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Curried Cabbage Pillows
From Issue 9 of News from the Kitchen
Servings8 pillows
Nutrition (For one serving)
Calories: 401kcalCarbohydrates: 52gProtein: 17gFat: 20gSaturated Fat: 2gSodium: 908mgPotassium: 3143mgFiber: 11gSugar: 19gVitamin A: 4140IUVitamin C: 382mgCalcium: 807mgIron: 27mg
Ingredients
Wrapper
- 5 cups courgette or zucchini, peeled
- 3 tbsp olive oil
- 2 tsp lime juice
- 1/2 tsp cayenne
- 1 tsp coriander ground
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/4 cup flax meal
Filling
- 5 cups white cabbage shredded
- 6 spring onions scallions
- 2 tsp cumin
- 2 tsp coriander ground
- 1/4 cup cold-pressed sesame oil
- 1 tbsp toasted sesame oil optional
- 1 tsp salt
- 2 tbsp tamari or nama shoyu
- 2 tsp lime juice
- 2 cloves garlic crushed/minced
- 2 red Thai chilies deseeded and minced
- 2 tbsp agave
- 3 tbsp tamarind paste optional
- 1 cup coriander or cilantro, fresh, roughly chopped
Dipping sauce
- 1 cucumber peeled
- 1 mango skin & stone removed
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1 tsp lime juice
- 1 spring onion or green onion, finely chopped
- 1 cup coriander or cilantro, fresh
Instructions
Wrappers
- If you don't have a flax meal, you can take the flax seeds and ground them in a high speed blender or coffee grinder to produce a fine flour.
- Blend all ingredients except flax meal in a high-speed blender until smooth.
- Add flax meal and blend again until smooth.
- Pour mixture onto a nonstick dehydrator sheet and spread evenly into a square. You can choose the size, but for the ones in the photo, the mixture was spread 26 cm x 26 cm square.
- Dehydrate for 8 hours at 105 degrees F, or until able to peel off the sheet.
- Once the dehydrator sheets are removed, return the wrappers to the dehydrator for 30 minutes, until both sides are dry to the touch but still pliable.
Filling
- To make tamarind paste, soak the tamarind in 1 cup water and break up with your hands. Strain the mixture through a sieve, and you’re left with tamarind paste. It should be roughly the consistency of watery yoghurt. You can also just buy tamarind paste premade.
- Combine all ingredients thoroughly in a bowl.
Dipping sauce
- Blend all ingredients, except spring onions and coriander, until smooth.
- Add most of the spring onion and all the coriander and pulse in.
- Pour sauce into a small bowl and top with remaining spring onion.
Assembly
- Cut each dehydrated wrapper, which should still be pliable, into 4 equal squares.
- Start with one of those smaller squares in front of you so that one corner is close to you.
- Place a good amount of the filling mixture into the centre of the square.
- Fold up the corner that is closet to you into the centre, then fold up the left and right corners so that you form an envelope.
- You will need to wet the edges as you go along so they stick in place.
- Fold down the final corner, as if you were closing an envelope, and use water to stick it down. (You will find that you’ll get better at this the more you do.)
- Place on a dehydrator mesh tray.
- When all 8 are done, return to the dehydrator for a further 1 to 2 hours at 105 degrees F. Serve with dipping sauce.
- Dehydrate any leftover cabbage mix until crispy; it makes a great addition to any salad.
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Hello Russel, thank you so much for sharing your recipes and passion, I really enjoy your website. I just made the curried cabbage pillows and I must say that the taste is fabulous!! I am definetely making them again. But I have a couple questions if you have time to answer them. First, how many wrappers do you make with this recipe? Two or three? I started spreading the batter on the two sheets but I found it was quite thick (first time making wraps) so I went for four….which were very thin once dehydrated. Secondly, that one cup in the filling ingredients is it only to make the tamarind paste? Or is it part of the filling ingredients? I did put it in and found it was quite runny and got all my already thin wrappers wet and difficult to work with. I mean it’s all good really, I had fun doing it and it taste so good! I would just like to know those details before I make them again. Thank you!!!
Hi Melanie, this is quite an old recipe of mine, so I’m trying to remember. I’d say that if you spread it over 4 sheets and it was too thin (if it had holes in after dehydrating) then 3 sheets should be fine.
The 1 cup of water? Yes, it’s for the tamarind paste. I need to make that clearer in the recipe 🙂
This recipe is really amazing. I love the wraps. I usually have a problem using zucchini in raw recipes because i don’t like the taste of it, but this is really wow. I am happy i give it a try it definitely worth. Super yummy.
Glad you like them, Alexandra 🙂
Hi there Russel. Love this recipe but am having trouble with dinner planning if it takes 8:30 to dehydrate the wraps .
I think that reading the rest of the instructions lol, I could make them a day ahead & then heat them 1-2 hrs ahead of serving them .?
You could 🙂
Hi Russell, I love curry but haven’t had it for a while…I’m looking forward to trying this healthy recipe! Frank
Hi Russell,
My dehydrator is round and each tray has a hole in the middle. Could you suggest another way to “form” the pillows?
you could just make a ring & then instead of folding them up like in the picture you could make small wraps that are open ended… or see how low your oven goes & depending on how low it goes, try baking them on a cookie sheet or something.
why can’t I get a recipes e-book for free
Hi, have you signed up for my newsletter at the top of the page? That will enable you to download the free recipes eBook.
love the look of these. I have made zucchini wraps before and they were a disaster. All dryed and cracked and tasted horrible. They were not your recipe, i got the recipe from someone else. But the taste of the zucchini and flax made me sick. I threw the whole lot out.
Wondering if I could just use a big cabbage leaf to wrap them in instead and still dehydrate them?
I have all the ingredients except the tamarind. Would it be far less flavourful without it?
A large cabbage leaf to wrap them in would be really great. There would be no need to dehydrate them if you did that.
You can just leave out the tamarind, as it would only have a small effect on the flavour.
Could chia be used instead of flax in your recipes? Just discovered your recipes. Can’t wait to try them.
I am allergic to zucchini 🙁 Any suggestions on a replacement? Thank you so much, by the way. I have just discovered you these past 2 weeks and am so impressed.
I presume you’re allergic to yellow squash too? That would work, or use the same amount of young coconut meat.
Actually it’s all nightshades, so zucchini, eggplant, peppers, tomatoes… Thank you for the suggestion of young coconut meat. I wouldn’t have thought of that. I also saw that you use corn in some of the recipes as a substitute for the wraps so I will give that a try as well. Again, many thanks!
If I dont have cold pressed sesame oil, what would replace it? I have normal toasted sesame oil, but 1/4 might be too strong. Would it?
Looks fantastic. Im just loving all your recipes.
Yes, that would be too much toasted oil. Just use cold pressed olive oil or any other favourite cold pressed oil like avocado oil.
Such a unique ingredients , how lovely ! Thanks for this recipe 🙂
What a fab recipe… dehydrator full this afternoon woth nori crackers and your latest bread recipe but this one is on the cards for later this week… cant do cabbage so think I will use marinated kelp noodles with enoki mushrooms as the filling. Thanks!
This looks fantastic! I can hardly wait to make this. I love raw savory dishes!
just making these right now!
I just finished making these and they are really tasty! I added some more veggies like carrot and red peppers and used lemongrass instead of coriander but the effect was much the same I’m sure. Only thing that didn’t work too well was that the wrappers cracked while they were dehydrating, should I add more flax to fix this?
Thanks for your great recipes, they help to keep me inspired by food!
Thanks, Antonia 🙂
You can use a little more flax or a little less liquid — or a combination of the two.
Thank you for answering my question on January 8th Russell!
If not using the wraps right away, where would you say I store them? In an airtight container in the cabinet or the fridge? Thanks!!
From Russell: In an airtight container will be fine as long as they’re dry but they will last longer in the fridge too.
could you add fresh grated ginger to this?
From Russell: Sure can 🙂
I have made the cabbage pillows twice now, and they are fabulous.
I don’t know if you have tried kelp noodles, yet. I’ve heard they can be a bit of a challenge to obtain in the UK, but, your cabbage pillow sauce goes beautifully with them.
I double the sauce and and herbs. Half goes with the cabbage, and half goes with one package of rinsed kelp noodles. It makes enough to serve 2 very hungry or 3 hungry adults. I dehydrate for about 1/2 hour until the noodles and cabbage are lovely and soft. It reminds me of raw version Pad Lao, a Laotian version of Pad Thai, made with a savory brown sugar and a hot tamarind lime sauce.
This looks so beautiful with your sweet and spicy sunflower seeds served on top – I substituted almonds for the sunnies, because they were soaked and ready to go. Additional garnishes could be julienned red pepper, carrots, lime wedges, cucumber slices, shredded purple cabbage, and more fresh cilantro and/or thai basil and mint.
For your readers who make kombucha at home, if they want a shortcut to the tamarind paste, 1/4 – 1/2 cup of kombucha vinegar and 2 pitted dates blended together makes a really nice substitute.
From Russell: Thanks, Heidi. Great tips, sounds like you’ve been busy 🙂
One more question, did you add curry to this recipe Russell? I couldn’t find it in the ingredients list.
From Russell: No curry needed, the curry flavour comes from the mix of herbs and spices in there.
Hi Russell! I love your work! I tried this recipe and although I didn’t have all the ingredients for the filling, it was quite tasty. I can’t wait to try it with tamarind paste! I never would have thought to use zuchinni to make a wrap..how genius and delicious. But I had one problem. I was making this for myself so I reduced the amounts and guessed at the ingredient proportions. My wrap broke apart a little bit. Would you please give me the ingredient measurements for everything to make this for 1 or 2 people. I have no idea how many zuchinni I should use to fill a cup because I don’t know how big you dice yours.
From Russell: Hi Kendra, roughly chop the zuchinni about 1cm thick – there is room for slightly more or less, it won’t effect the recipe if you chop it slightly differently.
Thank you – I will try again.
About the peeling you’re right I peeled them ‘lightly’ as I thought are organic.
Will go deeper next time and try ticker spread
…. learning from mistakes… 😀
From Russell: It’s the only way 🙂
Hi Russell
I had the same problem of Leslie, I did 1/2 of the dose for the wrap as I’m on my own. It came out of a greenish colour, still pliable but very fragile so that when I did try to fold it up, it just broke and/or melt.
I wonder if for the one in the picture you used coconut jelly.
As I liked the taste I kept the filling and I did another wrap using dessicated coconut, flax meal and apple plus all spices, it actually went out quite well and the wrap was done in just 2 hours.
However I’d love to do it with the courgettes, any advice, maybe more flax meal?
Thank you
From Russell: Hi Sylvia, firstly it sounds like you didn’t peel the courgette enough/at all if the wraps are green! 🙂 The ones in the picture used exactly the ingredients in the recipe, so you may be spreading them too thin. Let me know how you get on.
Thanks Russell, it didn’t really go either, it was just a thin layer stuck to the sheet. I did notice it wasn’t the same colour as yours, more green looking. I did use the right amount of flax seeds according to the recipe though. I don’t know what I did wrong, the courgettes were very watery once they were blended – could that be it?
Many thanks
Lesley
Hi Russell,
I had a problem making the wrap. I don’t have a vitamix and so used my food processor but the mixture was very wet and dried out over 24 hrs in the dehydrator, but had holes. It wasn’t usable. When I try it again would it help to increase the amount of flax meal and by how much would you say? Many thanks.
From Russell: The way you blend the mixture shouldn’t cause any difference in the wetness. Was it still pliable when you dried it for 24 hours or did it go crispy?
Russell –
Do you know how long the wrap and the filling should last for in the fridge? I’m thinking about making these for Thanksgiving, but I’m making a few things via the dehydrator, so if i could make these ahead, that would be a great help! Thanks!!!
From Russell: The filling will keep for a day or 2, and the wrappers the same,
Drooling….I will be trying this recipe soon…Hhhhmmmm…not soon enough!
Delicious! I typically do not like cabbage, but the photo was enough to whet my appetite. I made the wrappers and the filling; and, it was absolutely amazing.
I couldn’t figure out how you got the cabbage to look that way, so thanks for posting that.
Hello,
is there a uk source for jicama? It would e nice to be able to poroduce a comfort food like chips to entice the family to try raw a little more.
Dear Russell,
My name is Wendy and I have children with numerous food allergies. Eating more raw food has been challenging for us due to a lot of nut recipes, the fact that none of us seems to do well on fruit (yeast), and that a lot of the recipes seem to be the same variations of salsa, guacamole, pureed soup, and desserts that all seem to resemble Lara Bars. These are nice but not enough. After purchasing numerous raw books, your recipes have a lot of eye appeal and make this lifestyle appear more realistic. Thank you for making these options available. Do you have a book out?
I just signed up for your newsletter but I don’t know how many Recipes I have missed so far.
All the best,
Wendy
All the best
From Russell:
No book as yet, but I do get asked at least 3 times a day 🙂 First eBook comes out very soon, so you’ll get to hear about that.
Glad to see you’re back Russell with the wonderful recipes. keep us happy, smile.
Funny thing is I did use a mandoline one of those handheld ones which didn’t do too hot. Is there a certain way I should do it? Any sides I should start with first? Should I use a julienne slice? Any particular way to cut the cabbage? The recipe is still good even with my crazy looking cabbage shreds :), when are youcoming out with your ebooks?
From Russell: Cut the cabbage into quarters, from the top to the bottom, then put them in the mandoline lengthwise. I never knew how difficult it was to describe using a mandoline with just words. Lol. My first eBook will be out this week with my website, or next week at the latest.
Beautiful picture and recipe 🙂
Cheers,
Kristen Suzanne
It looked like regular grated cabbage or shredded cabbage. Not solid and uniformed like yours. Was there some special method you did to get it to look like that? Could you please share?
From Russell: No probs, try using a mandoline – it will give you those longer strands.
I really loved this recipe, I’m making it again this week actually, just want to know how I would get my cabbage to look like yours in the picture. It didn’t come out looking that good. Keep giving us good recipes. Thanks.
From Russell: Thanks, Ariel. How did it look then?