It has occurred to me that this
blog has been sadly neglected. Of
course, sometimes life gets in the way; in this case it was: a new puppy, a stressed-out husband, a
stressed-out houseguest/roommate, a freelance editing job, holidays, snow days,
brutal winter weather (making doing everything else take twice as long), and a
child who’s been swamped with homework.
But, never fear, we have still been cooking and eating local! Winter is the time when you have to be
most creative, and depend a lot on stored items and the local co-op to maintain
your connection to local ingredients.
Our friend has been staying with us
for a few weeks, and—lucky for us—has brought her own brand of “local.” She’s brought some preserved items from
her parents’ garden in her native Turkey:
walnuts, hazelnuts, tomato paste, herbs, and spices that still have the flavor
of the sun in them. I realized I’d
never really tasted hazelnuts until I sampled the ones her father had
roasted. We were in for a special
treat on Sunday when she and I “slaved” away in the kitchen, side by side. I made my stuffed peppers (which I’m
sure will be featured in a future blog post), and she made Turkish dolma; both
are labors of love. I watched her
as carefully as I could (trying to avoid chopping off one of my fingers at the
same time), so that hopefully I could recreate the dish at a later time.
She started with organic collard
greens. After washing the leaves
and trimming the stems, she put them to boil for about 30 minutes, so that the
leaves would be nice and pliable.
Then she squeezed and drained the blood out of a pound of ground beef
from our local Triple S Farms. She
explained to me that this was always a disgusting task for her since living in
the U.S. Meat in Turkey is halal, made according to Muslim
standards. Butchered meat is
drained of excess blood for a significant period of time before it can be
cooked and consumed. I had to
agree with her that meat wouldn’t be as unpleasant to prepare if it didn’t have
so much blood!
To the ground beef she generously added
salt, pepper, fresh chopped parsley, grated onions, and uncooked white
rice. (I’m fairly sure there were
some ingredients in there I didn’t see while I was busy making my peppers.) The mixture ended up fairly sticky, and
when the collard greens were done, she flattened the spine of each leaf, and
painstakingly rolled up a couple of tablespoons of the ground beef mixture into
a tiny, cigar-shaped and –sized roll, tucking in the sides as she went. The little rolls went side-by-side into
a dutch oven. When she ended up
with too much of the ground beef and not enough collard green leaves, she
stuffed a couple of small onions and a red pepper with the mixture.
 |
| photos courtesy of Nesrin |
She covered the whole thing in her
mother’s tomato paste, which she had watered down enough to make a thin
sauce. The dolmas needed to be
weighted down with a plate so they wouldn’t open during cooking. On went the lid, and back to the stove
to simmer for 30-40 minutes. The
dolmas were done when a sample showed the meat and rice were cooked thoroughly;
the rice cooks with the added liquid and moisture of the collard greens.
 |
| Beautiful and delicious |
The dolmas came off the stove, and
the stuffed peppers out of the oven, right before our favorite Downton
Abbey. So we hauled our plates,
silverware, napkins, tray of peppers, tray of dolmas, and a container of
full-fat organic yogurt to top the dolmas up to the TV room. I have to say, the TV show didn't hold my attention nearly as well as the delicately wrapped dolmas topped with creamy yogurt. What a feast!
