Mick in the kitchen: dolmades
A great thing about foodstuffs from overseas is the instructions. They're like a flatpack furniture manual.
My latest haul from Dublin's Moore Street (which just gets better and better - loads more shops that specialise in foreign food) includes unusual spices, herbs, dried mushrooms and vine leaves.
The mushrooms are ideal for mushroom soup or risotto. Very long cep type things with big stalks that enrich your cooking liquid.
They aren't actually labelled "MUSHROOMS" - they're called "DRIED WILD FOOD - DESSECHE ALIMENTS SAUVAGE!" And the storage instructions go:
"Avoid to contact with strong sun light as well as humid place. The best preservation is to keep its into refrigerator with water proof box, it will prevent the developing of mould the thriving of Harmful Worm and the changing of taste"
Yes, the Harmful Worm, a nasty little lad.
Vine leaves are for putting stuff in, and stuffed vine leaves come in many varieties - from sardines to minced lamb. But the one you're most likely to come across, particularly in delis and Greek restaurants and (spit spit) M&S, is dolmades.
The very large vacuum-pack of vine leaves I bought comes from somewhere in Turkey, "FROM ECOLOGICAL CLEAN REGIONS". It talks not about vine leaves but about "wine leaves", and it offers the following helpful instructions (again I'm quoting verbatim):
PREPARATION
Onions are fried in olive oil, washed rice and pienuts are added into oil and fried for a swhile. Add spices and 1/2 glass of water to it and close the cove and let it be cooked until the water is absorbed (by half fire). The wine leaves are washed by luke warm water and dewatered. Wine leaves are filed with themixture and rolled and queued in the cooking pan properly. Add sufficdent of water and coock it until it get well done.
You can get away without the "pienuts" or even pinenuts, but the following instructions might make more sense...
1. Rinse your vine leaves to get rid of the brine they're packed in. I also trim the stalks, which (like the mushroom stalks) can be a bit tough.
2. Gently fry an onion in a small drizzle of olive oil till it's softened. Allow it to cool
3. In a mixing bowl, mix together:
- the cooked onion
- a large handful of chopped fresh parsley and mint or dill
- a pinch each of salt, freshly ground black pepper and sugar
- a generous handful of long-grain rice (uncooked)
4. Lay out about six or eight vine leaves at a time, uncurling their corners so they're totally flat, and place a teaspoon of the ricey mixture on each leaf, and roll it up into a parcel, making sure that the mixture is fully enclosed. This is the only slightly fiddly bit. It takes a certain knack.
5. Line the bottom of a large saucepan with the parcels, tightly packed. Cover - only just - with some stock (chicken stock if you really want, though I just use a veggie stock cube and hot water) and simmer very gently for 45 minutes.
6. Allow to cool. Drizzle on some lemon juice, serve with black olives and feta cheese.
Posted by mick cunningham at April 1, 2004 11:04 AM | Email a friend this entry
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