Norwegian Dishes - Kol Dolmer or Cabbage Rolls

Ah, vacations are wonderful.  They may not necessarily be restful when you're sharing a tiny cabin with a toddler and a pre-schooler, but they're pretty great nonetheless.  Here's a picture of my family with the local giant of the Northwoods, Paul Bunyan in Akeley, MN.

I bet Paul would have loved some cabbage rolls after cutting down all the trees in the Dakotas.

Wikipedia says that according to the 2000 census, 50% of the residents of Thief River Falls consider themselves Norwegian-American making the town "one of the most ethnically concentrated town in the nation."  Those poor Swedes and Danes probably feel rather set-upon.  With such a high concentration of Norwegians, it should come as no surprise that there is a Norwegian Dishes section of the cook book.  This section starts with another poem, one I can't read.  So I did what all high school language students do.  I turned to Google Translate.  First the poem as it appears, then the translation.

Du hente kan

Lidt ve og van,

Jeg Kaffen snart

Skal faa istan.

Google Translate detected Danish (hmmmm...), and spit out the following:

You can download

little woe and van,

I coffee soon

Must have Istan.

I couldn't agree more.  On to the recipe!

Notice the spots (and one more covered up) This page has been open in the kitchen before.  I wonder what Marlys made.

Kol dolmer don't strike me as being particularly Norwegian.  My mother-in-law sent me an email a little while back mentioning German cabbage rolls, which got me to thinking that cabbage wrapped meat have to at least be pan-European, if not a global food.  Again, let's turn to Wikipedia!  The Cabbage Roll Wikipedia page (my challenge to you is to Wikipedia-surf your way from the Cabbage Roll page to the Paul Bunyan page in as few clicks as possible) lists no fewer than 39 different national, regional, and cultural variations of cabbage rolls.  It looks like most of the global cabbage rolls come from Europe, areas with strong colonial ties to Europe, the Mediterranean, western and eastern Asia.  The paragraph on Swedish cabbage rolls traces their introduction to the 18th century when King Charles XII  was allied with the Ottoman Empire (love me some Turks!), and some of the king's Turkish creditors returned to Stockholm bringing some of their food tastes with them (love me some cultural exchange!).  I wonder what those Mediterranean Turkish aristocrats thought about Sweden.  That must have been something of a shock.

Preparation

As with a couple of the previous recipes, things are a little vague here.  There is no mention of the size of cabbage or number of cabbage leaves... except there is.  Wow, I didn't see that it says "About 18" at the top of the recipe until just now.  How about that!  Well, maybe I need to read recipes more carefully.  Well, first things first.  I needed to deal with the cabbage.

Coffee cup for scale.  Believe it or not, this was one of the small cabbages at the farmers' market.

I've made cabbage rolls once before a couple years ago.  I ran into the same trouble this time as I did back then, that is it is kind of hard to peel of cabbage leaves without tearing them.

Try, try agin.

Then I figured out that if you cut the core of the cabbage out and loosen the leaves from the base, it works a bit better.

The grapes are for Thomas.  I don't think he'd be much of a fan of raw cabbage.

After I steamed the cabbage leaves, it was time to consider the filling.  The very first thing I noticed that probably shouldn't have been a surprise at all was the complete lack of spices.  Though I want to add a pile of herbs and spices to the filling, I'll follow the recipe.  I cooked the rice for 10 minutes, which left it al dente.  I threw the rice into a bowl with the pork and beef.  Then I turned to the onion.  I had just picked up some beautiful onions from the farmers' market.  They were pretty large, so since I was only making a half recipe, I wound up only using a half of the onion.

Now a quick digression.  I love Alton Brown.  Sarah and I used to watch episodes of Good Eats online pretty regularly.  His show is great because he deals with the science of food and he's always got great tips.  One thing I learned from watching him has probably proved more useful than just about anything else I've ever learned about cooking:  how to cut up an onion.  Especially since my knives haven't been the sharpest in the past, this is a much better way of cutting an onion than the traditional French method.  Condensed, there are five easy steps:

1. Cut a little off the end of the onion.

2. Place the onion on the cutting board root side up and slice it in half.

3. Peel the dry skin off the onion.

4.  Lay the onion down on the board and cut radially without cutting through to the root.

Steps one through four.

5.  Slice across the onion into perfect little pieces.

Never cut yourself again while dicing onions.

Now back to our regularly scheduled cooking.

Onions, beef, pork, and rice are in the bowl.  Time to mix.  What better tool to use for this than your hands?

Mmmmm, squishy.

My cabbage leaves were large enough where I didn't need to tie or fasten them with a tooth pick.  Then I neglected to pay attention to the recipe again with the tomatoes.  Instead of one can (what size?) of tomatoes and a can of water, I only used a 28 oz can of whole peeled tomatoes crushed by hand.  Here's the result.

The lack of any spice at all is making me shake a little and I can't help the furtive glances towards my spice rack.

Since I didn't have an abundance of flat bones in the house (was that a common thing in 1951?) and I don't have a round cooling rack that would fit into our soup pot, I put the rolls into a 9x13 baking dish and baked the rolls at 375 for about 55 minutes.  A quick temperature check had the filling well into the safe range.  45 minutes probably would have been sufficient.

Reaction

James was not excited at the idea of cabbage, but probably more because he has only had it once or twice in soups over the past year.  Sarah was not particularly excited about cabbage either, but was a good sport.

Dinner time!

Sarah – It doesn’t taste like anything.

James – I ate one bite.  I didn’t eat the cabbage though.

Sarah – What did you think about it?

James – A little better, but I didn’t like the cabbage part.  I like the meat part and the sauce.

Me – Pretty much all I taste is tomato.

Sarah – Well, that’s if you get tomato.  If you don’t then it tastes vaguely meaty.  It really needs salt pepper and garlic.

Me -  I don’t know what makes it Norwegian.

Sarah – It needs some cardamom [she jokes and then seasons her food].  Definitely better with salt and pepper.

Me – I mean, it seems like this could come from Italy, or Germany, or Russia… or anywhere in Europe.

Sarah – Thomas spit out the filling.

Me – I added garlic powder, oregano, salt ,and pepper.  It could use some heat too.  I don’t mind the cabbage at all.  It’s kind of sweet when cooked.  I also think the sauce needs to be more than a can of tomatoes.

As is typical with these recipes, this is an alright recipe that seems to be a decent jumping off point.  It seriously needs more spices, or at the very least salt and pepper.

After a quick trip to Istanbul, I come home ready to eat some more.

With garlic powder, oregano, cayenne, salt, and pepper it is better.

Reflection

These were fine.  I don't know that I would go so far as to call them good due to the extreme blandness of the dish.  The filling needed seasoning and the sauce needed something too.  I wonder what those Ottoman creditors put on their cabbage rolls on their visit to Stockholm all those years ago.  They probably wouldn't have had pork in their cabbage rolls either; lamb perhaps.  I guess we should just be thankful for the global world that we are a part of where foreign food experiences aren't the rare thing that they would have been in the 18th century.  It is pretty wonderful that if I want to try a Korean cabbage roll, I can head over to north Snelling Avenue.  If I want a Russian cabbage roll, I can go to Selby Avenue.  If I want a cabbage roll from the Levant, I could go over to Central Avenue.  Learning about the food, people, and culture of our global neighbors is pretty easy.  It's fun too.

Next time:  Meats & Hot Dishes