I’m an addict. Anything and everything in my kitchen is some sort of potential addiction device. Yesterday I came home exhausted from Lotus Mexicana and remembered I had some frozen grapeleaves my friend Toria brought me from South Africa (we don’t grow grapes here in Uganda, so they are imported from South Africa) and I started thinking how much I wanted to make stuffed grapeleaves. I remember this special taste from my childhood in Israel. This herby, viney, interestingly enough, completely ungrapey, smell of rice and parsley filled parcels wrapped in big green vine leaves and doused in lemon, garlic and olive oil. This is quite possibly the first food memory I have and one that is responsible for my addiction to anything cooking related. I remember sitting at my aunty Doras kitchen table and asking if I could help roll the grapeleaves and being astounded that she actually said yes. Dora never wanted help in the kitchen. She wanted to feed you, to love you, to spoil you and to coo and fuss about you but she never wanted help. That day I felt like a grown up. I may have even pretended that my cousins were jealous of me, getting to help our favorite aunt in the kitchen but I doubt that they were. They probably thought I was a sucker for being stuck in that kitchen but there was no place in the world I would have rather been and nothing else I would have rather been doing. On my Bulgarian side of the family, my aunts were judged by their cooking skills and stuffed grapeleaves (called sarmi) is as classic a Bulgarian dish as any. Traditionally, Bulgarians stuff vine leaves with a savory mixture of rice, meat and parsley and cook them in a lightly spiced tomato sauce, served hot with cold yoghurt that is quite frankly, pretty darn fabulous. However, somehow in recent years, I’ve become partial to the rice and herb stuffed variety stewed in a lemony, garlicky olive oil concoction more commonly known as Greek dolmades. I have, of course when the urge overtakes me, played around with many stuffings and versions of this dish but the following recipe is my favorite. Eaten cold with or without plain rich yoghurt, it never ceases to impress and amaze me that I could turn out something this good. Beware, it’s addictive. And P.S. It ain’t exactly hard but follow directions carefully because its easy to screw it up.
Stuffed Grapeleaves (Vegetarian)
Ingredients:
- 1 jar grapeleaves in Brine
For the filling:
- 1 cup long grain rice (you could use basmati here but I wouldn’t. I would use an asian white rice or a parboiled type long grain. If you are a health nut, be my guest and use brown rice. basmati is great rice but I don’t like it in my grapeleaves.
- 1/4 cup toasted pine nuts (I can’t always find them here in Kampala so I replace with roasted cashews – don’t embarrass me and use peanuts please)
- 4 green onions (scallions) finely chopped
- 1 packed cup chopped fresh herbs (I use parsley – curly or flat – a snippet of fresh mint, a dash of rosemary, a dash of dill)
- Lots of freshly cracked pepper
- 6 dried prunes, pitted and chopped (optional but fabulous)
- 1/2 tsp salt
- Freshly ground black pepper
For the stewing liquid:
How to:
- Take your grapeleaves out of the jar and gently unroll them so they don’t break or tear. Check them out. If they are good, they will be green, briny, soft and have the stems cut to the core. If they are not good or don’t resemble this, don’t worry, grapeleaves are like pizzas, even bad ones are good ones. Dump them into a colander and rinse them under cold water very well so the brine comes off. Then place them into a bowl and cover them with boiling water and let them sit there to soften while you make the stuffing. If your leaves are fresh or they are not soft, par boil them in water until they soften up some and make sure you trim the stem if this is not already done for you.
- Put a pot of water on the stove and bring it to a boil. In the meantime, wash your rice until the water runs clear and pick out any stones you see. If you live in Africa, where there is often seemingly more stones than rice, do this carefully. Nothing will piss you off more than going to all this trouble to make this dish and then biting into some sandy stone when you sit down finally to eat your grapeleaves. When the water boils put the rice into the water and then let the water come to a boil again. Don’t let the rice boil for more than 4 -5 minutes. Set a timer. This is the first place you can screw up this recipe. If you overcook the rice here you will end up with mushy filling. Not nice. Immediately drain the rice and run cold water on it to stop it cooking. Drain very well and set aside.
- Now add to the rice the rest of your stuffing ingredients and mix very well with a spoon. Taste it, this is critical. Adjust the seasonings to make sure it is a bit salty, herby and oniony.
- Now take all the ingredients to make your sauce out and get a bowl. Start with the garlic, salt, sugar and lemon juice and then add the olive oil while whisking with a fork. Taste it. If it needs a little something, add it. I grind tons of black pepper in it, but you don’t have to. Then put in your cup of boiling water. Set aside.
- Next prepare to stuff. Drain the vine leaves and get rid of any excess moisture. Inspect the leaves one by one and any that are torn or extra small or extra-large, use to line the bottom and sides of a heavy bottomed pan with a lid that will fit about 35 leaves in 1 or 2 layers. Working on a clean dry surface like a chopping board grab a leaf. Put the shiny side of the leaf down on the board with the place where the stem met the vine down and the maple shaped leaf end is away from you. You will see the stem side facing you. Say hey stem side. Put a tablespoon of stuffing right above the stem and compress it with your fingers. Pretend you are in Greece helping out your Greek grandmother. Make yourself a cup of mint tea and take a deep breath. Okay? Now proceed. Take the left part of the leaf and fold it over the stuffing. Do the same to the right side. Grab the now enclosed rice end and roll, making sure that your tuck the leaf in until you have rolled it to the end and then seam side down lay it gently in the pan lined with broken grapeleaves. Phew, thats one! Please don’t give in to the urge to use more than a tablespoon of stuffing. Remember rice expands and you don’t want your rolls exploding and also it makes them hard to roll if you put too much. Do roll them tightly because they will soften up during cooking and allow the rice to expand. Ideally, each roll will be about 2.5 inches long. If they are longer or shorter, try better next time.
- Now repeat this until you run out of stuffing placing each rolled vine leaf around and around side by side of your pan. You can do 2 or 3 layers if you wish but 2 is the most I like to do. If you have any leftover leaves, you can freeze them in plastic baggies. They keep for ages. When you want to use them again, just remove from freezer and pour boiling water on them again.
- Now turn on your fire under the pan to medium, pour on the sauce and see how high it reaches. If it barely covers the grapeleaves you are set. If not, pour a bit more water in the pan.
- Take a heat proof plate that is a bit smaller than the pan, turn it over facing down and gently lay it over the grapeleaves so that they don’t open during cooking cause that will also really piss you off.
- Put a tight-fitting lid on your pan and cook those babies for an hour. Now, don’t go too far because every 15 minutes or so, you should remove the lid, remove the plate without burning yourself (I use a long spatula to jimmy up the plate and a clean hand towel to pull it off but I still have burned myself doing this) Be careful and slow and you won’t hurt yourself. Make sure the sauce is just simmering but not boiling strongly. Take a bulb type baster and put sauce on the top of the rolls that are on the top layers. If you, like me, can’t find your baster since 10 Thanksgivings ago, use a spoon and tilt the pan to get the juices out and baste your rolls.
- By the second round of this basting you will be drawn into the kitchen by an amazing aroma of the herby smelling leaves, garlic, lemon and olive oil which will make your next 2 trips to do this an unadulterated pleasure. You will also be salivating and wanting to eat them right out of the pan but resist! They aren’t good until an hour because the leaves need to cook imparting the rice with their special aroma and the rice will not be very good half done and too al dente.
- If during one of these basting sessions, you see the pan is dry, you should add more boiling water but try not to let this happen. The rice and heat will impart a starchiness to thicken the sauce but in the end you should end up with only a bit of olive oil on the bottom of the pan. This tells you that you are a perfect person and all is well with the world.
- Go ahead and waste some rolls now because you have earned it to eat some of them right out of the pan standing in the kitchen and after all you just can’t resist that smell. When they cool a bit, carefully lifted out each roll and store them in a sealed container in the fridge Then tommorrow you will harvest your real reward. You will lift out a perfect, chilled, shiny rolled grapeleaf, bite into it and if you aren’t blown away at your creation, the perfect combination of cold, salty, sweet, savory, crunchy, umami, mindfuckingly amazing and toothsome little bundle, well then I just don’t know what to tell you. And if you share these with your friends or bring them to a party, they will actually respect you more or think you brought them back with you from Greece.
