Wonder Dolma

Oh my God. You do not need grape leaves for dolmas! Ever since an Iraqi woman told me she uses in-season greens like kale, chard, and cabbage, I have been on cooking cloud nine. Honestly, I like kale. Those kale chips are pretty good. But this.. This. Is. Awesome. My friends adore this dish. Even my kids adore this dish. Even my kids' friends! It's a bird, it's a plane, its Wonder Dolma and she gets kids to eat vegetables. I just thought of my halloween costume, and maybe even a Sesame Street appearance. PBS, Call me. I'll dress up like a dolma if I can save a generation of Americans from you know what! Click at right for the full story, how-to photos, and two favorite recipes.

Photo: Margo Roy

The Story

What to Eat After Trampoline-ing

By Lindsay Sterling

Dear growers of cabbage, chard, and kale; winter CSA subscribers; healthy eaters; gluten-free-ers; parents who pack lunches; potluckers; vegetarians, meat eaters; locavores; who-cares-avores; carnivores, omnivores with dilemmas; omnivores without dilemmas; people who eat while driving; triathletes who eat while biking; couch potatoes, and anyone else I have not called out who is human and eats… I have an amazing finger food for you. Dolmas are incredibly delicious edible packets of spiced rice and/or meat that are packable, portable, and extremely healthy. They’re so good, they must be bad for you, but they’re not. The aspect of this food I find absolutely unbelievable, astonishing, really, is that it gets kids to eat kale.

I brought a platter of dolmas to a party recently. On my Iraqi friend’s suggestion, I’d wrapped them in local kale, chard, and cabbage instead of grape leaves. A pack of kids dismounted the trampoline, ran to the buffet table, offered quizzical looks and some shrugs, and then devoured the dolmas like they were cupcakes. I would not be surprised if in 20 years kale dolmas finally redeemed McDonalds from the entire twentieth century health debacle. They would come in a hot little collection like nuggets, with a yogurt dipping sauce -- their first ever sauce with no sugar in it!

What you know of dolmas from the store, tangy cold little green cylinders stuffed in a deli container, is about 1/1000^th of their potential. I’m not exaggerating. The best kind are home-cooked, steaming hot, and served on a platter or big board for family and friends. Grape leaf wrappers are great, but large local edible leaves are phenomneal! So this is what to do with all that winter CSA chard, kale, and cabbage! The fillings are different for every family. One Iraqi friend fills hers with ground beef, rice, cinnamon, nutmeg, paprika, coriander, black lemon, cumin, garlic, onion, and tomato paste. Another Iraqi friend uses Madras curry powder, lemon pepper, turmeric, tomato paste and salt. My daughter’s favorite is the clean, bright, vegetarian version that my Lebanese friend told me about: rice, dried mint, dried dill, and salt. In addition to being wrapped with leaves, dolmas can also be made by stuffing de-cored vessel-like vegetables or fruits like bell peppers, tomatoes, and eggplants. All these varieties are cooked the same way: submerged in water with lots of lemon juice and salt, which is the key to the tangy flavor that everybody loves.

The name dolma comes from a Turkish verb meaning ‘to stuff’ and it makes sense that that Turkish word would stick even though dolmas are native foods to something like 20 different countries. Indeed, I think the Turks, the people of the Ottoman Empire, were responsible for spreading the food far and wide during the 600 years they ruled from the Mediterranean Sea, down to North Africa, and through the Balkans to Asia and Russia. This was about the time Christopher Columbus was setting sail. But who was the Nobel-deserving genius who figured out how to make vegetables taste good? I’m guessing a humble home cook living around 1000 BC in what is modern day Iran. If it wasn’t her, it was someone else. Dolmas are kale’s destiny. And because twenty years is just too long to wait for you to get them in the drive-thru, you should cook a pot of them this weekend.

Fine print. I shall be paid a million dollars if McDonalds suddenly decides to put dolmas on the menu. Also, I created the word first: “McDolmas.” Doesn't it sound like it was meant to be?

Copyright Lindsay Sterling October 17, 2011

See How to Do It

Wonder Dolmas

The cabbage, kale and chard leaves will crack and break if you try to roll them raw. So get ready for the most unexpected trick ever. Stick the whole cabbage in the freezer the night before. Then thaw the cabbage leaves next to something warm (I stuck the whole cabbage in a steamer basket over hot water) and they're perfectly malleable.

As for the kale and chard leaves - you simply trim most of the hard/big part of the stem out of each, and then drop batches of the trimmed leaves into boiling water for fifteen seconds or so. When they're bright green but droopy, pull them out with tongs and and put onto a platter to cool and let the water run off.

You can make meat filling (with any kind of ground meat, rice and spices) or you can make veggie filling with rice and spices. Here's one filling: rice, dill, mint, and salt.

Cool trick with the mint - rub it between your hands to unleash full mojo.

Here's a meat filling.

This one is a mixture of ground beef, rice, and all these spices...

Now we're ready to roll!

Lay the blanched leaves out on the counter. Dot each with a teaspoon of filling. This part is great for kids and parents to do together. Something I've learned about kids and food. Cooking It = Liking It.

You basically make little burrito shapes with the rice filling and leaf wrappers. Here's a step by step from my Iraqi cooking lesson. She's using grape leaves here:

Put generous oil in the bottom of your pot. Then place slices of potatoes or carrot planks on the bottom. You're basically sacrificing these veggies... they're there on the bottom so your dolmas won't stick or burn. If these potatoes or carrots don't burn, they turn out to be a decicious addition to the dolma platter.

If you want a nice colorful centerpiece for your dolma display, stuff a bell pepper with a flat bottom or a tomato and place it in the middle. Then you pack the dolmas in shoulder to shoulder around it so they stay nice and tightly wrapped and don't open up in the boiling cooking liquid. Make the bottom layer one pattern, and then make the next layer an opposite pattern so they interlock and are sturdy. I think it looks nice when you make one layer kale, the next chard, and the next cabbage.

Try to make the top layer even so the plate you put over them is level and the weight you put on top of the plate won't roll off to the side.

I liked her weight - just a jar of water (no lid on the jar or you'll have an explosion!) The goal is to keep the dolmas packed in the cooking liquid without letting them knock around when it boils. Fill the pot with cooking tangy, salty cooking liquid made of water, lemon juice and salt. You do not want bland dolmas, so make sure you put enough salt and lemon in. The little bundles can handle it! Tomato paste mixed in tastes delicious particularly with the meat varieties. Get the liquid simmering, and cook until the rice and meat inside the dolmas is cooked and all but the last bit of water disappears. (If every ounce of water disappears, they'll burn, so don't let the pot go completely dry.)

Then there you have it! A gorgous pot of delicious, healthy finger food! Turn pot over directly onto serving platter or board. They'll tumble out in a loose version of your beautiful pattern, and get gobbled up with glee.

Copyright Lindsay Sterling October 2011.

Photo credits: Margo Roy and Lindsay Sterling

The Recipe

Vegetarian Tangy Mint and Dill Dolmas

As suggested to Lindsay Sterling in Portland, Maine, by a Lebanese friend she bumped into in a Persian market.

Cooking Time: Honestly, it's 2-3 hours hours, but every second of it sheer bliss! Like edible crafting mania.

Serves 8 with leftovers for lunches

4 bunches kale and/or chard

1 cabbage (optional)*

2 potatoes or 3 large carrots, cut into flat planks

1 bell pepper with flat bottom so it sits upright

3 cups rice

1/4 cup dried mint

1/4 cup dried dill

1 Tbsp salt (for rice) + 1 1/2 tsp (for cooking liquid)

5 cloves garlic minced

1 yellow onion minced

juice from 3 lemons or 1/2 tsp citric acid*

Cover the rice 3 times with water and drain each time so the run-off liquid is less milky. Then let soak for 20 min while you get all the other spices out, chop the onion and garlic, and take the big clunky part of the stems out of the kale and chard. For efficiency, fold the leaves in half so you can get the stem out with one slice of the knife, not two. This helps you go faster. Get a pot of boiling water on to blanche the greens (i.e. boil them ever so briefly).

Mix the spices, rice, garlic, salt and onion together in a mixing bowl. Rub the dried mint between your palms if you really want unleash its mojo. (Why wouldn't you? plus I think this is fun - especially for kids. Don't forget to inhale the bliss.) The action of your hands as you do this is the same as when you come in from the cold and rub your hands together in front of a fire, only fresh powdery mint is sprinkling out the bottom into your bowl of rice. Nice!

Boil the greens in bunches in a pot for like 20 seconds, just until they get droopy. Pull them out with tongs to cool/drip dry a little. Then lay the leaves out on the counter. Place a tsp filling in the bottom-center of each leaf. Roll leaf over it like a mini burrito, folding ends in mid way and then finishing the roll.

Cover the bottom of a soup pot generously with oil. Cover the oil with one layer of sliced potatoes or carrot planks (about 1/4 inch thick). You are sacrificing them so the dolmas have no chance of burning on the bottom of the pot, as well as allowing the cooking rice liquid to become essentially a complex veggie broth (with kale, chard, potato, carrot, mint.. etc.).

The way you pack the dolmas in the pot is totally variable. The goal is to tightly pack them and weigh them down so they don't come open when the cooking water that will cover them boils. I like stuffing a colorful bell pepper with rice and putting it in the center (on top of the potatoes or carrots) then putting the dolmas packed tightly around the bell pepper in a spiral pattern like the dolmas are rays of a bell-pepper-sun. The second layer of dolmas can be like rings expanding row after row outward from the bell-pepper. Then the third layer you can make the sun rays shape again. Try to end with a complete layer on top so the next step (plate and weight) works.

Put a plate that fits easily inside the pot upside down on top of the dolmas. Put a glass of water on top of the plate to weigh it down so it's sturdy. Add your cooking liquid, enough salted water and lemon juice or citric acid to cover the plate's edges. Cook on medium high to get a low boil going. Cook until water almost all disappears, but not all - then those potatoes and carrots will definitely burn, and you want to eat them if you can - delish! REmove plate and taste one of the dolmas. Is the rice cooked? Likely the answer is yes! Turn pot over onto a large platter or wooden cutting board to serv. If not... you better add a little more water and let cook a little longer.

*For the cabbage dolmas, stick the cabbage in the freezer over night. Then place in a steamer basket. As the leaves thaw, peel them off the head and they're ready to roll.

Awesome Iraqi Beef Dolmas

As an Iraqi woman taught to Lindsay Sterling during the Catholic Charities of Maine cooking class series, Portland, Maine.

Cooking time: Honestly, it's 2-3 hours hours, but every second of it sheer bliss! Like edible crafting mania. First time takes longer, like everything in life!

1 16 oz jar of grape leaves

and/or: fresh chard leaves, de-stemmed and dipped in boiling water

red onion skins, boiled for 5 minutes

white onion skins, boiled for 5 minutes

2 lbs beef or lamb minced

1 cup uncooked Basmati rice

¾ cup tomato sauce

2 Tbsp tomato paste

1 medium onion, finely chopped

2 garlic cloves, minced

2 Tbsp salt

1 tsp pepper

1 tsp dried lemon (available in middle-eastern markets)

1 tsp cumin

1 tsp paprika

½ tsp cloves

½ tsp nutmeg

½ tsp coriander

½ tsp cinnamon

½ cup fresh squeezed lemon juice

2/3 cup Canola oil

4-5 carrots, peeled

water

Drain grape leaves. Rinse in fresh water. Peel and slice carrots into planks and line bottom of the pot (prevents dolmas from sticking). Soak rice in hot water for ten minutes and drain. In a large bowl, combine rice, beef, onion, garlic, tomato sauce, tomato paste, and all spices. Place each grape leaf vein-side up so that smooth side is on the outside of each roll. Cut off any stem. Place 1 Tbsp of the mixture on leaf near the stem end. Roll top over once, fold ends in, and continue to roll away from you. Repeat with remaining leaves. Arrange rolled grape leaves in a pot, seam side down, tightly packed. Place each layer in opposite direction of previous layer, in a criss-cross fashion. For even cooking, try to have no more than 4 layers. Combine lemon juice and oil and pour over grape leaves. Top with water until approximately 1” below top layer. Place large plate on top, and a heavy weight on plate (a foil-wrapped brick works great). Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low and simmer for 1 hour and 15 minutes until rice is thoroughly cooked. Allow to rest for 20-30 minutes. To remove from pan, get serving platter out, drain off any remaining liquid if any, remove plate from pot, and turn over pot onto platter in one fluid motion so the packed dolmas sit like an overturned cake on the platter.

Copyright Lindsay Sterling Oct. 2011, beef dolma recipe courtesy of Catholic Charities of Maine and the woman who wrote it up for them.