Cabbage Strudel and Paprika Ice Cream
While I am still on my Hungarian cooking kick, I offer you two desserts: one traditional, the other, not so much.
This my entry for Sugar High Friday 23: Surprise Inside, which is run this month by Alanna of A Veggie Venture. Finding cabbage inside a dessert strudel is not surprising to Hungarians or their descendants, who are used to the strange versatility and fabulous flavor range of that particular leafy green, but it sure seems to surprise everybody else. Paprika ice cream, well, that surprised even me.
Paprika Ice Cream
1 1/2 C heavy cream
1 C milk
1/2 C sugar
1 vanilla bean
1/4 C sweet Hungarian paprika
Pour the heavy cream into a saucepan. Slice the vanilla bean in half, the long way, and scrape the seeds out into the heavy cream, then throw the rest of the bean in after them. Add the paprika and sugar and bring almost to a boil, then let steep, covered, until the flavor is strong enough for you. Chill, then whisk in the milk and put through your ice cream maker as per its instructions.
Cabbage Strudel
Phyllo dough
1 medium cabbage
3 tbsp sugar (or more to taste)
2 tsp cinnamon (or more to taste)
olive oil
salt
black pepper
The cabbage is prepared much the same way as it was for my cabbage-stuffed peppers, but with more cinnamon and sugar, and more focus on caramelizing the cabbage when sauteing it.
Pull off the most wretched outer leaves of the cabbage, and rinse the rest. Chop it up into chunks that your food processor can handle, but remember to remove and toss out the core. Grind pretty finely in your food processor.
Mix the ground cabbage with plenty of salt and leave covered in your fridge for at least two hours. The point here is to allow the salt to draw some water out of the cabbage. Once that’s done, you rinse off the salt and squeeze as much water as you can out of the cabbage.
Saute the cabbage in a saucepan with some olive oil, along with the sugar, cinnamon, and salt and black pepper to taste. You are basically trying here to caramelize the cabbage. Be patient, it will all work out.
Lay out a few sheets of phyllo, brushing melted butter on each before laying the next on. Spread a line of the cabbage on it, the long way, and roll up as in the first method described here.
Bake at 400º for about 30 minutes or until done.
OH MY OH MY OH MY! Cabbage strudel! (Did you say CABBAGE strudel???!) There definitely needs to be a special round-up for the veggie desserts for Sugar High Friday! So here’s the questions: are they a pair? and how do they taste? and are they dishes you’d make again, or better, recommend someone else making? And yes I’m still laughing. OUT LOUD.
They can be a pair, but don’t have to be. Cabbage strudel is actually a totally traditional dessert, and it really, really works. No one ever expects it to be as amazingly good as it is. I highly recommend making it.
Paprika ice cream is not at all traditional, and was very interesting. I think I liked it, in the ‘I want a spoonful once in a while but probably not a whole bowlful’ sort of way. It was an experiment, really. For paprika sweets, I more strongly recommend making my paprika sticky rolls.
Great recipes,…loved the photos too!
M from Panama
Extremely creative.
I ma game for the cabbage strudel, I am not that sure about the paprika ice cream…might have to try a small batch just to see.Yummy entry to SHF!
The paprika as a dessert flavour concept has me very curious. Will have to try this (maybe not the ice cream)
Wow! So unusual—I’m very intrigued to give them both a go! Especially that studel! I love cabbage, but have never thought of it as part of a sweet dish…..looks delicious!
I’m so delighted to see everyone being enthusiastic and brave about the strudel!
Paprika ice cream? Brilliant! And what a luscious autumn color. The cabbage strudel has me intrigued as well.
[...] Desserts and Other Sweets: Other Aztec Marshmallows Basil Sorbet with Lemon Olive Oil Cabbage Strudel Cardamom Meyer Lemon Créme Brûlée Bubbles Carrot Cake Ginger Rum Churros with Milk Chocolate Dipping Sauce Lemongrass Saffron Soda and Ginger Ice Cream Float Maple Cream Truffles Marxipan Muffins Nutmeg Chipotle Tuiles Paprika Ice Cream Paprika Sticky Rolls Salty Oat Cookies Thai Iced Tea Ice Cream [...]
Wow! I was just reading about the loss of cabbage streudel in Nora Ephron’s book “I Feel Bad About My Neck and other thoughts on being a woman” and decided to google out a recipe. Shazam, here it is. I can’t wait to try it. I really do appreciate the appetizing picture too.
Ah! Thank you for the cabbage strudel recipe! I ate and fell in love with this dessert while living in Hungary, but stupidly forgot to ask anyone over there for a recipe.
I also was reading Nora Ephron’s book and her mentioning cabbage streudel. Was so glad to find your recipe on the web. Plan to try it at Thanksgiving dinner with pork loin.
When the Nora Ephron article was first published, my mother clipped it from the paper and showed it to me, saying we just send her my grandmother’s recipe.
So, Nora, if you ever come across this, here it is!
I just came across this entry and had to comment! My great-grandmother was from Hungary, and my father joked that on Saturday nights, when she babysat my father and aunt and uncle, she would make some of her more unusual Hungarian dishes — like cabbage strudel! I recently found an old box of her recipes, but sadly this one isn’t in there. I’ll have to bookmark this one instead!
I made this yesterday. With the cabbage being brown from the cinnamon, how do you tell if it is carmelizing? I cooked it and cooked it (over half an hour on med heat) and it never really looked any different (just reduced a little), then finally gave up because I needed to get it in the oven. The final product was kinda gross.
Marie – Oh, that’s weird. If it’s hard for you to tell, maybe stir in the cinnamon at the end? Also, higher heat might help. I’m sorry it didn’t work out for you.
We have a theme based dinner group and the entre couple wanted a Hungarian motiff. Since we had desert I looked online for an option. This was in 2007, and I came across your strudel and paprika ice cream. Made them both and they were a hit. We are back at it again and I had lost the recipe and found it again. Doing them again in two days. Thanx again…
marie – don’t understand awaiting moderation?
I was very happy to see these Hungarian desserts in a non-Hungarian blog. We, Hungarians, are great fans of strudels. We eat any kind: sweet and salty as well: cottage-cheese, cherry, poppy-seed, cabbage, potato. The interesting thing about cabbage strudels is that they divide us into two groups: people who eat them with black pepper sprinkled on top and people who eat them with caster sugar on top… And there are some strange people (like myself) who prefer to have both peppers and caster sugar on the same cabbage strudel :-) Try the recipe – it is really something unique…