members recipes

Traditional Greek(north) winter recipe.

Ingredients
6 serves
700 gr mixed beef and pork minced meat( 500 gr/200 gr)
80 gr white rice
1 big onion peeled and chopped
a handful of parsley (chopped)
a handful of dill
half of a handful mint
¼ cup olive oil
1 ½ tea sp salt
¼ tea sp pepper powder
¼ tea sp sugar
The juice of one lemon(don’t use substitute)
a big cabbage, use the leaves

Method
The first thing you have to do, is to boil in salted water the cabbage. Turn it upside down and make a big slot on its bottom. Remove the stalk and throw it away. Put the cabbage in the boiling water and after 5 minutes remove the first leaves. Set them aside to drain the water. Do the same with all the other leaves. As you can understand, the cabbage needs to be boiled in this way, cause when the outer leaves are boiled , the inner part of the cabbage doesn’t.
After the above procedure, make the mixture of the minced meat.
Put all the ingredients in a bowl and mix well. First add to the minced meat the rice (wash it before you add it) and then the onion and the herbs. Then add the olive oil and the salt, pepper and sugar.
Mix well using your hands as if you were making meatballs.
Now pick a medium size leaf and place it on a flat surface. I f leaves are big ,cut them in the middle. Use a tea sp and add 1 or 1 ½ tea sp’s mixture. DO NOT MAKE THEM BIG !!!
Roll the leaf carefully caring cover the mixture with the leaf all around.
Place on the bottom of a big casserole some cabbage leaves(this will help to not stuck the food while you cooking it).Then place the stuffed leaves one by one and side by side. Place them roundly on the bottom and continue to the top. When you finish, placing the stuffed leaves you can put one or two pieces of pancetta on top of them. This will give an extra taste to the food.
Add the lemon juice and ¼ cup of olive oil and ½ of water. Boil the food in very slow fire for 45 minutes.
You can serve them making a simple sauce from the liquids of the food ,lemon juice, a yolk and salt(avgolemono is the Greek name for this).
Hope you enjoy it!!