One delicious meal becomes 2 (and a half)

My sister and I have been cooking our way through Maureen Abood’s cookbook, “Rose Water & Orange Blossoms,” and finding in the exploration of her Lebanese kitchen a connection to our own roots. Along the way, we’ve also discovered dishes that have quickly come to feel like old standbys, like the crowd-pleasing, cross-cultural casserole of lamb, tomato and eggplants that have been broiled to a crisp, called “sheik al mehsheh,” and a simple warm potato salad dressed with lemon and mint that is at home on a summer table alongside whatever has just come off the grill.

In our latest venture into Abood’s book, we found not just one meal to put into heavy rotation, but two. Actually, call it two and a half, with a lesson in leaving nothing to waste.

Cabbage Rolls in Garlic and Tomato Broth

In “Rose Water & Orange Blossoms,” Maureen Abood offers several options for stuffing and cooking these versatile cabbage rolls. I prefer lamb and rice stuffing, over beef or bulgur. And while I haven’t tried the option of swapping the chicken wings for bone-in pork chops, I’m sure it would be delicious. The recipe that follows includes two adjustments: I say tuck the ends of the cabbage leaves in to make a pretty package, while she says leave them out, and I added five minutes to the cook time, which may need adjusting depending on the type of rice used.
The rolls are served with labneh, a traditional strained yogurt. It’s worth the time to make it yourself, but store-bought Greek yogurt mixed with a bit of salt, to taste, is an adequate substitute.
Be sure to save the rich broth that the rolls are cooked in to use as the next day’s soup stock.

FOR THE STUFFING:
1 cup medium-grain rice
1/2 cup salted butter, melted
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 pound ground lamb

FOR THE ROLLS:
3 teaspoons kosher salt, divided
1 head green cabbage, cored
6 chicken wings
1 large head garlic, cloves separated and peeled
1/4 cup tomato paste
Labneh, for serving

To make the stuffing, in a medium bowl, combine the rice, melted butter, salt, pepper and cinnamon. Add the meat to the rice and mix well with your hands to combine everything thoroughly.
To make the rolls, bring an 8-quart pot of water to a boil with 1 teaspoon of the salt.
Blanch the whole head of cabbage for about 3 minutes. Remove the leaves one by one from the head with tongs as they loosen, placing them on a plate or sheet pan to cool.
Line the bottom of an 8-quart pot with the chicken wings, and then top the chickens with any cabbage leaves that are torn or too small to use as rolls.
To stuff, place a cabbage leaf with the stem end nearest you and the cup shape of the leaf facing up. Place about a tablespoon of the stuffing (more for the largest leaves) on a cabbage leaf at the stem end and spread the stuffing out lengthwise along the bottom of the leaf, like a finger. Roll up the leaf around the meat, tucking the ends in as you go.
Place each roll seam-side down in the prepared pan snugly against one another and tucking in the garlic cloves throughout as you go. Make small meatballs with any leftover stuffing and place those on top. Place a salad plate face-down over the rolls (and meatballs) to hold the rolls down while they cook. Fill the pot up to the plate with cold water and add the remaining 2 teaspoons salt to the water.
Whisk the tomato paste with 1/4 cup of warm water in a small bowl to dilute and add to the pot.
Cover the pot, place it over high heat, and bring the liquid to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer until the rolls are cooked through and the rice is tender, about 50 minutes. Remove the plate and cool for 20 minutes or so before transferring the rolls from the pot to a serving platter. Serve warm with a dollop of labneh.

Abood’s cabbage rolls, stuffed with lamb and rice and boiled in a broth of tomato and garlic, are satisfying, even more because of the half-dozen chicken wings added to the pot for cooking. Served alongside a big green salad, dressed with lemon juice and olive oil, and with labneh, the ever-present Lebanese condiment made by straining salted yogurt, these made for a hearty family meal.

But, what about those chicken wings? And all that rich broth the rolls were cooked in? We put them to good use.

The chicken meat, so moist it simply fell off the bone, became dinner for my 1-year-old son – hence, the half – but could just as easily top a salad, be folded into a quesadilla, or get mixed into a colorful egg scramble.

The chicken bones went back into the pot, with all of that flavorful broth, topped off with some of the water used for blanching the cabbage, then out onto our back porch when the weather was still cold enough to keep it safely until we were ready the next morning to put it back on the stove. Into the pot we added a fresh whole chicken, along with the bag of kitchen scraps I keep in the freezer – kale ribs, lemon peels, carrot tops, celery bits, mushroom stems and more. We added a couple of bay leaves and some cardamom pods, the last a tip also picked up from an Abood chicken soup recipe.

The pot simmered for the better part of seven hours. (It’s best to remove the chicken about one hour in, pick the meat off and set it aside, then return the carcass to the pot.) We strained the broth, then added barely sautéed carrots, celery and onions, plus the chicken meat and about a cup of rice.

The many-layered broth made for a hard-to-describe soup that turned heads when I warmed it up in the office for lunch the next day. And it taught us a lesson our Lebanese ancestors surely knew: When you know how to work with what you’ve got, one delicious meal begets another.