pazi dolmasi

It’s leaf season.  Not the tree kind, the eating kind.

Spring’s nice with regard to the eating-type leaves.  Lettuces, spinach, pea shoots, that sort of thing.  And I do enjoy them.  But my heart really belongs to the kind of eating-type leaves that are available mostly in the fall, many of which taste best after a frost or so.  Kales, broccoli leaves, collards, mustard greens, turnip greens.  And of course the season-long standout, chard, with its glorious texture and delightfully toothsome stems.

A few weeks ago, shortly after fall greens season started to hit its stride, my Belovedary peered into the refrigerator and announced that our household was not normal, because the fridge was full of, and I quote, “bags of leaves.”

True enough.  But leaves are a pretty good thing to have your fridge be full of, as far as I’m concerned.  But then again I may not be entirely normal on that score, myself.  I’m pretty diehard about my greens, and have turned into something of an evangelist on the topic as a result.  To the extent that I’m gearing up to teach some classes — probably in the springtime, it’s looking like — on cooking and eating greens, in cooperation with a local organic produce outlet that is building a commercial kitchen in its facility.  (I’ll let you all know when this actually gets scheduled.  Right now I’m planning a greens class, a cole crops class, and a canning 101.)

Anyway.  One of the reasons that I’m gearing up to teach a greens class is because I’ve noticed that a lot of people seem to not really know what to do with greens, or have had only bad experiences with them being overcooked and slimy and nasty, and I think both are a shame.  Greens are, of course, good for you, but I think that’s beside the point: they’re also tasty, and useful in the kitchen.  You can do lots of things with greens.  Many more than most people think.  I’ve written about some of them in the past, in a post on kale.  And indeed, there was a little greens recipe in the preceding post, if you noticed that.

But perhaps you’d like something a little more main-dishy to do with greens.  And perhaps you’re just getting used to greens, and would prefer that the greens not take the starring role in the dish.

Pazi dolmasi — Turkish stuffed chard — is the perfect solution for you.  It’s basically stuffed grape leaves, what you might know in Greek as dolmades, but made using chard leaves instead of grape leaves as the wrappers.  The chard has a different texture to the grape leaves, and a different taste, but I think you’ll like the buttery smoothness of the chard as a wrapper around a savory, engagingly-spiced filling.  This is one of the recipes I plan to teach when I teach my greens class, to help people break out of the mindset that “eating greens” means having to eat a huge pile of greens all by themselves.  I mean you can.  And I often do.  But there are plenty of other options, and this is one of those stealthy ones that sort of sneaks the greens in by using them as a conveyance for something enticing.

You can make either a vegan or a meat filling for these.  I like both equally well, to be honest.  The process is more or less the same for both, it’s just a matter of swapping out grated/salted/squeezed zucchini for ground lamb.

Pazi Dolmasi (stuffed chard)

1/2 pound ground lamb OR 4 cups grated zucchini, lightly salted, allowed to sit for 10 minutes, then squeezed dry
3 medium onions, diced
5-7 cloves garlic, minced
medium bunch parsley, minced
large handful pine nuts
large handful dried black currants or Zante currants (which are a grape, actually, but they still taste good) or finely chopped dried apricot or dried unsweetened tart cherries
1 teaspoon ground allspice
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon dried spearmint leaves, rubbed to powder between your hands
1 teaspoon dried dill weed (if you like it, leave it out if you can’t stand it, opinions can be strong)
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 cup coarsely ground tomatoes (canned is fine, or put fresh ones through the big holes on a box grater)
1 cup medium-grain rice
juice of a lemon
olive oil
salt
water

2 large bunches fresh chard, washed and trimmed of stems so that no stem protrudes past the base of the leaf
Heat a large, heavy-bottomed pan over a medium heat and when the pan is hot, add the onions.  Saute until onions are transparent, and add the pine nuts and saute until the pine nuts are lightly golden.  Add lamb or zucchini and cook until lamb is thoroughly cooked or zucchini is limp, as relevant.  Add garlic and and stir in, then spices, herbs, parsley, and dried fruit.  Finally add tomatoes and rice, and stir in well.  If the tomatoes are thick you may want to add a little water — not more than a half cup — to give the rice some moisture to soak up.  Add a little salt, if you think it needs it.  (Canned tomatoes can be kind of salty.) Cook over a low heat, stirring frequently, until the filling is a reasonably cohesive mass and could concievably be dolloped out into little piles without it running all over the place.  Turn the heat off and let it cool a bit, so you can handle it.

While the filling is cooling, place your chard in a large heatproof bowl or pot and pour boiling water over the chard until it is submerged.  Let the chard sit in the hot water for about 10 minutes, just long enough to soften it but not long enough to make it mushy.  After 10 minutes, pour off the hot water and pour in some cool water, and let sit another 5-10 minutes.  When you are ready to roll some pazi dolmasi, drain the chard and proceed.

Preheat the oven to 350F/ 180 C.

You will need a plate to roll on, and  large baking pan to put the rolls into when they’re rolled up.  Begin by selecting a chard leaf and placing it, stem side up, on your plate, with the stem end of the leaf nearest you.  Place about a tablespoon, perhaps more (depending on the size of the leaf) of filling about 2 inches up from the bottom and in the middle of the leaf.  Fold the bottom of the leaf up over the filling.  If the stem is thick, this may require a little force, but the stem should bend without breaking too badly (if it breaks a little, don’t worry).  Next, fold the sides of the leaf in over the lump of filling, so the leaf is now more or less the same width as the filling.  Finally, roll this little packet of filling up the rest of the way in the remaining leaf, tucking any stray bits of leaf in at the sides as you go.  You should have a little dark-green burrito-esque packet, and you should put it, flap-side down, in the pan.

Repeat until you’ve used up all your leaves or all your filling,whichever comes first.  After you’ve made a few batches you’ll have a pretty good idea of how to get it to come out more or less evenly.

Once you have finished rolling dolmasi, you need to make them a cooking liquid.  The rice inside the rolls, as you will recall, is not fully cooked yet.  Nor are the chard leaves.  So that’s the next stage.  Mix 1/4 cup olive oil, the juice of a lemon (use a lemon and a half, or possibly even two lemons, if your lemons are small or dry or if you just really like a lot of lemon), and a cup of water, and pour the mixture over the dolmasi.

Place the pan in the oven and leave it there for about an hour.  Check in with it after a half an hour or so and make sure it still has a little water in the bottom of the pan.  If it looks too dry, add a quarter-cup to a half-cup of water.  And if, after an hour of baking, it still looks pretty wet, give it another half an hour to dry it out a little.

When you remove the dolmasi from the oven there should still be a little liquid left in the bottom of the pan.  Not much, just enough to coat it.  Let the pan sit, loosely covered (I usually just toss a baking sheet on top of the pan, but you could use tinfoil I suppose), for a half an hour.  Serve warm, or at room temperature.  I do not recommend serving dolmasi chilled as it mutes the flavors.

This makes a lovely main dish, but can also be served as an appetizer or as part of a mezze spread.  I am particularly fond of pairing pazi dolmasi with cucumbers in some form or another, sometimes just plain old sliced ones.

If you have leftover filling, save it.  Tomorrow you can bung it into a pot with some broth, or even some water, and some lemon juice, and cook it until the rice is soft, and call it soup.  It’s quite pleasant.  And if you have leftover chard, you can slice it up and saute it and squeeze some lemon juice on it and eat it and that is quite pleasant too.