Polish Cooking Classes - Zurek Soup & Golabki

For those of you who know Chris and I - you know we are foodies - but you also probably know I am not the cook and Chris is AMAZING in the kitchen. So when I heard about the cooking classes, I thought it would be a fun way to learn traditional Polish dishes - and show Chris my skills. Also, never a bad idea to hang out with girlfriends and drink mimosas at 8:00am.

Marzena, from Poland, is our teacher and a lot of fun. Today's menu is Zurek Soup (translates to fermented rye) and Golabki (stuffed cabbage). Both dishes turned out perfectly! If you are interested in Polish Cooking Classes: highly recommend her (you choose what you want to cook but she has some great suggestions) www.marzenia.edu.pl She also does Polish language lessons.

Recipe for Golabki: 

Ingredients:

• .5 kg of rice
• .5kg of ground pork or beef
• cabbage
• 2 onions
• 2 or 3 cloves of garlic 
• tomato paste
• sour cream
• flour
• salt
• pepper
• cube stock

Bake: covered in tin foil for 1 hr. at 180 degrees Celsius - once out of the oven, you can drizzle with some olive oil so they don't stick together.

Steps:

• Cook rice till al dente
• Mix the meat (raw), chopped garlic and chopped onion 
• Combine cooked rice with meat mixture and add half a teaspoon of tomato paste (note: if the mixture is too dry, you can add 1 egg)
• Cut the hard parts of the cabbage off, boil the head of cabbage for 5 - 30 minutes (until soft)
• Peel off a cabbage leaf and place the rice and meat mixture inside the cabbage leaf & wrap 
• Bake

Suggestion after making it: You can mix up the spices in the mixture. Make is spicier, possibly even leave out the rice.  

Golabki Sauce:

1.5 cups of water to cook the chopped onion & garlic until onion is soft. Add salt, pepper, 1 stock cube and tomato paste. Mix 1 spoon of flour with cold water and add to the sauce. Mix 1 spoon of sour cream with a small amount of sauce and at the rest to sauce. Serve over baked Golabki.

Recipe for Zurek:

Ingredients:

• 400 grams of raw sausage
• 20 grams of smoked bacon
• 3 Bay leaves
• Pepper
• All Spice
• Marjoram
• Salt
• Garlic (2 cloves)
• 4 hard boiled eggs
• 2 cups of Zurek sourdough liquid (ready made)

Steps:

• Cook sausage, bacon, garlic, spices (3 bay leaves, 5 all spice corns & 2-3 teaspoons of Marjoram) in 6 cups of water for 15 minutes after you bring it to a boil. 
• Remove the items (spices) floating in the water and toss
• Remove the sausage & bacon
• SAVE THE WATER
• Cut the sausage and bacon into cubes 
• Bring the water to a boil and stir in the sourdough liquid
• Add marjoram, salt, pepper, sausage and bacon. 
• Simmer soup for 30 minutes over low heat
• Serve with hard boil eggs

Suggestions after making it: You can add whatever meat you want (chicken is good) and also might consider cooking the bacon to taste rather than just a boil.