Savoy ‘stuffed’ cabbage cake
A delicious ‘cheffy’ accompaniment to lots of different dishes. This one is really quite posh with the use of ‘Foie gras’, but I’d normally use the liver, heart etc of the bird it was served with. Chicken livers are a brilliant substitute otherwise.
What you need
Ingredients:
1 large Savoy cabbage – outside woody leaves removed
4 ‘Banana’ Shallots (the long ones) – peeled and finely chopped for the stuffing
1 clove of peeled and finely diced garlic
1 tsp fresh thyme leaves
3 good size real pork sausages – skins removed
100g cleaned foie gras
100g streaky bacon, roughly chopped
75g white bread crumbs
1 whole egg
1 tsp fresh Black Pepper
2tsp Green Saffron Quatre Epice Spices
25g finely chopped fresh curly parsley
50-100g Unsalted Butter for frying
How to make it
- Take a 175mm, 7in flan or pie tin
- Peel about 10 of the largest bright green leaves from the cabbage, blanch them in rapidly salted boiling water for no more than 60 seconds, then pop into a bowl of ice-cubes.
- Next, slice the remaining cabbage into very thin strips, a chiffonade if we’re being all posh!
- Sweat the sliced cabbage ‘chiffonade’ gently in 50g of butter for around 5 minutes, then take off the heat allow to cool completely
- Take the offal and cleaned chicken livers if using, chop them roughly and using the same pan as the cabbage, quickly fry until they’re just lightly browned
- Pop into a separate bowl
- Then in the same pan, add the streaky bacon, the garlic, the chopped shallots, thyme and spices and cook for 3-5 minutes,
- Then, add the breadcrumb, cook for a further 2-3 minutes adding more butter as required
- Now, scrape the frying pan out into a bowl, add the liver mix, mix all gently but well together
- Add the sausage meat and the egg to bind making sure the mix isn’t too wet
Cabbage Assembly
- Take the blanched leaves, remove the hard central spine of the leaves, then layer the base of a buttered flan dish so that they overhang well
- Put half the sautéed chiffonade cabbage, followed by the meat mix into the dish then cover with the remaining ‘chiffonade’ press down gently, place one large leaf over the mix then fold over the other leaves so you have a neat ‘pie’
- Cover with a sheet of grease-proof, then foil and place into a ‘bain-marie’ with enough water so as the water goes halfway up the side of the flan dish.
- Roast for 45-55minutes at 180°C, gas mark 4,
- Rest covered for 10 minutes, then turn out on to a serving plate and cut into wedges