Amo old book printed in Hungarian in Baia Mare in 1913. Searching through it I found a recipe for sarmale and also one for "cabbage a la Cluj" (Kolozsvári káposzta). Since we've been talking about sarmales for a while, I thought I'd give you these two recipes, maybe you should try them. There are many Hungarian communities in the villages of Transylvania. As with Romanians, sarmales are not absent from the holiday or Sunday menu. Some recipes are passed down from Romanians to Hungarians or vice versa. Today we are only talking about sarmales. You will notice that the book talks about "barrel sauerkraut". I found many recipes that use this cabbage, especially in winter.
The fattier pork is finely chopped. For half a kilogram of meat, add half a handful of washed rice, an egg, a pinch of ground black pepper and a coffee teaspoon of salt. Mix and wrap the sarmales with sauerkraut, about the size of a walnut. The ends of the cabbage leaf are pushed into the wire. A soup plate filled with finely chopped cabbage, squeezed well, is placed on the bottom of a pot. Place the sausages in a circle and place bacon or fatty meat in the middle. Pour enough water to cover the sarmales. Periodically, the pot is lifted from the fire and turned so that the food does not stick to its bottom.
Put a good spoonful of grease (pork lard), a little flour and a finely chopped red onion in a larger pan and make a paste by adding cold water. If the cabbage is not very sour, you can add it to the rântaş and a little more (cabbage juice). Add the rentaš on top of the sarmales, put plenty of cream. They are served with the boiled pot meat, sliced.
Apart from the meat, you can put fresh or smoked sausage in the pot, it depends on how fatty the meat used is.
In some areas, rantaş is no longer made, only cream rubbed with egg yolks is added. The beaten egg and cream are put over the hot sarmales before serving.
Finely chop a red onion and fry it in 50-60 grams of fat (pork lard). A kilogram of cubed pork is placed on top of the hardened onion, salt, a little water is added and it is stewed until the meat becomes soft.
Separately, in 40-50 grams of fat, stew a soup plate full of finely chopped pickled cabbage.
Still separately, in a little oil, about 20 grams, with finely chopped red onion, lightly fried, fry the rice a little, add salt, pepper, water, soften.
Place the meat, cabbage and rice in layers in a larger pot. Cream is put between the layers and put in the oven.
Do not mix at all, when it is ready, turn it over on a plate and serve.
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