Saturday, October 23, 2010

Chicken & Pistachio Dolmades

The Daring Cooks Oct 10 Challenge: WE ARE ON A ROLL!

Our October 2010 hostess, Lori of Lori’s Lipsmacking Goodness, has challenged The Daring Cooks to stuff grape leaves. Lori chose a recipe from Aromas of Aleppo and a recipe from The New Book of Middle Eastern Food

This is my first Daring Kitchen Challenge and although I completed the challenge within the time frame, I've only now just got a spare moment to figure out how to blog it! 
Having never even tasted Dolmades, this was going to be a challenge for me indeed.


After a fair amount of research I finally decided to make two different types - one savoury and one sweet (this is where the Daring bit came in for me!)




Chicken and Pistachio Dolmades with Mint Yoghurt

 Fig and Pistachio Dolmades with Fig Syrup and Cream 


Now that I've decided on my fillings, the next challenge was to find the grape vine leaves - this turned out to be quite an adventure because there were so many new and interesting things in the Persian store that I ended up leaving with more than just the Leaves and Ajvar (capsicum paste) - I could not ignore the beautiful pink dried mini roses and the sour Hibiscus Tea which was, you guessed it, PINK! I was delighted :D

Ok, so the stakes were high, "Ba" was making Vegetarian Dolmades and Veal Dolmades and "Be" was making Lamb Dolmades - the "judges" were getting excited and the tension was building... who's Dolmades were going to win??

Saturday afternoon and I started to soak the preserved Vine Leaves - I needed to wash out as much of the saltiness as possible if I was going to attempt a sweet version.

Sunday morning and I've got to get cracking if I'm ever going to get both types done in time for the judging on Monday.  I decided to complete the savoury ones first because I had a recipe to follow and thought that I needed as much help as I could possibly get, so first up is the Chicken and Pistachio Dolmades with Mint Yoghurt - recipe compliments of SBS.

Now that my leaves had been soaking overnight, I decided to sort and group them into tiny, small, medium, large and damaged groups.  (oh, did I mention that I can be quite anal...)  

Sorting the Leaves

Next step was to prepare all of the ingredients required then mix them all together:


preparing the required ingredients

The prepared Chicken filling



And now the fun begins...

Preparing the Leaves
The thought of making one at a time what just too much for me, so I went "production line" style
 
 

Placing the Chicken filling in each of the leaves
 Once all the leaves had been laid out, face down, I cut off each of the stems and was FINALLY ready to begin.


 Now we're on a roll!

Step by Step
 I managed to stay sane and finally got them all rolled and into the pot.  I decided to try making them in the oven rather than on the stove, so once they were all layed to rest on a bed of damaged leaves, I drowned them in chicken stock and popped them in the oven.

Ready for the oven!

Google informed me to leave them in the oven until all the liquid had been dried up, however I found this made them a little dry - next time, I'll take them out sooner.
Straight out the oven

Serve with a Minted Yoghurt dressing and finely chopped pistachio.

Chicken & Pistachio Dolmades with Mint Yoghurt

So who won I hear you ask?? Well, Be’s leaves kept breaking ,so he wasn’t able to bring his in – ZERO points for Be, however Ba was given some leaves from a friend of a friend as well as a time honoured vegetarian dolmades recipe (grudge!) and she won with flying colours!

HaHa – well done Ba! (If truth be told, they were actually very moist and delicious) Wink

 

Chicken & Pistachio Dolmade Recipe

Filling

  • 2 ½ cups long grain rice
  • 250g chicken mince
  • ½ red onion, finely diced
  • 2 tbspn mint, finely chopped
  • 2 tbspn continental parsley, finely chopped
  • ½ cup ground pistachios
  • 1 tspn Turkish capsicum paste ( (biber salca - available from Turkish stores. Substitute ajvar - Macedonian capsicum paste)
  • 3 spring onions, finely diced
  • 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
  • 3 tbspns lemon juice
  • 1 cup tomato concasse
  • Vine leaves – either fresh and blanched or preserved (remember to rinse)
  • Sliced tomato
  • One sliced lemon
  • Two cloves of garlic, sliced
  • Salt and ground black pepper to taste

 Method
Mix together all the ingredients for the filling, making sure the mix is not too wet and not too dry. Place a small quantity in the centre of a vine leaf, starting at the stem end, and roll into a small, fat cigar, tucking in the side edges as you roll.

Line a large, heavy-bottomed saucepan with tomato slices, any torn vine leaves, the sliced lemon and the garlic. Pack the vine leaf parcels into the pan, fitting them together snugly but allowing a little room for them to expand.

Place a large plate over the top and fill the pan with water to the rim of the saucepan. Simmer for about 30 minutes.

** Variations to this recipe - I lined the saucepan with torn vine leaves only and I used Chicken Stock instead of water.


 


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