Stuffed Grape Leaves from Dorne - GoT Countdown

"The kid had been roasted with lemon and honey. With it were grape leaves stuffed with a melange of raisins, onions, mushrooms and fiery dragon peppers. 'I am not hungry,' Arianne said... After a while, hunger weakened her resolve, so she sat and ate." - A Feast For Crows

Good Afternoon sweetlings,

Only a week to go! I am very very eager for the week to pass so the start of season 5 can begin.

When I first got this book I was excited to see a chapter on Dorne, it sounds like such a beautiful place and from the characters we have seen so far on the show (Oberyn and Ellaria) it also seems an open minded, and exotic place. I can just tell when we finally see it on screen it will be amazing.

The dishes in this chapter such as 'chick pea paste', 'flatbread' and 'lemonsweet' seem to be heavily influenced by Mediterranean foods, in particular Greek and Turkish based. All very aromatic and fresh tasting. I imagine they would taste even better in the sun, as opposed to curled up on a sofa while you hear crashing rain outside the window!

I thoroughly enjoyed making this dish because it was something very new to me, working with ingredients such as grape leaves was really fun but also very difficult. The hardest part of it all was getting the leaves out of the jar because they are so tightly packed, it took me a good 10 minutes!
Once you get the hang of the rolling process it really is quite easy and fun.

The recipe for these actually contains 1/4 pound of ground lamb but since I am a vegetarian I just used more rice instead. You can add any ground meat though or maybe try soya or quorn instead. Or you could try different rice's too, I think arborio would be lovely in these but I just didn't have any in the house, or even cous cous!

Recipe: Stuffed Grape Leaves
Time to make- 45 mins prep 1 hour cook
Level- Effort required
Rating: 8/10

Ingredients-

• 1 pint jar brined grape leaves, drained
• 1 medium onion, finely chopped
• 1 teaspoon hot pepper, such as jalapeno, finely chopped
• ground black pepper
• sea salt
• 7-10 button mushrooms
• 320g cooked rice
• 1 handful chopped raisins
• 1/4 cup vegetable or chicken stock
• Juice of 1/2 a lemon

Method-

• Carefully remove the leaves from the jar, gently unroll them and prise them apart. Place them in a large bowl and cover with boiling water to soak for 30 minutes. Rinse with cold water. 
• In a pan, heat the oil and saute the onion until it slightly browns and then add the hot pepper, seasoning and mushrooms. Cook until the mushrooms are soft.
• Remove pan from heat and stir in the rice and raisins. (At this point I also added a 1/4 cup of chopped coriander)
• Chose a large leaf to fill, place shiny side up. Put 1tbsp of mixture near the stem of the leaf and take the end and fold over the mixture. Roll once and then fold over the sides into a neat package and continue rolling until you get a neat roll.
• Continue this action until no filling is left.
• Line a deep pan with the remaining leaves and layer your rolls snugly on top of them, if a whole layer is filled then repeat by lining more leaves on top of the rolls and placing the remaining on top,
• Pour over the stock and lemon and place a lid on the pan and cook for 45 minutes to 1 hour until soft. (I needed more liquid in this process as the leaves began to burn, I added bout a 1/4 cup every 10 minutes) 
• Once done, cool them and serve at room temp,

Although time consuming, these little leaves are delicious and brilliant served with feta cheese, dates, lemon, and olives. They're mentioned in a passage of the books by one of Prince Oberyn's daughters; a sand snake. Characters I am very exited to see this season. So, enjoy a short video on them here and a little tutorial on how to roll these leaves. I found it very helpful. Until next week sweetlings!