Wrapping It Up

I learned how to make stuffed cabbage rolls in Miami, in the kitchenette of a woman called Ruth. Ruth was in her sixties, recently widowed, and a little lonely, as I was. She showed me how to steam the cabbage first, then peel off the leaves, being careful not to tear. We stuffed them with a mixture of beef, rice, onions, and seasonings. Each cabbage roll was then placed seam-side down in a heavy-bottomed skillet, then topped with tomato sauce simmered with brown sugar, carrots, parsley and raisins. We sat in Ruth's kitchenette and ate the steaming cabbage rolls on a rainy November day. They were the first thing besides Kraft macaroni-and-cheese dinners I learned how to cook, and I couldn't believe how easy they were to make.

I rolled my first sushi in a Victorian flat in San Francisco. My friend Atsuko showed me how to season the boiled rice with vinegar and sugar, how to scoop it into a flat, shallow wooden dish and fan it until it cooled, then spread it over a sheet of nori, add a variety of condiments -- egg pancake cut into ribbons, shiitake mushrooms and carrots cooked in soy sauce, broth and sugar, and finely chopped strips of salted cucumber. We rolled it all up and sliced each roll into savory circles which we ate with soy sauce, pickled ginger, and cups of green tea.

A Chinese engineering student called Li taught me how to make jiǎozi in Japan. My friend Wendy and I peered over Li's shoulder as he mixed flour and water and kneaded it into a ball of dough. We scrubbed the surface of my table and rolled out a hundred little circles, patting each one with flour. Then we watched as Li chopped hakusai (Chinese cabbage) and salted it. I couldn't believe how much we needed: the mound of chopped cabbage was massive, but Li assured me we would use it all. We chopped spring onions and ginger, adding them to chopped pork, then took turns squeezing the moisture out of the salted cabbage -- which had miraculously been reduced to 1/5 of its bulk -- and added that too. We put a mound of the pork mixture onto the middle of each circle of dough and crimped the edges, then steamed the jiǎozi and ate them with a dipping sauce of soy sauce, vinegar and finely chopped garlic.

My daughter and I learned how to make dolmasi (stuffed grape leaves) from Güzin's mother, a woman called Fatma. Güzin didn't have a pot big enough to cook them in, so I'd brought one of ours, a nasty-looking Teflon-coated casserole with a fitted lid. Fatma took one look at this, noted the fact that the Teflon coating is scarred (I tell my family not to use metal spoons with Teflon-coated pots, but I might as well save my breath), and sent Güzin over to the neighbors to find a better one. We watched Fatma mix rice, chopped tomatoes, currants, pine nuts, and olive oil into a fragrant-smelling mixture. Then we all sat down to roll the grape leaves. You put a little bit of stuffing on each leaf and start rolling from the base, tucking the sides in as you roll. My daughter and I struggled to get just the right amount of filling on each leaf. We each had our respective rolling sins: I put too much on first, then not enough; my daughter didn't roll tightly enough, and even Güzin couldn't compete with Fatma for speed. But gradually the pile of cigar-shaped rolls rose higher and higher until all the filling had been used up and the they were ready to be sprinkled with lemon juice and more olive oil and steamed until tender. We ate them hot from the pot, and later cold, and they were marvelous both ways.

There is something wonderful about food that is stuffed or wrapped. The contrast of the wrapping and the stuffing is a delight, as is the surprise of biting into a savory filling concocted from a number of ingredients. The salty tang of seaweed works beautifully with sweetened vinegar rice; the melt-in-your mouth succulence of cooked cabbage perfectly complements the savory center, piping hot and tender; the gingery, garlicky goodness of jiǎozi is a nice surprise to find in a dumpling; each dolmasi is a juicy little parcel with a bouquet of flavors to make your mouth water.

"Well then," said Scottish friends of mine when I waxed lyrical about all of these stuffed or wrapped taste treats, "you're bound to love haggis."

The blood drained from my face. I am sorry to say that I do not love haggis, that I don't even like it. Yes, I ought to be ashamed of myself. What's not to like about haggis? It is wholesome, it uses up ingredients that might otherwise be discarded, it has onions and oatmeal in it, two of my favorite foodstuffs, and it is so Scottish that Robert Burns actually immortalized it in a poem. But I made the mistake of looking at the recipe first, and I really wish I hadn't: (1) sheep's stomach or ox secum, cleaned and thoroughly, scalded, turned inside out and soaked overnight in cold salted water, and (2) the heart and lungs of one lamb, and (3) stock from lungs and trimmings.

I'll just stick with the teachings of Ruth, Atsuko, Li, and Fatma.