Delectable Dolmas

This weekend I had a friend come over to give me a little cooking lesson.  The topic??  Dolmas.  What exactly is a dolma you may be wondering?  The word 'dolma' comes from the Turkish verb 'dolmak' which means 'to be stuffed'.  So technically any stuffed vegetable (zucchini, pepper, tomato) can be called a dolma; but dolma usually refers to a stuffed grape leaf. 

I came across a big jar of grape leaves and thought to myself  "Oh cool.  This will be fun!"  I brought it home and cooked up some rice with onions and spices, rolled the filling up in some grape leaves and voila!!  It was disgusting!  Horrible.  Luckily I did not try to feed it to my party guests! 

Obviously I was going to need a little help.  Jeanette to the rescue!  Apparently grape leaves are preserved in a very salty brine that needs to be rinsed off repeatedly.  To do this you put your grape leaves in a big bowl and cover them with hot water.  They will start to loosen up from the bunch they are rolled in.  So as they soak, you can gently separate them.  We soaked them and drained them 3 times.  The last time with boiling water.  Then we laid them out between paper towels to dry.  We prepared some brown rice, only half cooked.  Then added sauteed onions, garlic and tomato with spices.  We added the onion mixture and some currants to the rice and mixed it up.  Then comes the fun.  Each grape leaf is stuffed with a dollop of rice mixture and rolled up like a little cigar. 

Then all the stuffed leaves are tucked into a baking dish side by side in a single layer.  Over this layer we poured a mixture of lemon juice and olive oil.  Then we poured water over the whole thing to just cover the dolmas.  We covered the baking dish tightly with foil and baked it for just under an hour.  But these need to be made a day in advance, because after baking they need to be refrigerated over night before you can eat them!  So as you can see.....  it was a little more complicated than I originally thought!

And what goes beautifully with hand rolled dolmas??  Tzatziki!  I finally managed to get my hands on some plain soy yogurt.  And it was not easy!  I had to get the grocery store to special order it for me.  In my pre-vegan days, tzatziki was one of my favorite things, so I was very excited to make some.  And it turned out very well.  I had to tweak my traditional recipe a bit and add lemon juice and salt.  I also added a bunch of dill.  One thing about the soy yogurt was that it didn't need to be drained (I tried, but no liquid drained off). 

 And what did I make for my special little valentines today??  Chocolate Mint Chip Cookies!!  I was inspired by the chocolate mint chips that I found at our new bulk barn.  They were gobbled up in no time.

I hope you enjoyed some sweet moments with your own Valentines today.