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Beef and Rice Croquettes
1 cup chopped beef (cut from top of round) 1/3 cup rice 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/4 teaspoon pepper Few grains cayenne Tomato Sauce Mix beef and rice, and add salt, pepper, and cayenne. Cook cabbage leaves two minutes in boiling water to cover. In each leaf put two tablespoons mixture, and fold leaf to enclose mixture. Cook one hour in Tomato Sauce. Tomato Sauce. Brown four tablespoons butter, add five tablespoons flour, and pour on gradually one and one-half cups each Brown Stock and stewed and strained tomatoes. Add one slice onion, one slice carrot, a bit of bay leaf, a sprig of parsley, four cloves, three-fourths teaspoon salt, one-fourth teaspoon pepper, and a few grains cayenne. Cook ten minutes, and strain.
The method here is for stuffed cabbage rolls simmered in a brown tomato sauce, and it depends on two things the ingredient list leaves unsaid: how much cabbage you need, and whether the rice goes in raw or cooked.
- Cabbage leavesThe leaf count is not given. Two tablespoons of filling per leaf and one cup of meat plus rice gives roughly eight to ten rolls, so allow one large head of green cabbage and take the biggest outer leaves. Pare down the thick rib at the base of each leaf so it will fold without splitting.
- Rice, raw or cookedThe recipe does not say. An hour's simmering may cook raw rice through, but it is safer inside a tight parcel to use one-third cup of cooked, cooled rice, or to cook the raw rice first and expect the yield of filling to increase by about half.
- Chopped beefNot pre-packed ground beef. Ask for a piece of top round and chop it fine yourself, or have it coarse-ground once; top of the round is a lean cut and the coarser chop gives the filling more texture.
- Brown StockA dark beef stock, made from browned meat, bones and vegetables. Good low-sodium beef stock is a fair substitute, but taste before adding the three-quarter teaspoon of salt in the sauce.
- The sauce is a heavy rouxThe sauce -- Four tablespoons butter to five tablespoons flour thickened with three cups of liquid (a cup and a half each of stock and tomato) gives a lightly thickened brown sauce, not a heavy one. Brown the butter and cook the flour in it before the liquid goes in, and add the liquid gradually or it will lump.
- The hour of cookingSimmer, never boil. Set the rolls seam side down in a single layer, pour the strained sauce over, cover, and hold at a bare tremble. A hard boil will unwrap them.
- Strain the sauce firstThe onion, carrot, bay, parsley and cloves are flavouring only and come out after ten minutes. Strain before the rolls go in; whole cloves left loose in a finished dish are unpleasant to bite.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; on the estimate above, roughly four servings of two rolls each, with sauce. Mashed potato or plain boiled rice takes up the sauce well.