Food for Fuel: My Big Fat Greek Project
October 6, 2008 at 10:23 am | Posted in Food, Nutrition, Other, Rice, Quinoa, and Other Grains, Seafood, Vegetable Side Dishes | 6 CommentsOne of my favorite things to get at Greek restaurants are dolmas (also referred to as dolmathes). I crave them quite often, so I looked up this recipe, decided it looked easy enough, and made them last night. Dolmas take a long time to finish, but most of the cooking time is hands-off, so my Greek food fest was the perfect Sunday evening cooking project and left me lots of study time while they simmered!
I scaled down this recipe to make 15 dolmas. I used a short-grain brown rice for the stuffing. It took much longer to cook than I prefer, so maybe next time I will go back to my instant Uncle Ben’s. I found the grape leaves in the Mediterranean section of my local grocery store. They come in a jar.
I was able to get more than a teaspoon of stuffing into each grape leaf, but they need to be closed tightly, so you don’t want to overstuff (a problem that I have with fajitas).
I packed them tightly into my pot in the hopes that this would help keep the rice from spilling out. After this I added the lemon juice, but I didn’t see the point in using olive oil also. I added a cup of chicken broth and simmered for an hour.
I decided to eat some of the dolmas as a side dish to a fantastic Greek salad, complete with fresh sockeye salmon. I found this recipe and decided to scale it down to use as a marinade for my salmon. I marinaded the salmon for most of the afternoon and then baked it for 10 minutes at 450*. It was a perfect Sunday treat!
For the salad, I used mixed greens, baby spinach, shallot, cucumber, Roma tomato, jarred artichoke hearts, kalamata olives, and of course, a liberal helping of feta.
Isn’t it pretty with the dolmas arranged around the plate? 🙂
And…I consider a Greek feast to be incomplete without tzatziki sauce! I made mine with the following:
- 1/2 cup non-fat Greek yogurt
- Heaping teaspoon dried dill
- 1 clove jarred minced garlic
- 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
- Dash of salt
- Squirt of lemon juice
- Green onion
Served on the side for dolma dipping and salad spreading.
It was a wonderful meal and I have dolmas and tzatziki sauce left for lunch and beyond!
Nutrition of this Meal:
This meal contains 18 (record!?) ingredients from the World’s Healthiest Foods list:
- Salmon
- Cucumber
- Garlic
- Onion
- Olives
- Romaine lettuce
- Spinach
- Tomato
- Salmon
- Low-fat cheese
- Yogurt
- Olive oil
- Lemon
- Brown rice
- Black pepper
- Dill
- Basil
- Oregano
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I love tzatziki on everything! And I am so impressed by your dolmas. I have very little patience for folding but it looks like it would be a fun weekend project– esp. since using brown rice seems like a great way to make ’em healthier.
Comment by tfh— October 6, 2008 #
LOOOVE Greek cuisine.
Comment by VeggieGirl— October 6, 2008 #
Very impressive! I don’t think I could ever pull of cooking those dolmas! I have heard from several people how wonderful grape leaves are – but they freak me out!
Comment by Allison— October 6, 2008 #
[…] the pan frying step, I wrapped the chicken in grape leaves leftover from my dolma project. I don’t know what to do with the rest of my grape leaves, except maybe make more dolmas, and […]
Pingback by Food for Fuel: Swiss, Prosciutto, and Spinach Stuffed Chicken « See Jess Run— October 28, 2008 #
[…] | Tags: Beef, Bread, Greek food, Hummus, Sauce The original Big Fat Greek Project consisted of dolma making. That project took much longer than this project, but this one was stupidly undertaken on a […]
Pingback by Food for Fuel: My Big Fat Greek Project Part II « See Jess Run— October 29, 2008 #
[…] Greek food, Hummus, Salad Apparently grape leaves last forever in a jar, because it’s been two months since I last made dolmas. I really have no other use for grape leaves, so I decided to make dolmas again last night in […]
Pingback by Food for Fuel: My Big Fat Greek Project, Part III « See Jess Run— December 8, 2008 #