the oven for about 5 minutes, or until it turns golden. Take the baked circle from the oven and immediately, while it is still hot and soft and cut a neat circle using again the same base of your spring form Allow to cool on a wire rack then put aside. Repeat with remaining pieces of dough. Do not discard offcuts of the dough edges – you will need them for decoration.
Prepare the cream
In a big bowl, mix sour cream, sugar, vanilla extract, lemon zest and juice. In a separate bowl beat double cream until soft peaks form and gently fold it into the sour cream mixture. Put aside 4-5 tablespoons of a cream – you will need it to finish decorating the cake later. Keep it in a small covered container in a fridge.
Assemble the cake
Put one layer of cake into a springform (the sides of spring form will help you to keep your cake straight and even), add 1/8 of a cream, evenly distributing it on the first layer. Add second layer of a cake, push it down very gently and add another layer cream. Repeat until you add all eight layers of cake, spreading remaining cream on the top layer. Cover the cake loosley with cling film and leave in a fridge for a night – this will allow all flavours to marry and cake layers to soften. You can leave a cake in a fridge up to 3 days – it will mature and will taste better).
Decorate
Crumble the remaining offcuts of the baked cake layers using a food processor or add them to a ziplock bag and roll with a rolling pin, producing crumbs. Before serving, spread a thin layer of the cream which you have put aside, on the sides of the cake then sprinkle crumbs on the sides and top of a cake. Decorate with powdered sugar and/or seasonal flowers, berries or fruits.
Images supplied.
