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June 25, 2014

Dolmas

We have 4 grape plants that have grown like crazy this past year.  The grapes are small and green right now, but the leaves are ready for picking.  I picked just 25 and blanched them, following the directions here:  http://greekfood.about.com/od/ingredientpreptechniques/a/abelofylla.htm
Dolmas is what we call stuffed grape leaves.  Next time I'll try to pick the leaves earlier in June, as they were a bit tough and chewy.  Or maybe I just needed to blanch them more than 3 minutes in boiling water?  They were still very good! 

Olivia ate 5 of them while rolling them up!!!  Here's the basic recipe we followed:  http://greatist.com/health/recipe-stuffed-grape-leaves 
If you want to try to make them, and don't have a grape vine, you can buy canned grape leaves.  I'd like to try to make them stuffed with meat and rice sometime in the future.

2 comments:

Jeannette said...

Oh thank you Martha...I have grapes and have never thought of stuffing them, though I do make stuffed chard leaves from time to time. I'll dig up that blog post and post it to you. I think you would like those very much. My girls used to like them cold for lunch.

We just had some hot days, so my leaves are probably tougher now too. They are such a beautiful leaf.

GretchenJoanna said...

I did this one time long ago - it was so much fun to use some free grape leaves! Mine were so deeply lobed, though, that it was difficult to keep the filling inside as I rolled. I imagine that the various varieties of grape leaves have other differences, too -- maybe how thick and tough the leaves are? At this point I don't remember how long I blanched them...