quickie - dining in the clouds

Dinner last night at Cumulus Inc. Finally. Don’t know what took me so long? Oh yes I do, all the charcuterie on the menu. Loved the slow cooked octopus with aioli (where about 1:4 morsels packed a powerful chilli hit) and the mackerel and artichoke barigoule. That’s not to say we didn’t enjoy the asparagus or the school prawns either. But the star of the meal was the baby carrots with almond cream and harissa. The sexiest carrot dish ever.

Best part of the night? The company. I have a ritual with one particularly busy friend. Twice a year we have a special dinner or lunch together for our birthdays. Friendship, ritual and connection always wins over the food and wine, though they come a close second.

Decided to google "barigoule". Let’s hope there was no bacon in it! (for some reason blogger doesn't want to encode the http://www.saffronrestauranttruro.co.uk/chef'_dictionary.htm)

The trick to snagging a table at Cumulus inc.? Skip lunch and meet at 5.30. Nursery dinner hours rule!

Still to post – a mild cauliflower curry I’ve been playing with. Made three versions so far, which one to post? It’s my new favourite vego meal at home.

Plus even more about Malaysia, including the blow-my-mouth-and-my-mind Thai meal in KL. But I figure you’re had enough of my holiday stories by now.

Am shocked by how much food is left in the fridge this week. Maybe I’d better read 50 Ways to Never Waste Food Again. Or perhaps eating at Ciccolina, Flor and Cumulus Inc all in the same week is a little too much.

The garden is thriving with the spring rain. Still have an outrageous crop of nettles, with self-seeded patches of green appearing everyday. Any Melbourne food friends want a bunch to experiment with? The upside is fresh nettle tea is great for hayfever, something both of us in this house have at the moment. Nature’s very clever sometimes.

Grapevine is bursting with leaves - must make dolmades next month!

dolmades, friends and wine

I’m hiding. I’ve been doing a bit of that lately I must admit.

But right now there is the detritus that comes from having 30 of the SE’s friends/colleagues through the house for a barbecue, to be cleaned up. Having been the sober one to do the lion’s share of the cleaning last night, I reckon I’ve earned a little time out to tap on the keyboard.

While barbecuing en masse is a topic for another post, so too the story of the brand-new-second-hand-barbecue, it is another smaller gathering around the table that demands to be written today.

Back in October I threw up the idea of making dolmades with a few like minded people. There was a lush crop of leaves and surely, I thought, just coordinating three people’s diaries to find an afternoon to roll and sip would be no problem? It took to the New Year til we could all get together, I was a little worried the leaves would be tough by now but went ahead anyway.

So while I hear empty bottles clink in the background, I am going to do a dangerous thing – recount the recipe from memory.

Dolmades, stuffed vine leaves or “ricey-roll ups”* if you prefer, are made in four simple steps.

Prepare the leaves

If making them fresh, the leaves need to be picked and blanched. Soft, tender ones with shallow ‘fingers’ are best. They are blanched for a couple of minutes in boiling water then laid on a tea towel to dry.

You can skip this step and use a jar of preserved vine leaves (in Australia they are available from some deli's and foodstores.)

Cook and flavour the rice

I went back to my old friend Madhur Jaffrey for help. Her sturdy tome has a simple method and handy diagrams to follow. I used her directions to par cook the rice – a cup or two (depending on how many leaves and willing hands you have to roll them) of long grain rice cooked at a rolling boil for 5 minutes, then rinsed and drained.

We made two batches of rice mix. Both contained:
Finely sliced spring onions
Chopped pine nuts
Herbs – parsley and fresh minute also finely chopped
Salt and pepper

One batch had a large squeeze of tomato paste stirred through and the other a pinch of good quality turmeric.

Roll up your sleeves and get rolling

This is where the fun begins. With bowls of filling and another of blanched leaves the four of us sat around the table, a chilled glass of resiling at hand. There was Lucy, Docwitch and her daughter Moon. M is a wee girl, very enthusiastic about creating the ricey parcels and did a great job of wrapping hers in an origami inspired style. The rest of us took a teaspoon or 2 of filling and wrapped and rolled accordingly. We placed sliced of tomato on the bottom layer of my large iron pot, then packed the dolma in tight layers. This is a long process and one best shared with friends and other grape products.

Finally the pot was full; I’d guess there were close to 90 made in the end.

Create the cooking liquid

Whisk together:

1 part lemon juice
2 parts olive oil
4 parts warm water
I tsp sugar
Plus a generous amount of crushed garlic and salt.

Pour the liquid on so they leaves are covered, place a plate on to weight them down, then the lid on top. Simmer for an hour. By the time the cooking was done, heat off/lid on we left the pot while another bottle of wine was consumed.

Verdict – great day, pleasant tasting dolmades but still room for improvement.

Notes for next year:
Leaves a little tough, make earlier in the season
More salt
More herbs, less pine nuts
More tomato paste
More wine!


Docwitch offers M some assistance in rolling the vine leaves



Into the pot, nice and tight


Of course I meant to reshoot this the next day while...err..sober but that never quite happened. A rather haphazard photo but represents the rolling styles of all four of us :)

Can't wait to see Lucy's photos of the day!

Update: Lucy's photos and poetic account is up. Hurrah!


*TM Moon