Dolmades

We have a grape plant in the backyard near the garage, and there are a lot of leaves on it during the summer, obviously. I happened to be browsing recipes online (yet again), and I came across the idea of dolmades - stuffed grape leaves. Food trucks around Philadelphia seem to serve these a lot, too. I figured I should make some dolma/dolmades because I have free grape leaves!!! None of those preserved leaves in a jar! These are fresh, smell grapey, and taste a bit sour/fibrous/grapey. I wonder why I never thought about making these before, or making zong[4]zi[3] (粽子) with grape leaves...

Since there are many variations of dolma (the Egyptian one interests me more just because I like Egypt, I guess), and I don't have any relatives who make dolmades from some family heirloom recipe, I know this isn't "authentic". Plus, I've never eaten stuffed grape leaves before, so I don't really know what I'm supposed to be comparing my version to. According to Wikipedia, possible ingredients include rice, pine nuts, cow, eggplant, raisins, and parsley/dill/mint. I sort of just used what we had at home. I also wasn't sure what online recipe would be good, but I ended up loosely following this one. By "loosely", I mean the way the rice stay in the grape leaves - quite loosely. Hah.

Ingredients for about... 38 dolmades (There are fewer than 38 pictured above because the rice either leaked out of the grape leaves for the bottom-of-the-stack dolmades)

Most ingredients are optional. Add what you want.

A. Flavouring

4 sprigs of fresh dill

A few leaves of fresh basil

Parsley flakes

Mint flakes

Liberal amount of coriander powder

Pinches of salt and pepper

75% of a lemon's juice

B. ~4 cups of Stuffing

2.5 cups white rice

0.5 cups Arborio rice (actually, whatever rice you want; 3 cups rice total)

0.75 cups pine nuts (boiled pine nuts are delicious!!!!)

A few tbsp chopped dried fruit

30% of a medium-sized onion

1.25 cups of ground turkey (for the rest of the family.)

1 cup of artichokes in oil

C. Misc

40+ grape leaves, and some to line the saucepan

25% of a lemon (possibly unnecessary)

0.25 cups of oil (possibly unnecessary)

A lot of water

Method

1. Mix all ingredients except turkey in Group A and B together in a big bowl. If you like turkey, you can put it in now, but if you're cooking for a vegetarian (a.k.a. me), you should add the turkey after using half the stuffing.

2. Put one tablespoon of stuffing onto a grape leaf.

3. Roll

4. Put into saucepan along circumference.

5. Stick in 25% of the lemon (possibly unnecessary) and however much oil you want, and also pour in a lot of water until all dolmades are covered.

6. Put a ceramic plate on top of the dolmades to weigh them down, cover pan, and boil water on high heat.

7. Simmer on LOW for about an hour.

Whoo!!!

Note: Unfortunately, the bottom layer of dolmades ended up quite overcooked, while the top two/three layers ended up perfectly chewy and gooey. To avoid having the grape leaves break and the rice and pine nuts floating around (well, the rice sinks, but the pine nuts float in the water/oil mixture since they're less dense due to the high fat content), I will use a smaller saucepan next time and just make two batches of two-layers instead of one batch of four-layers. This will:

1. Use less than half the amount of oil/water I used today

2. Require less heat energy because I will be reusing the water/oil, which would already be about 97 degrees C instead of 25 degrees C

3. Cook all the dolmades evenly.

4. Possibly require less than 1 hr of simmering.

Yummy!!

Lentil Chips!

One thing that really irks me after learning about celiac disease is that "gluten free" is not "healthier" than a normal diet. Celiac disease is when your body can not break down gluten; celiacs lack the enzyme. This does not mean that gluten is bad for you. GLUTEN IS DELICIOUS. It is a protein found in bread! "Gluten-free" food does not mean it's somehow more salubrious, or more "natural". Gluten-free wheat bread is well... not really "natural" [although I'm starting to despise that marketing gimmick too]. Yet, "Gluten Free" appears right under "Trans Fat Free!" and "No Cholesterol!" Now, I know that the Mediterranean Snack Foods company is not the only company that does this [Pirate's Booty is another], but in general, this practice is like labeling an apple as "No Cholesterol!", or water as "Calorie Free!". It's stating the obvious to appeal to the public, because advertising and journalism tell the public that "x-Free!" = healthy.

A diet for celiacs is not deemed healthy, since many of the foods aren't fortified with vitamin B12 and folate, whereas most grain/gluten-containing foods have fortified vitamins/minerals from some law in the 1970s [in the U.S., at least]. Going on a "gluten free" diet as a non-celiac is like going on a "peanut free diet because some other people are allergic to peanuts".

How many people do you know are true celiacs? I know one. Apparently it is 1% of the population, although this doesn't state much since Graves' disease is also 1% of the population and I know 3 other people with it [not including myself].

Anyway, I had to put this out there because I'm getting sick of hearing people/girls [yes, sexist generalisation, but I believe more girls do this than guys] talking about their salad and their complete abstinence from bread and cool foods, not that salad isn't cool.

I got these Lentil Cucumber Dill chips [no packaging image, but here is the shiny image for the website] because there was a rather high protein content compared to potato/corn chips, and cucumber dill seemed like an amazing combination! I was thinking that it'd taste something like dill pickles. That would've been amazing; imagine a sour, watery, crispy chip like that! Speaking of which... are there burger flavoured chips out there?

Unfortunately, I was really upset with the quality and taste of these chips. Firstly, there was an overwhelming amount of saltiness. I just checked the sodium content: 260 mg/serving. In comparison, Lay's Original Potato Chips has 180 mg sodium/serving, and I think those are salty already... So, I believe there is 44% more sodium in the lentil chips. Uh, bleh.

The second part that I was highly discontent with was that it tasted like there was sour cream powder smothered over it, but it wasn't even fresh sour cream. It was like... salty, garlicky, pungent sour cream.

No cucumber taste.

Some dried dill flakes.

No lentil taste.

Super crunchy, though.

In other words, stay away. They're also kind of very expensive [probably due to the high markup. I'm telling you, a Dining Dollar equals at least 2 real dollars...].

Pasta Salad!

I'll talk about chocolate some other time. Today, I actually felt like cooking so I made lunch. There are actually only 17 pieces of penne left. This is amazing because there are always tons of leftovers. [I mean, we always have leftover pasta and rice. No matter what.] Plus, my mum and brother genuinely like[d] what I made today though my brother didn't like the pickles part.

Anyway, a few weeks ago I found this recipe and the pictures were really pretty, so I decided to emulate it. In truth, I have never really had legit pasta salad. Okay, in year 7 and 8 there were these days I bought macaroni + mayo + tuna, which I suppose constitutes pasta salad. However, today's salad was LEGIT!
Tweaking The Luna Cafe's ingredients and method...

Stuff you need:
1 box/lb of penne
A chunk of frozen cut vegetables from an even larger chunk of frozen vegetables.
0.5 cups of cut up pickles
1 red bell pepper

Dressing:
1.5 cups mayo
0.5 cups low-fat milk
3 tbsp vinegar
Juice of one lemon
Pepper, salt, garlic powder [a LOT!]
1 big spoon of mustard.
Method:
1. I think the ingenuity of The Luna Cafe was that the boiling water used to cook the vegetables was then used to cook the pasta, because the vegetables were taken out using a strainer. I honestly think this is SUCH a cool idea.
2. Boil vegetables until they are soft and look cooked.
3. Make pasta and drain and let it sit there until it cools down. Don't use too much water draining it. While the pasta is cooking, cut pickles and red bell pepper.
4. Mix all the stuff in the dressing ingredients list.
5. Mix everything together.

Yes, the dressing does look rather unappetising. I just put it here so that you know you're doing the right thing. The powdery stuff is garlic powder since we don't have actual garlic.
The dressing looks delectable now :P


By this time, the pasta salad actually tasted good, except that there was wayyyy too much dressing. I somehow managed to coat all the pasta and vegetables using just half the dressing. I ended up dumping the other half in anyway, though, because, like chocolate, I suppose you can't have "too much". Though, apparently semolina likes to soak up liquid, so right now, 4 hours later, the liquid has, er, apparently decreased. I can't really tell, since there are only 16.5 pieces of penne left.

I just taste tested half a piece of penne and I have to say that this time, the penne piece tastes like it was made with the soury-fatty dressing INSIDE the semolina. Earlier, when it was just cold, you could clearly distinguish between the pasta and the dressing. Now, the dressing and pasta have formed a glutinous-y conglomeration of awesomeness. An analogy would be

bread in a pan + egg in a pan = fried egg on toast.
but
bread soaked in egg overnight = eggy bread [more commonly known as "French toast" in the U.S]

This was delicious pasta salad, since you could definitely taste a sourness and tangy-ness that comes only in PASTA salads! In retrospect, if I made the dressing more vinegar based rather than mayo based, I probably would get something completely different, [vinaigrettey salad?] which I would like to try out actually, since it would be healthier. [NEVER, EVER, EVER, use low fat or fat free mayo. It's crap in a jar. No kidding.]