Stuffed cabbage in Hollywood: what sarmale are
If you searched for stuffed cabbage near you and landed here, the word on our board is sarmale. Romanian cabbage rolls, four to a plate, at 422 S Dixie Hwy in Hollywood, any day but Monday.
Ours are ground pork and rice, rolled in sour cabbage leaves with onion and thyme, then cooked slow with smoked bacon and tomato. The plate is four rolls with mămăligă, the cornmeal polenta that goes under half of Romanian cooking, and a spoon of sour cream on top. Twenty dollars, one plate, one person.
The leaf is what makes this a different dish from the stuffed cabbage you may already know. It is sour before it ever goes near the pot, because the cabbage was fermented whole in brine, and that sourness works into the pork and the rice while the pot cooks. Nothing in it is sweetened. If the stuffed cabbage in your memory is one large roll of fresh green cabbage under a sweet tomato sauce, this one is smaller, sharper, and has smoke in it.
The smoked bacon goes into the pot with the rolls and cooks down with the tomato, so the smoke ends up in the dish instead of sitting next to it.
Sarmale are the dish of every Romanian holiday table. In most Romanian houses the pot goes on at Christmas and at Easter, big enough for everyone who might come by, and the family eats from it for three days. We cook them all year, so you can have them on a Tuesday in September.
There is one size and one price: four rolls, mămăligă, sour cream, $20. Order them ahead on the menu and pick them up at the counter, or come in and order at the register. Every dish on the menu has its ingredients written under it, so you can read what is in something before you decide.
Have a soup first, the way it is done at home. Ciorbă de perișoare, a sour soup with pork meatballs and rice, is $13 for twenty ounces. Salată de varză, shredded cabbage in a light vinegar dressing, is $5 and goes beside the plate. A franzelă, the house loaf, is $6, and you will want bread for what is left in the plate.
The case out front is a separate errand. Dry smoked sausage with garlic and paprika at $20 a pound, slănină, smoked fatback, at $18, pastramă from pork neck at $25. We smoke the meat in the house, over hardwood, and it is cut and wrapped to order. Ask for a quarter pound and watch the scale.
Pickup is at 422 S Dixie Hwy, Hollywood, Florida. Tuesday to Saturday, 10 AM to 6 PM. Sunday, 10 AM to 4 PM. Monday the doors stay shut, because Monday the smokehouse rests and Tuesday the case is full again. The hours and the way in are kept in one place so they cannot go stale in two.
If somebody gave you this address as Artisan Deli, the door has not moved. We made the mici and the sausage that were sold here, and the counter is ours now. The short version is here.
Sour cabbage, pork, rice, thyme and smoke. If that is the stuffed cabbage you were looking for, it is four rolls and a plate of mămăligă away.