Eastside Road, Healdsburg, April 3, 2009
IT SOUNDS SO MUCH better than "stuffed cabbage," don't you think? It's a dish I've always loved. I generally make it from the first volume of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, where you dismantle a Savoy cabbage in hot water, then reassemble it in a proper-sized bowl, interleaving it with the farci.
Tonight we ate at a friend's house, and he made his from Simca's Cuisine. I don't find the book on our shelves, and Lindsey thinks it possible she deaccessioned it, which would annoy me greatly, but there it is, you can't do anything about such things.
In any case it tasted much like Julia's recipe, and of course Simone Beck was a co-author of that first volume, so perhaps it is. I see online a reference to "Petits choux farcis" in Simca's Cuisine, and that sounds like what Tom must have made. The cabbage wasn't re-formed and carved at table, as the one I cook is; instead it was served loose, in broth, so in fact it wasn't really "stuffed" at all, but accompanied by the mince of, I'm guessing here, pork and sausage and, yes, Tom said Canadian bacon — a note that seems just a little louche; I'd have used a mild ham or maybe Mortadella. In any case it was delicious, and a glass of two of Riesling didn't hurt.
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Catching up with this yesterday, I went to MTAOFC where, after a bit of searching, I found the recipe in vol. 2. We had most of a leftover savoy cabbage, some newly made rich chicken stock and lots of meat scraps left from making it, so I substituted them for the pork and ended up having made the cheapest meal I've ever put together following a Julia Child recipe. It should have done two days, but Mary and I polished it off within the hour. You can look at it here: http://www.whitings-writings.com/images/chou.jpg
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