How to Make Mixed Dolma Part 2
So now, it’s time to stuff our vegetables but before we do that, we’re just going to take that tomato pulp from before and chop it up in there. You just want to chop up this pulp really nicely in there. And sometimes if you see it’s not enough, you can always chop another tomato because tomato is great in Dolma. You don’t need to overpower because you have the pepper paste but one extra tomato is always good. So, that pulp really wasn’t enough so I chopped an extra one over here. You could just take it and drizzle it around, you don’t need all the juice. Give that a quick mix. See if you could already see the color of the red and the green. It’s really great.
Now, we’re just going to stuffing or vegetables and put it in the pot. So, what you want to do first with the pot is just line the bottom of it because as in any dolma, it will stick. So, what you can use if you don’t have these bones like I have right here is you could use the stems of parsley or you can even use grape leaves if you have some extra grape leaves at home. Lot of people do that. Sometimes when you go to your butcher and you’re ordering a meat like I always do, I always ask for extra bones and I just keep them in my freezer and I save them until I make dolma because it actually gives a great beef aroma. It makes everything taste that much better but it’s not enough beef to line the pot so we’re just going to use some stems and fill in the spaces. That’s why you should always save your parsley stems. My mother always saves them. She’s a smart woman. So, now that is all lined, very nice, now we could just start stuffing in our Dolma.
Now, first you probably want to do your eggplant because they have the thickest skin and you could just take a spoon or your fingers whatever you feel comfortable and stuff it but not completely. Now, I know Dolma, it actually means, it comes from the word “dolmak” which means to stuff, Turkish way. And dolma is actually that is vegetable or something stuffed. So, that’s why we’re stuffing vegetables right here. So, you have this one very loosely stuffed because the rice is going to cook and it’s going to expand while you cook. So, we could just leave them there. And now, we have the bottom of this eggplant here. So, we could just use as the bottom and then keep stuffing it this way. And even in Turkey, we have little mini-buses, it goes all around the city and it called dolmas because that’s what it is, it’s stuffed. Stuffed with people, just jump on and jump off.
So now that you stuffed both of them, both eggplants, what you want to do is put them into each other. However way you can maneuver it, just mold it together kind of just like that. It’s really easy and you want to lay them flat not upright. So, just lay them downward on top of your stems or your beef and just keep doing that until all your vegetables are done but the tomatoes go on top because the tomatoes, they take the longest to cook.
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