Stars of the East

Few things taste better than a large, well-cooked piece of meat. However, if the meat is cut into smaller pieces, it can be cooked in an even more subtle and refined way, since in this form it blends perfectly with other ingredients of the dish. If the meat is chopped very finely, then it, perhaps, can become the basis for the most delicious dishes: in this way it perceives the best of the other elements of the dish even more readily and generously shares its taste and aroma with its neighbors on the plate.

But there is a way to turn the meat into something absolutely perfect – to cook it so that not a single drop of juice is wasted and so that the environment gives the meat an additional piquancy, while retaining all its taste and aroma. This method is as old as the world and probably familiar to everyone: wrap well seasoned minced meat in a piece of dough. Almost every nation on its gastronomic path one way or another came to a similar idea. Someone wraps minced meat in rolled pieces of dough and boils dumplings. Someone fries minced meat laid in a crescent of dough in oil and calls the resulting dish “cheburek”. Someone bakes rounded pies called “samsa” in clay wood-fired ovens and endows the whole area with alluring smells.

fairy tale motifs

But one day someone decided to wrap minced meat not in the usual dough, but in a grape leaf, and representatives of a good dozen nationalities still argue about whose ancestor this genius was.

The truth, in my opinion, is as follows: every nation that has included the word “dolma” in its lexicon has contributed to this dish. Some guessed to add onion to minced meat; others have suggested that it is more correct to sauté the onions first in ghee; still others went even further and decided that they could not do without rice; the fourth came up with the idea of ​​adding pine nuts; fifth – greens and carefully selected seasonings; someone else got into the top ten, seasoning the minced meat with pomegranate seeds … Counting the options for improving this simple dish, it is no wonder to go astray.

What, for example, is the idea of ​​laying leaves of other plants between minced meat and a grape leaf: quince, sesame, and even ordinary linden! The radical replacement of the grape leaf not only with cabbage, but also with the hollow fruits of bell pepper at first seemed to make it possible to talk about the appearance of a new dish, but successful attempts to stuff almost any vegetables and fruits with minced meat – starting with quince, as if specially created for this purpose, and ending with potatoes with eggplants, in which holes are specially cut out for minced meat – dotted the i: all these countless variations are essentially the same dolma!

Salt of the earth

Over time, the dish changed not only the shell – they changed, tested, rejected and accepted different ways of preparing it. In addition to simply boiling in a saucepan with a small amount of liquid, some cooks began to fry dolma in an oiled frying pan as the first stage of preparation and only then lay it for cooking. Someone decided to fill the dolma with a specially prepared frying of various vegetables. Dolma is baked in trays with fatty lamb broth and stewed in pots along with sour cream and onions. They even prepare a special steam dolma.

A wonderful perspective opens up if you stuff a small bird – a quail or a small chicken – with minced lamb and roast them on a spit. But personally, I really like the usual Uzbek plov, decorated with dolma in grape leaves. This recipe has already become a classic, but what if we take one more step and completely replace all the meat in pilaf with different types of dolma, while combining several cooking methods at once? I would not be ashamed to serve such a dish to guests on the biggest and most joyful holiday – for example, on New Year’s Eve.

TABLEWARE

daily rice