Stuffed Cabbage Rolls

Malfof mahshi is the Levantine stuffed cabbage: cabbage leaves rolled around rice and cooked in a tomato and cumin sauce. We build the filling before anything is rolled. A tomato sauce seasoned with ground cumin, ground coriander, salt, white pepper, red pepper and a touch of black pepper is cooked down until it thickens, then the rice is worked through it until grain and sauce are one mixture, so every grain carries the seasoning on its own rather than waiting to pick it up in the pot. Coriander, parsley and dill go in last, fresh, and give the mixture its body. Each leaf is rolled around that filling, the rolls are packed into the pot, and a second sauce of tomato, cumin and salt, cooked down separately, is poured over them. The pot is sealed and left for three hours on the lowest heat, so the rolls cook in their own steam instead of at a boil; the leaf turns tender while the roll stays whole and the rice keeps its grain, and leaf and filling taste as one. It arrives hot, in the sauce it cooked in.