Hell’s Kitchen Romanian Style!

Hell’s Kitchen Romanian Style!

As you all might know already from my previous post I am planning a special Christmas dinner. To be more exact MY special Christmas dinner! The first dish on the list is my famous stuffed cabbage rolls ( sarmale in romanian) which I take pride in making the best! ( thx @abbak7 for encouraging me to improve my recipe!). Well if I were back home this would be an easy task since I would have the prime quality ground pork meat (extra fat and all, as it adds to the flavour), pickled cabbage leaves and delicious smoked ribs and bacon ( SLANINA to be more exact and that is not in any circumstances the bacon you all imagine).
Alright! I mentioned that I have spend around 5 hours and numerous stores to go purchase what I need and in the end I had to settle for the best I could find..pickled cabbage ( good, but as I have learned today from my folding experience not close to the home made one), ground pork meat extra fat ( I might have to go back and thank that generous meat shop worker that offered to grind me some extra fatty pieces), smoked bacon or as we know it Slanina ( it is pork bacon but salted and smoked and left to dry, so it has no brine and belive me it is extra special) and last but not least smoked pork hocks since my smoked pork ribs were nowhere to be found! ( I have to thank the only romanian shop in town for that, since I have preorderd them a month ago and they were nowhere to be found according to her!).
That being said I managed to pull the best tricks in the book and my Sarmale are on the stove slow cooking for the next 6 to 7 hours..I am an optimist by nature so I am hopeful they will outwin last years Sarmale, but I will let DC be the judge of that!
Until then and a couple of Cuba Libre’s later (@abbak7 & @sultnpapper know what I mean) I will continue cooking the rest of my menu tomorrow after the results of my first dish turn out!!

Keep in touch,
@lidac