1 week Ago
Charlotte de Chou with Mustard Cream Sauce. Photo by Christine Burns Rudalevige I am a pushover for a pretty savoy cabbage. It’s the Brassica oleracea with the dark green, crinkly, puckered leaves that get paler as you peel them away, working your way to the creamy core.
This cabbage is sweeter and milder than most of its red, purple and Napa cousins. But when I bought a big, beautiful head of Savoy last week at my local Hannaford, I’d forgotten my husband was headed out of town for five days. As the acerbic writer Dorothy Parker quipped about a whole ham and two people defining eternity, I feared consuming a six-pound cabbage solo in a week might be both boring on one end and potentially explosive on the other.
Yes, I could have put up some sauerkraut, but I’d also recently introduced visiting friends to Morse’s in Waldoboro, so there were several jars already in the fridge. And I certainly love a good slaw as the base of lunch salad or a sweet and sour foil to a fried cutlet, but the internet explained to me that a six-pound Savoy would give me 12 cups of cabbage slaw, and I fall back on Parker’s definition of eternity. A whole savoy cabbage.
Isn’t she lovely? Photo by Christine Burns Rudalevige On the cover of the 2012 revision of “Vegetables,” James Peterson features a stunning photo of a Savoy cabbage set on a black background that shows off its intricate web of raised veins. As James Beard award-winning chef and cookbook author, Peterson could guide me, I figured, on how best to use the stunning head I had in my hands. He suggested stuffed cabbage, but not the rolls and rolls of stuffed cabbage that grandmothers from everywhere serve with ceremony at large family gatherings and with humility as waste-not-want-not weeknight fare.
Those types of rolls include Armenian Tolma, Bulgarian sarmi, Chinese steamed cabbage rolls, Greek lahanodolmades, Indian bandh gobi ki, Italian cavolo ripieno, Japanese roru kyabetsu, Korean dwaejigogi baechu ssam, Lebanese malfouf, Lithuanian balandeliai, Polish galumpki, Russian golubtsy, South African oumens onder komberse, Swedish Kåldolmens, Ukranian holubtsi, and Vietnamese Bap Cai Cuon Thit. The filling for these is typically made from sautéed ground meat combined with cooked grains or rice, chopped vegetables and the particular region’s favorite spices. Single blanched cabbage leaves are stuffed and rolled, then arranged in a baking dish to be gently heated in a tomato, lemon or a soy-based broth.
You’ll need to boil the cabbage leaves briefly to make them pliant enough to wrap the potted cabbage. Photo by Christine Burns Rudalevige Peterson suggested something more akin to a stuffed cabbage cake, which he calls Potted Stuffed Cabbage. His recipe comes from chef and Frenchman Robert Viret, who founded the Greenwich Village bistro Le Petit Robert, which Peterson eventually owned himself.
Peterson explains that customers would come from miles to order the dish. First, he lines medium-size bowls with cooked whole cabbage leaves. He then fills the leaves with cooked vegetables and braised meat padded with milk-soaked breadcrumbs and tucks the lot in with more cooked cabbage leaves.
In France, the dish is known as Charlotte de Chou. The web of strong veins in the Savoy makes it particularly good as the cabbage casing here. In their molds, these stuffed cabbage pots can sit in the fridge for days, before being warmed in a 350-degree oven, turned out on plate, and served with aplomb and a Calvados-laced sauce.
Peterson writes that he faced a customer revolt one year when he attempted to take them off the menu in the heat of one particularly hot summer. I followed his lead, using the core of the cabbage, some smoky bacon and a bunch of root vegetables I had on hand, and I can understand why Peterson’s customers considered this a keeper. I made two, keeping one in the fridge for when my husband Andy got home.
Given the size of my cabbage, I still had enough leaves left over to make some of the galumpkis he loves, but those freeze better than a Charlotte de Chou does, so they’ll come out for Easter dinner as a nod to his Polish ancestors. Charlotte de Chou with Mustard Cream Sauce Chef and cookbook author James Peterson in his book “Vegetables” explains that if you can’t pull the outer leaves away from the raw Savoy cabbage without tearing them, you can repeatedly dunk the head into a pot of boiling, well-salted water, peeling away the slightly softened outermost leaves after each dunk. Whether you disassembled the cabbage raw or with the help of the dunking process, all of the leaves will require another 5-7 minutes in the pot of boiling water to be pliable enough to make this dish.
Serves 4-6 FOR THE CHARLOTTE 2 pounds yellow potatoes, scrubbed and cut into 1-inch pieces 1 medium celery root, turnip or rutabaga, peeled and cut into 1-inch pieces Salt 2 tablespoons butter 1/4 cup milk 1/2 cup Greek yogurt 1 tablespoon grainy mustard 1 teaspoon ground black pepper Olive oil 4 ounces smoky bacon, chopped 1 cup chopped onion 1 cup shredded cabbage 1/2 cup grated cheddar cheese 1/4 cup chopped parsley 1 egg, slightly beaten 8-10 boiled, whole Savoy cabbage leaves FOR THE SAUCE 2 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil 1⁄4 cup minced shallots 3 tablespoons brandy or white wine 1 1⁄4 cups heavy cream 1 1⁄2 tablespoons Dijon mustard 1 tablespoon whole-grain mustard Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste Place the potatoes and other root vegetables in a large pot, and cover with cold water. Add 1 tablespoon kosher salt. Place over high heat until the water boils, lower the heat to medium, and simmer until the potatoes are fork tender, 7-8 minutes.
Drain the water and return the vegetables to the pot. Add the butter, milk, yogurt, mustard and black pepper to the pot. Use a potato masher to rustically crush the root vegetables and incorporate the other ingredients.
Taste and add salt to taste. Set aside. Combine 1 tablespoon olive oil and the bacon in a large skillet.
Cook over medium heat until the bacon starts to get crispy, 3-4 minutes. Add the onions and cook until they start to soften, 3-4 minutes. Add the shredded cabbage and cook until it is quite soft, 5-6 minutes.
Taste and add salt to taste. Combine this mixture with the mashed root vegetables, the cheese, parsley and egg. You should have about 5 1⁄2 cups.
Rub olive oil all around a 6-cup oven-safe bowl. Line it with the softened cabbage leaves, making sure they overlap on the sides by at least an inch. Ensure that enough of the leaves are hanging over the sides to fold over the top and cover the filling.
Spoon the filling into the mold, pressing down firmly until filled. Fold the overlapping leaves inwards, making sure the filling is completely covered. Cover the top with oiled aluminum foil and place in the fridge with a weight on top for at least 4 hours, but up to 3 days.
When you’re ready to bake the charlotte, place the bowl on baking sheet and bake until the internal temperature (measured with an instant-read thermometer) measures 165 degrees. The bake time should be 30-35 minutes. Remove the charlotte from the oven and peel off the foil.
Place a serving dish over the top and carefully invert. Let the charlotte sit inverted inside its mold for 10 minutes to firm up. While you wait, make the sauce.
Heat the olive oil in a medium skillet set over medium-low. Add the shallots and cook until softened, 2-3 minutes. Add the brandy or white wine, and cook until the liquid evaporates, 2-3 minutes.
Add the cream, reduce heat to low and simmer until the sauce is slightly thickened, 5-6 minutes. Stir in mustard and season with salt and pepper to taste. Carefully lift the mold from the charlotte and serve it with the sauce.
Local foods advocate Christine Burns Rudalevige is the former editor of Edible Maine magazine and the author of “Green Plate Special,” both a column about eating sustainably in the Portland Press Herald and the name of her 2017 cookbook. She can be contacted at: [email protected].
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