I was watching the Rachel Ray variety and lifestyleTV Show. A featured guest was chef Nyesha Arrington. She is a well trained famous chef that owns at least one restaurant in California and has been featured on many food related TV shows including Top Chef. On the Rachel Ray show she made these adorable….what she called, “SHOW STOPPING” five-spiced chicken meatball stuffed cabbages. I decided that I needed to make them. First thing that I decided that I needed to cut the recipe in half…..Then I made different (my own) meatballs because I didn’t need to add tofu to my meatballs and I wanted to add more flavors….I can make meatballs in my sleep. Got the meatballs made…..
I did have problems with the rice step…..Unless you have a rice cooker or a steamer…I would suggest just to make the rice the way you normally cook rice. The instructions might be misprinted. I did soak and drain my glutinous rice but my rice took far longer than the 12 minutes noted. Mine took at least 40 minutes. Still not such a big deal……Just note that your rice might take longer…Just cook till your rice is sticky.
My last issue was the Chinese Cabbage……..I keep forgetting that chefs get better produce than we get……They get the most stunning fresh local beautiful big produce and we get mostly average produce that is trucked in from far away…..I also didn’t know how many leaves are in large Chinese Cabbages or Savoy cabbage. The cabbage I bought I thought was enormous……THE BIGGEST ONE THAT I’VE EVER SEEN……..But still not big enough for even half of the HALF recipe………Little did I know that I could only use eleven leaves to wrap meatballs and I had 21 meatballs so some we ate unwrapped and I made a nice Asian type sauce for them…….On the TV Show the chef saiid to make the meatballs 1- 1.5 ounces each so I did exactly that….Mine were all 1.3-1.4oz each. I made 21 meatballs. ( do have to mention that chef Arrington also got 18-20 meatballs and hers looks way larger than the 1-1.5 ounces….I know she added a cup of tofu and had twice as much meat..I guess that is why they looked so large…..I think they were MUCH bigger)….I have no idea how she got such big cabbage leaves to wrap hers…..)…..I only got 11 of my meatballs wrapped because I only had 11 leaves big enough to wrap the meatballs………(and my cabbage was the biggest one that I have ever seen at a grocery store……..So you might need to buy two (or FOUR if you didn’t cut recipe in half like I did).
ANYWAY……
Making them was pretty easy. (you. do have to blanch the cabbage)
Add some rice and meatball….This sits on plastic wrap….
Here comes the clever secret to making them……..
You take the wrap and pull it up and kind of use your hand to distribute the rice around the meatball and twist at the end. I chilled mine over night.
If you follow chef Arrington’s directions she suggest to steam the cabbage wrapped meatballs hot in the plastic wrap…….I didn’t do that because I thought mine would take too long to steam. I also couldn’t imagine unwrapping boiling hot plastic wrapped meatballs…My husband would starve by the time I unwrapped them all…….So I warmed mine up in the oven with a little vegetable broth without the plastic wrap and they came out great that way.
Chef Arrington’s recipe is called Five-Spice Chicken Meatball – Stuffed Cabbage and can be found on Rachel Ray TV Show Recipe Site. A few others claim to have wrote this recipe but I don’t think they did because they used chef Arrington’s photo.
A Special. THANKS!!!! to chef Nyesha Arrington for sharing her unique recipe so I could make what you see here!
