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

...and one more thing I've been doing

A neighbourhood bottle store often has tastings of delicious wines and sherries. When the regular e-newsletter came out during the week I earmarked a small portion of my Saturday afternoon to spend in the back of their shop.

I’d only had Billecart-Salmon once before. Despite it being a fine maker of champagne the situation left a bad taste in my mouth. In a now defunct city restaurant named after a common vegetable, when I ordered some innocuous rose, the sommelier gave me the B-S rose champagne instead. Seeing the fine beading in what should have been a still wine, as well as the glass it was served in, I asked him to double check my order before tasting it. He came back with the assertion it was the rose I ordered and when I was about a third of the way through this delightful sparkling but obviously not the wine I had requested - I asked again and this time the maitre-d, a woman trumped up with her own self importance, came to the table explaining the mistake and suggested I continue drinking it but they would charge me the actual price, being 3 x that of the drink I had ordered. I found this outrageous, told her so very nicely and she whisked the glass off me and replaced it with the one I had asked for in the first place. It would be a fair guess to say I never ate there again, despite the organic food being pleasant enough.

In the unpretentious surrounds of my local, it was time to make friends with this champagne and loose the bad memory that had been lingering. There were 4 non-vintage varieties on offer, all hovering just above or below the $100 a bottle mark. With the exception of the aforementioned rose, the nose smelt strongly of strawberries and cream.

First off the rank was the Brut Reserve. Finely beaded, with a slight sweetness it was creamy in the mouth. A drop you could imagine swanning around with in your hand at some reception, while nibbling on canapés. The Significant Eater, who isn’t the most discerning drinker, gave the first mouthful a “wow, I can taste the difference” exclamation.

Number 2 reacquainted me with my old friend the Brut Rose. This was a drier wine, delicately tinted the gentlest pink. I wouldn’t have said no to another glass, but despite liking a drier wine I would have takes the Brut Reserve in preference.

Number 3, the Brut Blanc de Blancs, was thumbs up the winner for the Significant Eater. A tad drier than the rose and would pair well with savory food. It was lively in the mouth and it made me briefly have delusions of a lifestyle I can’t afford.

The final tasting was the Demi-Sec. The strawberries and cream aroma was particularly noticeable and was a distinctively sweet wine, though not cloying. We did the unthinkable and not finish the tasting glass. The blanc de blancs had spoilt us!

Alas, we went home with 2 bottles of Spanish Sherry to put in the fridge. Now the weather is warmer, a drop before dinner occasionally is a refreshing (and cost effective) aperitif. But friends and anonymous blog readers, if you ever get the urge to show your appreciation you now know what to do!