Thomasina Miers’ stuffed cabbage in white wine and escabeche

I have always loved stuffed vegetables. As a child I cooked stuffed aubergines from my mother’s old book, and in the early 1990s Delia Smith showed how similar magic could be worked with peppers and tomatoes. Travels in Mexico shaped later choices, and this stuffed cabbage grew out of a memory of the most delicious tongue in a light escabeche at Nicos in Mexico City, and a current craving for cabbage.

The dish uses an Oaxacan-style picadillo that you can make a day in advance; the flavour improves overnight. The filling combines pork mince with onion, celery, ground allspice and cumin, raisins, garlic, whole plum tomatoes, chipotle en adobo, apple cider vinegar, a little runny honey and toasted pine nuts.

To prepare the leaves, cut away the stem, separate 15–16 leaves and blanch them, reserving the cooking water for the rice if you like. Shave away most of the thick rib from each leaf, then spoon two to three heaped tablespoons of the pork mix into each, roll up and tuck in the ends.

Mexico, Mexico City

thomasina miers, stuffed cabbage, escabeche, white wine, picadillo, pork mince, chipotle adobo, plum tomatoes, cider vinegar, pine nuts