Welcome to 2010

I decided to make stuffed cabbage leaves from the current issue of Martha Stewart Living for the second dinner I've cooked in the new year. The first was a simple supper of rosemary roasted potatoes and steamed mussels with a spinach salad. Tonight I wanted something a bit heartier, since we are freezing, and the cabbage leaves appealed to me. I followed the recipe pretty faithfully, though I did substitute some cooked barley for the rice in the filling of ground beef and pork. I thought that this worked pretty well, and the acupuncturist I was seeing for my back told me that I needed to eat more barley and kale. (Kale soup is on the menu for Tuesday.) It is a pretty spicy filling, containing a tablespoon of hot Hungarian paprika. I actually purchased mine in Budapest when I was there for work eighteen months ago, and I need to use it up. (I took advantage of that trip to eat a fair number of delicious pastries, as well...It's hard to go wrong at Ruszwurm, up at the castle.) We had the cabbage leaves with some roasted carrots and parsnips, which I did very simply with olive oil, kosher salt, and herbes de Provence. With dinner I opened a 2004 Blauer Zweigelt from Paul Lehrner, a spicy Austrian red wine, which was an excellent pairing, and we finished with a bit of goat cheese from Firefly Farms, a local cheese maker. All in all, this was probably my favorite meal of the year so far.