The cold seems to have addled my brain.

After last week’s signs of spring, the last hurrahs of winter came roaring back this weekend, chilling every marketgoer and the poor vendors who had to make change with stiff fingers in the biting wind. In addition to the cold, the time change had me confused and I left the house before having my coffee.

The cold, along with the lack of caffeine, helps to explain how I came back with the most disparate and random bag of ingredients: a block of feta, some bacon, some pork sausage, a quart of broccoli, a pound of salad greens, a head of cabbage and a small bottle of blackberry vinegar.
 Now, what kind of meal is a girl supposed to cobble together from all that?

Well, the bacon went into the freezer for a distant breakfast; the broccoli will be roasted for a dinner party later in the week and the feta, greens and vinegar will make salads for my lunch throughout the week. This left the cabbage and the sausage. So I started thinking about slow-braised stuffed cabbage rolls, like my Hungarian-Jewish great-grandmother would have made. (Except, you know, with pork.)

Stuffed cabbage leaves, a tradition among Eastern European Jews, is a wintertime dish that makes the most of what is on hand. Cabbage was one of the few vegetables available in wintertime in Hungary, before the days of globalization. The rice helps stretch the meat, much like the bread crumbs in a meatloaf or meatballs. The tomatoes would have been canned in the summer, and the onions can be cold-stored for months.

Of course, in the Jewish old country, this dish would always have been made with beef. I don’t keep Kosher and, in fact, I like pork the most of all the meats, so the version below is my decidedly non-Kosher twist on an old Jewish classic.

In my version, the meat is salted and spicy, the cabbage is sweet and provides some structure to the dish, and the sweet-and-sour tomato sauce brings the whole thing wonderfully, vibrantly together.

My Methodist boyfriend from Alabama, who’d never had stuffed cabbage and eyed me with great suspicion when I said I was making it for dinner, went back for seconds and then thirds. He loved this dish so much he said it’s one of the top three things I’ve ever made — which is high praise. And so I’ve named the dish in honor of him.
 Enjoy it in these last few days of winter, when the oven heats up the house and hearty dishes are on the menu.

Methodist Stuffed Cabbage

Serves 4. Takes 2 hours, 1.5 are inactive

• 1 lb. mild Italian pork sausage filling, or sausages removed from their casings
• 1/4 c. cooked, cooled white rice
• 3/4 of a red, sweet or white onion, or some combination thereof (I used a quarter of a red onion I had in the fridge for the filling, and half a sweet onion for the topping)
• 1 tsp. oregano
• 1 tsp. garlic powder
• 1 tsp kosher salt
• 2 pinches red pepper flakes
• 1 head of Savoy cabbage
• 1 14.5 oz can diced tomatoes
• 3 Tbsp. cider vinegar
• 3 Tbsp. light brown sugar
• 1 pinch cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees.
Bring a large pot of water to boil.
In a mixing bowl, combine sausage, rice, 1/4 of the onion (diced small), the oregano, garlic powder, red pepper and half the salt in a bowl.

Work the mixture with your hands until everything is incorporated. Form into a dozen or 15 patties, two or three inches across. Set aside.
Remove any damaged outer leaves from the cabbage. Cut out the core of the cabbage head in a cone shape with a sharp knife. Dunk the entire head into the boiling water for a minute, then remove and drain. Peel off the outer layer of cabbage leaves, which should now be soft and pliable after the blanching. Lay a leaf on a flat surface, cut out any tough core remaining, and place a sausage patty on the leaf. Fold the leaf around the patty, then place in a 9” x 13” baking pan.

Repeat until all the patties have been used, re-dunking the cabbage in water to blanch as many leaves as you need.
When all the stuffed cabbage leaves are prepared and in the pan, top with half an onion, thinly sliced, the tomatoes, the sugar, the vinegar and the cinnamon.

Cover tightly with foil, and braise in the oven for an hour. After an hour, turn the heat up to 350 and remove the foil from the pan. Bake an additional 30 minutes.
 Serve to your Methodist boyfriend, who will go back for thirds.