Adventures in Cooking
My Big Fat Greek Whatever - 5.14.04
Brandon
Alright. For this first installment, I'm not actually braving a strange recipe found on the Internet. This recipe has actually been in our family for several generations. That's right, I'm part Greek. I grew up eating dolmades (stuffed grape leaves) and I had always wondered how they were made. Well—let me clarify—I didn't just eat stuffed grape leaves. I ate other things, too. Anyway, my mom had planned a big, fat Greek graduation party for some of us recent graduates, so I offered to make the stuffed grape leaves. What you are about to see is the leaf-stuffing that ensued.
You start with grape leaves. Lots and lots of them. That's right! Grape vines aren't just good for grapes! You can actually eat the leaves! By the way, my mom looks like the lady from the raisin box, doesn't she? I think so. Yeah, so you cut all the stems off of the grape leaves. This takes a long time.
The problem with most stuffed grape leaves is that they're stuffed full of crap. There's no meat—it's just rice and vinegar. Seriously, I made stuff like that in first grade, and nobody called it food. We stuff our grape leaves full of meat, thank you. That's all meat, right there. Hamburger and lamb. We talked about opening a place that serves hamburgers made of lamb and calling it Lamburgers—I mean, hamburgers aren't made of ham either. It's not much of a stretch, right?
Grapes leaves were featured prominently in the movie Stigmata. No wait— that's my mom. She looks like the raisin lady. We added tomato sauce and all hell broke loose. Seriously, I should have videoed some of this for later use in a sci-fi movie. It was pretty gross.
So now we have the leaves trimmed and the innards prepared, it's time to stuff those suckers.
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