Turkish Biber Dolmas

I love Dolmas. It needs small green peppers and the right sized pan to hold them upright. In Wood Green restaurants it is hard to find dolmas that don’t include meat. Not that I have anything against meat, and the boy would certainly prefer a meat version. But I am looking for something simpler.

16-18 small green peppers

4 tomatoes sliced

¼ glass olive oil

1tsp salt

Rice filling

1 glass rice

6 onions, finely chopped

¾ glass olive oil

1 large  tomato

25g pine nuts

25g currants

1tbsp finely chopped mint

22bsp finely chopped dill

½ tsp pepper

1tsp salt

2tsp sugar

½ tsp cinnamon

½ tsp allspice

1 lemon

This looks like a lot of ingredients, but if you can find the right peppers it makes a fairly easy Monday night supper. I was thinking it needed stock, but given the flavours of the ingredients, clearly not. The peppers should be small enough that you can wrap your hand around one.

There is an easy going comedy from the 1960s on the radio. It is actually quite funny. Have discovered we have raisins not currants so am just swapping them around.

Wash the rice with warm water and drain it. Put the oil, onions and pine nuts in a large pan and cook to soften. Add the salt. Cook slowly over a low heat for about 20 mins. Add the drained rice and stir it around for another 10 mins. Chop one tomato and add it to the pan. Add the currants, pepper, sugar and ¼ glass of warm water. Stir it well and cover and simmer for 12 minutes. This is sometimes not enough water so keep an eye on it and top it up if you need to.

Once it’s cooked and the water is absorbed, add the spices and chopped herbs. Leave it to rest in its own steam for half an hour. I cover it with a tea towel.

The small peppers come from a Turkish grocer. They are paler green than what we usually think of as green peppers. Cut the tops of and remove the seeds. Stuff loosely with the rice mixture. Make ‘lids’ from the sliced tomatoes and put them on top. The tricky bit is getting them to stand up in a pan. They need to be fairly firmly packed so the boy is called into service to help stand them up while I pack them in. Put a few thin slices of lemon over the top of the dolmas.

Sprinkle with salt and olive oil. Pour in ¼ glass water and cook on very low heat. Until the peppers are tender. Probably 45 minutes or so. Again check to make sure they don’t dry out. Let them cool and serve them just warm with a big spoonful of thick yoghurt.

Just because this is veggie, doesn’t mean the boy gets away without a salad. Chopped tomatoes onion and cucumber shredded red cabbage and lots of flat leaf parsley. A squeeze of lemon juice over the top and a pickled chilli to garnish. A wedge of flat bread won’t go amiss for mopping up the rice that spills from the dolmas along with the warm yoghurt.