An oriental dish, similar to cabbage rolls by the cooking method, is dalma. How to cook such a dish? These are grape leaves stuffed with meat or vegetables with rice. There are also lean and vegetarian Dalma species. To make this delicacy at home is simple, but if you want the dish to be authentic, you need to take into account the features that it has in different countries.
Cooking Dalma in various nations
In Georgia, this dish is made spicy and spicy, adding a large number of seasonings, such as red pepper, celery, garlic, parsley, cilantro, tarragon. In Armenia, the dalma is much more tender in taste. You can cook it from lean meat with thyme, marjoram, mint. The lean option involves stuffing with eggplant, tomatoes and bell peppers with rice and herbs. In Azerbaijan, Dalma is also made with fish filling. Greece is famous for a vegetarian dalma recipe; it is served with lemon and olive oil sauce and chilled.
Grape leaf selection
If you take the young ones, you will have a more tender dalma. How to cook leaves before stuffing? Fresh need to be dipped in boiling water for a couple of minutes, then remove large veins. Salted leaves are placed in hot water to soak. Wrap the shiny side inward. You need to cook dalma in a pan, laying fruit (quince, apples), dried fruits (dried apricots, dried peaches), onions between rows. Serve with fermented milk based sauce.
Dalma How to cook it according to the classic recipe?
Chop four hundred grams of meat in the combine or with a very sharp knife. Remove streaks and films. Add one hundred grams of fat. Two hundred grams of onion, chopped into small cubes, fry in a pan with ghee (it can be replaced with olvic) until transparent. Then add turmeric, ground cumin and a teaspoon of black ground pepper. If you wish, you can still throw fresh mint and dried cilantro. After mixing, put the meat in the pan and simmer over a very low heat, making sure that it does not collect lumps.
Then put one hundred grams of round rice, boiled until half cooked, to the minced meat. In this case, cereals in the Dalma will secrete starch - this will lead to the absorption of juices released from meat and onions. Thus, the desired texture and humidity of the dish will be achieved. Fill the prepared grape leaves with minced meat, roll into a roll. Servings should be small - the size of a thumb. If you follow this rule, the dish will be evenly juicy. Put in a cauldron or stewpan, where the dalma should be cooked. How to cook it after that? Cover with a plate, pour broth (it is convenient to cook it from the bones left over from the meat). Place a load on top and place the cauldron on medium heat. Make sure that the broth does not boil. If the grape leaves from which the dalma is prepared are fresh, you need to cook for an hour and a half, and if they are pickled, then no more than one hour. After removing from heat, the dish should cool and infuse. Dalma will gradually absorb part of the broth. Serve with pita bread and unsweetened yogurt sauce (with red hot pepper, garlic and mint).