Posts Tagged ‘Grape leaves’
Best Lebanese Recipes for Easter, a glass of ice water, and a word of thanks
It has always struck me that the first thing that happens whenever someone walks up the front steps and enters the home of anyone in my family, they are welcomed with a tall glass of ice water. It’s our pineapple, our refreshment. As my father used to say: don’t even ask them. Just put the…
Read MoreThanksgiving Menu Ideas
Rev up your Dansko clogs, my friends. It’s Thanksgiving game on. I suspect you’ve got the star of the show, your turkey ideas, well in hand (will you brine? Fry? Or just let someone else worry about it?). We are brining and roasting two turkeys, mid-sized (Mom says no smaller than 15 pounds each;…
Read MoreVegetarian Grape Leaves (gluten-free and vegan too…)
Vegetarian grape leaves are stuffed with a delicious mix of rice, onion, chickpeas, and peppers. Simple adjustments make this gluten-free, and vegan. See how to roll grapeleaves here. Learn how to identify the leaves for picking them fresh here. Hello, cousin. That’s just how we say it, the Lebanese. It’s our expression of closeness to…
Read MoreHow to identify, clean, and store fresh grape leaves
[…watch my video on how to roll grapeleaves HERE!…] One of the first, and favorite, things I ever wrote about food was a poem about picking grape leaves. There is, it seems, poetry to be found in the memory of being a child following the ladies out to the edge of a parking lot somewhere…
Read MoreFavorite Things: Tomato Powder
Fresh, fruit of the vine, the-moment-it’s-picked is always best when it comes to produce of any kind, especially tomatoes. But best isn’t always possible. In fact, up north, it’s only possible for a very short window of the year. Besides, when it comes to something like tomatoes in the form of paste, we’re never using…
Read MoreLebanese Grape Leaf Rolls, a taste of Dier Mimas
[…watch my video on how to roll grapeleaves HERE!…] There is one thing I’ve always thought was a given about grape leaves: that fresh is best. In other words, that leaves picked when they’ve just unfurled from the vine in the spring and eaten immediately make the finest little stuffed rolls. Or so I thought,…
Read MoreTechnique: How to roll grape leaves
[…watch my video on how to roll grapeleaves HERE!…] Just like with our baklawa, there is a distinction to be made between Lebanese grape leaf rolls and Greek-style dolma. They’re not the same! Ours are always more slender and smaller in general. How small you go is a matter of preference, as well as the…
Read MoreIngredient: Grape Leaves
I’ve got a secret. Or at least I used to have one, and like my mother and my aunts and my grandmothers, I carried it around in my purse until spring, right around this same time every year when bloom was the big event each day and the unfurling of tender, young grape leaves was…
Read MoreFavorite Things: Kitchen Shears
I am the type of person who will pull hard on a plastic clothing tag to try unsuccessfully to remove it, until I’m forced to walk across the room to a pair of scissors, which snips off the tag cleanly and swiftly. I’m not sure what this says about me, but I tend to keep…
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