I confess that this is a bit of 'chef-ly' pride, but I just made the richest, tastiest cabbage rolls I've ever eaten. Interestingly, I feared that the cabbage rolls may be bland since I ran out of dried thyme and forgot to put it on the shopping list. The herb garden is also void of thyme as I pulled all of it up because it was getting overgrown and very woody (I trimmed it back regularly, too). While I don't generally put much more than 1 to 1 1/2 tsp. of thyme in the whole dish I felt concerned that a depth of flavor would be missing. Boy was I mistaken!
Let me back up a little ways.
I started with a lovely, tight leaf cabbage with gorgeous deep green color that faded to a crisp yellow-white well into the vegetable. Delicious. Sweet. Fresh Cabbage. Interestingly, the leaves came off the head so easily in the slightly salted, boiling water that by the time all of the leaves were peeled all that was left was a tiny core the size of a large brussel sprout. Every single leaf came off perfectly down to the last tiny ones. The smallest cabbage roll looked more like a dolmades. Fabulous the cabbage.
Then, the beef. A few weeks ago beef tenderloins were on sale for stupid-cheap. We picked up one and had the local butcher slice it for us. The end pieces weren't particularly 'steak worthy' so the butcher ground them. Wow -- that' burger!
I confess they weren't the most beautiful things when they came out of the oven -- I don't know that I've ever found a way to artfully present cabbage rolls, but oh my! they were scrumptuous.
Wow!
