Destroying tradition for lazy’s sake: galumpkis vs. galumpki soup

This may not look even remotely appetizing, but I swear: it was good.

So I made galumpkis recently.

Galumpkis: what a great word. It makes me think of a kindly, pot-bellied, lumbering troll with a missing tooth. Instead, galumpkis are stuffed cabbage of eastern European origin, filled with meat and rice, covered with a sweet-sour tomato sauce. They are delicious. Delightful. De-lovely.

I’m enjoying cabbage these days: it’s the comfort food of vegetables, perfect for a relentlessly sub-zero winter. Plus it is, like, insanely healthy. Cabbage is packed with phytochemicals and vitamins, it prevents tumor growth, it cures peptic ulcers, it helps fight Alzheimers, AND it can leap tall buildings in a single-bound.

Plus, it’s cheap. Which makes it an ideal food for the Greatest Depression.

So I made galumpkis last week, and they were a hit. But they were work. And I’m all for minimizing work, wherever possible. So with apologies to all the Polish babcis out there, I confess that I also created a tradition-destroying version of this recipe that is just as tasty and is a whole lot easier.

For the standard galumpkis recipe, I will point you toward Rosie, of Kitchens are Monkey Business, because:

(1) She posted pictures of the process. Every step is documented with photos.

(2) She also includes photos of her dogs, and I’m a sucker for any food post where big, drooling dogs play a supporting role.

(3) I followed her recipe, more or less.

Her recipe involves:
- Boiling a cabbage
- Making a sweet-sour tomato sauce
- Making filling (meat, onions, garlic, rice, half the tomato sauce, tomato paste, and some other good stuff)
- Mixing the filling with one egg, to hold it all together
- Wrapping the filling in cabbage leaves, covering it with remaining tomato sauce, and baking

But actually, the truth is, I followed her recipe only sort of. Here’s how mine differed:

- I used only 1 lb of ground turkey, no other meat (global warming! My food budget!)
- I used only 1 cup of cooked rice
- To make up for the lesser amounts of turkey and meat, I added one large head of shredded steamed cauliflower
- I used dried parsley where she used fresh (used only 2 teaspoons)
- I used balsamic vinegar where she used white, and also where she used wine

So there’s room to customize. But more or less, you should do what Rosie did.

My reduced amounts made slightly less than Rosie’s, just one honkin’ 11″x15″ baking dish, but enough to last for two nights. Or so I thought. It turned out that everyone loved it so much that it lasted only 1 night, plus lunch leftovers.

Yep. One family ate all that in a single sitting.

Seriously: Merrie, my finicky seven-year old, ate four huge servings.

It is a good recipe. But there is a tremendous downside to this meal, which is that you create an unfathomable number of dishes. Here are the dirty dishes, pots, and pans, created in the preparation of these galumpkis:

1. The pan I used to create the tomato sauce
2. The pot I used to boil the cabbage
3. The chopping block for cutting the onions and garlic
4. The food processor, for the cauliflower
5. The pot in which the rice cooked.
6. The pan in which I ground the meat and added the other sauce
7. The bowl I used to scramble the egg
8. The big honkin’ bowl I used to mix the filling with the egg
9. The pan in which the whole darn thing cooked
10. A motley assortment of measuring things

Whoa! That is far too many dishes for one harried mama. So later that week, I decided to bust tradition and make “galumpki soup,” which involved simply a chopping block and a big ol’ soup pot.

For the tradition-busting soup version, I:
1. Cooked 1 lb ground turkey in a big ol’ soup pot
2. Added a bunch of vegetables, including:
- 1 onion (actually, I did a mix of onion and shallot, but whatever)
- 4 cloves of garlic
- 1 head of cabbage, chopped pretty small
- 2 head of cauliflower, chopped so small my kids didn’t notice
3. Added can of tomatoes, half-can tomato paste, and a bunch of dried rice
4. Added a splash of water, 2 tablespoons balsamic, 1 teaspoon dried parsley, and 2 teaspoons sugar
5. Added salt and pepper to taste

Then I brought to a boil and let the whole thing simmer for about 30 minutes, adding water if it looked like I might run out. At the end (when the rice was soft), I drizzled some olive oil over the whole thing and served as soup.

You know what? It was just as tasty as the real thing, with far fewer dishes to clean: just one chopping block, and a big ol’ soup pot. And I didn’t use an egg, so I didn’t need to worry about it cooking enough. I am all for tradition, but man: This was a whole lot easier as a soup, and my family ate just as much as they did the first time. Actually, I suspect the kids wound up taking in more cabbage when it just blended in with the rest of the stuff. Merrie even requested the soup in her lunchbox the next day.

Traditionalists might holler at me for destroying tradition in quite this way. They might. Except I suspect that they are far too busy doing dishes.

Happy weekend, all.