The Melting Pot 2.0/The Melting Pot 2.0.iso/food/vegatbls/stuff005

Text File | 1995-10-12 | 2.5 KB | 60 lines

Newsgroups: rec.food.recipes
From: Gretchen Miller <[e-mail]>
Subject: Vegetarian Stuffed Grape Leaves
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Organization: Computer Operations, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
References: <[e-mail]>
Date: Wed, 15 Sep 1993 14:32:36 -0400


I just made these the other night, and they were quite good.  I started
with this recipe, from The Old World Kitchen, and basically eyeballed
and fiddled until I had something I liked.  I'll note the recipe and
then note my changes:

grape leaves, fresh or bottled
1 cup uncooked white rice
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 lb onion, minced
1/2 cup raisans
(1 tsp coriander, which was my addition to this)
juice of 2 lemons

Heat half the olive oil, fry onions until soft, add rice and stir to
coat.  Pour on a glass of water, add raisans and cook until all water is
absorbed.  Roll into grape leaves, place grape leaves, seam side down,
in a baking dish (close together), add more water, oil and lemon juice
and bake at 300F for 1 hour.

Now, my changes:
I use the bottled grape leaves, because I like the extra tang from the
pickling juice.  I also used green onions (both white and green) instead
of regular onion, and used more of just about everything.

Heat olive oil, fry onions until soft, add rice and stir to coat.  Pour
on a glass of water, add raisans and coriander.  As water is absorbed,
add more until the rice is firm but no longer crunchy.  (I've found that
the one glass method tends to produce crunchy/undercooked rice).  Roll
mixture into grape leaves (notes on rolling below) and pack like the
bottom layer of a can of sardines (or like the 12 bunnies in the bed...)
with the seam side down.  When the pan is full, add one or two fingers
of water (i.e. pour in water so the height of the water on the side of
the pan is the width of one or two fingers)  Squirt lots of lemon juice
on the little suckers.  Cover, put in 300F over and bake for 1 hour.
The tops may get a little dry during cooking, but will remoisten when
stored in the refrigorator.

Note on rolling grapeleaves:

Place your grape leaf flat, stem end away from you, vein side up.  Place
about a tablespoon or so of mixture a tiny bit closer to you than the
point where the two side leaves branch off.  Fold the bottom over the
stuffing toward you.  Fold the side leaves in toward the center.  The
stuffing should now be surrounded on at least 3 sides.  Roll toward you
until you have a little cigar shaped packet.

Enjoy!