I've been inspired by my friend and ex-roommate Nick.  He's just started a new blog and his tag line is: <a href="http://www.macheesmo.com/" target="_blank">Cook Something</a>.  I used to be one of his food tasters and now I just get to read about what he's been cooking. This seems decidedly unfair.  I move to Sofia and he starts a cooking blog?! Well it's clear: he's got one lucky girlfriend and that most of his recipes are too hard for me to make here in Sofia.

My kitchen is not what you would call well equipped. In addition to dishes and silverware, I've got one frying pan, a pot, and two slightly larger pots that you could use to make soup, a strainer, a set of crappy knives, a spatula and a can opener.  I think that I have the kitchen equipment of a college frat boy minus the microwave.

I have a what the Bulgarians call a cooker--it's a mini stove and oven in one.  To help you picture this, imagine a dorm room mini-fridge and then imagine shrinking down a stove/oven to similar proportions.  My stove has two burners--one large and one small.  The temperature options range from 1 to 4.  It takes a while to heat up and once it's heated up I think that all of the options between 1 and 4 are some variation of very hot. <!--more-->

The oven is another part of the cooker and is more of the same.  There are some options for how I want the oven to be heated just from the top, just from the bottom or both but because my cooker is really not larger than a microwave in the states I always choose to heat the top and bottom.  There's also a knob that controls the heat--this starts at 50 degrees Celsius goes up to something like 300 degree Celsius.  I don't know if these knobs are accurate but the most I've done is to bake potato wedges, roast pumpkin or heat up left overs and it's worked okay for this.  So I turn it to high and get cooking.  Oh, I probably won't be baking bread or cooking cookies in this oven--if only because I don't have a cookie sheet.

The good news is that I think with my stove I could give Rachel Ray a run for her money--30 minutes? Not a problem I could probably do it 15! The one problem with this would be that I don't have nearly enough utensils or spices to keep up with her. I've stocked my kitchen with the basics--there's no fancy spice rack in my kitchen(I am from real America) .  Well really being from real America has nothing to do with it--mostly it's because I can't justify it.  I've been living here since August (gasp nearly three months!) and I probably only cook two times a week.

So I've been inspired by Nick to start a regular posting on my site called: Simple and Satisfying.  This post will be an easy to make recipe which is both tasty and simple.  As I've explained, I don't have a lot to work with and I can't find lots of fancy ingredients so here's the first installment.

<em><strong>Bulgarian Meatballs and Cabbage</strong></em>

[caption id="attachment_344" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Ingredients for Dinner "]<a href="http://www.karolinkabulgaria.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/dsc04232.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-344" title="Dinner " src="http://www.karolinkabulgaria.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/dsc04232.jpg?w=300" alt="Ingredients for Dinner " width="300" height="225" /></a>[/caption]

It's pretty straightforward:

First cook the meatballs on the stove in a pan.  You can see that I bought mine premade.  These are called Koufte--they are made of out pork, garlic and some green spice. When these have been cooked transfer them to a pan in the oven to keep them hot.

Second, add the sliced red onion and cook until soft in the fat from the meatballs.  Then add the cabbage which should be sliced thinly (about three cups) and the grapes (about a cup).  I had to slice these in half to de-seed but if yours don't have seeds no need to cut them.

Third, cook this mixture for about 10 minutes and be sure to stir once or twice.  Then add about four tablespoons of vinegar, two tablespoons of mustard and a tablespoon of lime (or lemon) juice and stir.  Cook until the cabbage is soft maybe 5 more minutes.

Finally, take the meatballs from the oven add to the cabbage mix.  It will look like this:

[caption id="attachment_345" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Maybe not Beautiful but it sure is Easy! "]<a href="http://www.karolinkabulgaria.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/dsc04233.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-345" title="Meatballs " src="http://www.karolinkabulgaria.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/dsc04233.jpg?w=300" alt="Maybe not Beautiful but it sure is Easy! " width="300" height="225" /></a>[/caption]

The grapes will kind of open up and the cabbage will wilt a little bit and the vinegar and mustard really add a nice depth to the dish.

Probably from this picture you can see that what I've been calling meatballs are actually look like little patties.  You may think that I mangaged to flattened them out while cooking them.  I did not.  The Bulgarian meatball or Koufte is actually served in restuarants flattened out like this.  Somone one told me recently: Oh, they've been spanked.

Great now I can't get the image out of my head: Bulgarian women and grannies spanking meatballs.

[caption id="attachment_346" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Dinner: вкуснo E! Delicious! "]<a href="http://www.karolinkabulgaria.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/dsc04235.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-346" title="Dinner " src="http://www.karolinkabulgaria.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/dsc04235.jpg?w=300" alt="вкуснo E! Delicious!" width="300" height="225" /></a>[/caption]

Now comes the fun part.  You get to eat the dish and you've made enough for left overs for the next day or two.

As you can see, if you want to make the dish look really pretty and maybe  you want it to like it took you more than three steps to make, you can serve the dish in a pretty bowl with two slices of bread.

And if you wanted to eat this meal quickly, I guess that you could just make a big Koufte, cabbage and grape sandwich.

Okay, let me know what you think!