Crockpot cooking redux

Unfortunately I was not writing this blog last spring during passover (the Jewish holiday where you can't eat bread or bread-like things), because if I was, I could have written a number of delicious recipes. Let me give an example. [Passover is 8 days]
Day 1 and 2: Was at Bubbie's (grandmother's) and had wonderful food made by many relatives.
Day 3: Bought a crockpot just for use on passover. Bought 2 pounds of chicken and some vegis. Chopped everything up and added water. Cooked for a few hours and ate. Taste was really good!
Day 4: Chicken running low. Added more. Ate it. Still pretty good.
Day 5: Replenished chicken and water supply again. This time added garlic. Starting to get a little sick of this.
Day 6: Briefly forgot I have been eating chicken soup for the past few day and enjoyed a wing... then remembered and stopped enjoying.
Day 7: Only two more days. Bought another pound. Added a potato or two. This sucks.
Day 8: Soup started to taste sour. I think I'll fast today.
Day 9: Done! Never eating chicken soup from the crockpot again.

I have, of course, used the crockpot other times, but never in such a concerted and concentrated manner as during passover. Yet, in the past few days I have almost rivaled that experience. I'm writing from sunny San Antonio, visiting my girlfriend. So far I've made two very large dishes in the crockpot, which has provided breakfast, lunch and dinner for the last few days.

The first dish was an adaptation of the Tuscan Bean Soup I posted about before. This time (under my mom's advice) I used a 15 bean bag of beans. The soup came out well, though the beans took way longer to cook than I expected. After the first 6 hours of cooking they were still tough (I had soaked them for a night as well). The next day though they had broken down very nicely, and made a good, thick soup.

The new dish (or at least the dish I have never posted about) was the stuffed cabbage that my girlfriend and I made last night and have been consuming today. The only experimenting I did with this dish was that instead of meat I used vegetarian imitation chuck meat, and for the rice I used risotto rice (short grained).



1 large head of cabbage
1 package of "meat" roughly a pound (can use real or soy)
1 cup of rice
2 eggs
1 can tomato paste
1 large can tomato puree
1 lemon
1 large onion
1 pepper (any color will do)
1 hot pepper
3 medium carrots
a little ground thyme or oregano, cinnamon, nutmeg, red pepper flakes and brown sugar
olive oil

In a medium sauce pan saute the onion until transparent over medium heat. Add in diced carrots and pepper, plus the finely chopped hot pepper. Throw in a few dashes of thyme or oregano. Cook for another five minutes. Add in the content of one can of tomato paste and mix thoroughly with the oil, until the oil turns red in color. Turn off heat.
Meanwhile, in a large pot boil about four inches of water. While this is happening, take a large cabbage and begin to remove layer one at a time. This can be tricky. Try to cut off some of the base of the cabbage and then work each leave off. If it rips, it alright, just try to keep at least one large section unripped. You should be able to remove about 15 leaves. Also, for eat in rolling, remove a little wedge at the base of each leaf (the thick white part). The left over cabbage can be chopped up and thrown into the crockpot with the sauce. When the water is boiled, put, two at a time, pieces of the cabbage into the water and cook until the leaf is pretty flexible for rolling. Remove and put in a bowl to cool (no need to ice them).
When all of the pieces are par boiled, the filling begins. The "meat" filling is made by mixing the "meat" with the rice and with two eggs until uniform. You can add a little salt and pepper too. Place a few spoonfuls of this filling and then a spoonful or two or the vegis onto a cabbage leaf. Fold the leaf around to make a roll. The rolls don't need to be very full since the rice will expand.
The rolls get packed into the crockpot. Already in the crockpot should be a little tomato puree mixed with some lemon juice and brown sugar. As you start a new layer of rolls, add in some more tomato, lemon, brown sugar and also cinnamon and nutmeg (not much of this). You can also sprinkle in any extra cabbage bits finely chopped. When all of the rolls are in the crockpot, add in the remaining tomato and lemon, plus enough water to cover most of the cabbage (it does not need to go over the top of the top layer). Set to cook for 8 hours on low heat and go to sleep.



About two rolls is enough for a meal, so this makes about 7 servings or so (or as I think of it, it makes enough for about 3 days of breakfast, lunch and dinner). The cabbage gets very soft, but nicely keeps the meaty mixture in place. The liquid remains and makes a nice thin, but flavorful sauce. Think of eating this in a bowl and then slurping up the leftover liquid.