Greek-Style Cabbage Rolls

Cabbage rolls are good on a cold winter's day, but I have never really liked the dryish, hard filling of rice and mince in rolls made the "traditional" way. Last Saturday I went to Knossos, the Greek restaurant in the old Hietalahti market hall in Helsinki, and had some good stuffed vine leaves there. That set me thinking about cabbage rolls with a rather more exotic filling.

The Swedish-Finnish cabbage rolls we know have an interesting history. In 1709 King Charles XII of Sweden lost the most famous battle of the Great Northern War to the Russians at Poltava, in eastern Ukraine. From Poltava he fled to Moldavia, which was then in Ottoman hands. At its height the Ottoman Empire held a large part of the Mediterranean coast, present-day Greece and Turkey included. Charles spent several years in exile on Ottoman soil. During that time he tried to persuade the Ottomans to go to war against Russia, and borrowed money from them to carry on his own war.

When Charles went back to Sweden, a group of Ottoman moneylenders followed him to make sure the debts were repaid. They lived in Stockholm from 1716 to 1732, and in those years cabbage rolls, kåldolmar in Swedish, became familiar on Stockholm dinner tables. Dolma is borrowed straight from Turkish and literally means something stuffed. At first the rolls were made with vine leaves in Sweden too, but the wrapping soon changed to cabbage, which was easier to come by. I read that the first Swedish recipe is in Cajsa Warg's cookery book of 1765, and that it, too, rolls the filling in vine leaves. She suggests cabbage leaves only as a substitute, because vine leaves were expensive.

In these Greek-style rolls barley takes the place of the rice, and lamb mince, feta, mint and honey move the flavour towards the Mediterranean. The vegetables, feta and honey keep the filling moist, so it has no chance to dry out hard. Finnish cabbage rolls usually get a drizzle of syrup on top, and here maple syrup does that job, with pink peppercorns crushed over it. The most laborious part was getting the leaves off, with the cabbage boiling in the pan and the leaves to be lifted one at a time with a slotted spoon into cold water as they loosened. In the oven the syrup roasts, and the rolls in the picture are dark brown and glossy on top.

Those readers who did not fall asleep or turn the page during the history lesson are rewarded with a recipe borrowed, with a few changes, from Finfood, the Finnish food information service.

The rolls keep in the fridge for a few days and freeze well. I am happy to eat them cold, straight from the fridge, too. Made to this recipe, one roll has about 85 kilocalories, so the dishful in the picture, three rolls, comes to a little over 250.