Cafe Liz
Kosher vegetarian recipes from my kitchen in Tel Aviv
Grape leaves stuffed with mozzarella and sheep cheese
January 23, 2010 at 11:00 pm | Tags: cheese, dairy, grape leaves, jibneh, mozzarella, sheep cheese, stuffed
Why restrict your grape leaf stuffing to rice alone? Rice or other grains are traditionally the base for many a stuffed grape leaf, perhaps because they swell up during cooking to make the leaf dumpling round, fat and firm. But that’s no reason not to expand into more unusual territory. Cheese, for instance.
I got the initial idea for this recipe — if you could call two ingredients a recipe — from a restaurant in Bat Shlomo, which serves cold grape leaves wrapped around a firm labaneh. Call me immodest, but I have to say that my version is way better — there’s no cold cheese that can compare to warm, gooey mozzarella. I’d know, since I probably ate about half of my grape leaves while photographing them. Continue reading Grape leaves stuffed with mozzarella and sheep cheese…
Grape leaves stuffed with cranberries, garlic and rice
May 19, 2009 at 1:00 am | Tags: cranberry, garlic, grape leaves, Israeli, parsley, parve, rice, vegan
Now is the season to pick grape leaves. Not that I have access to a grapevine; but plenty of other people do, it seems. One of them apparently dumped a pile of fresh leaves next to the scales at some stall buried deep in the Carmel market this past weekend. Now, stuffed grape leaves take a lot of time to prepare, and I didn’t really think I’d have that much time this week, but what can I say? I was intrigued, since I’ve never worked with fresh grape leaves before, only pickled ones.
As it turns out, there’s not much of a difference between fresh and pickled, especially not once they’ve been cooked for a very, very long time. This very long cooking is crucial, since many a stuffed grape leaf has failed me by coming out too tough to chew after only, say, an hour on the stovetop. But this time around, I figured out a new and improved way to make my grape leaves perfectly tender: the pressure cooker. Continue reading Grape leaves stuffed with cranberries, garlic and rice…
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