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Dolmas
(Greece and Turkey.) Chop fine a sufficient quantity of cold cooked lamb or mutton, add an equal amount of boiled rice, season to taste, and add as much milk or white stock, blended with the yolk of an egg, to make a thick paste. Fill lettuce leaves with this, roll them up and cook in water or a little stock for 1/2 hour. Drain them, arrange on a dish, and pour a sauce over them of milk, yolk of egg, parsley, and the juice of a lemon.
A leftovers dish disguised as a foreign delicacy: cold roast lamb, rice and an egg-lemon sauce. The one thing to get right is the sauce, which will curdle if it boils.
- The sauce must not boilWhisk the yolk with the lemon juice, then dribble in a ladle of the hot cooking liquid or warm milk while whisking, and return it to very low heat only until it thickens to coating consistency. At a simmer the yolk scrambles and the sauce breaks.
- Half an hour is too longLettuce collapses in a few minutes and the filling is already cooked, so 30 minutes leaves you with grey packets. Ten to twelve minutes at a bare simmer, barely covered with stock, is enough to heat through and set the rolls.
- Blanch the leaves firstLarge romaine or butter lettuce outer leaves, dipped in boiling water for 15 to 20 seconds and cooled, roll without splitting. Trim out the thick central rib. Raw crisp leaves crack at the fold.
- Quantities are left to youThe recipe gives no absolute amounts, only a proportion: an equal quantity of boiled rice to chopped meat. As a working guide, 2 cups chopped cooked lamb with 2 cups cooked rice, 1 yolk and about 1/3 cup milk or stock fills roughly 16 to 18 rolls and serves four.
- "Thick paste" is the targetAdd the milk or stock a spoonful at a time. The mixture should hold its shape when pressed in the hand; if it slumps it will leak out of the leaves in the pan.
- White stockThis means an unbrowned veal or chicken stock. Any light chicken stock works; avoid a dark beef stock, which muddies both the filling and the pale sauce.
- Season more than you expectCold cooked meat and boiled rice are both bland. Salt, pepper, and a good deal of chopped parsley, mint or dill in the filling itself, not just in the sauce.
- Packing the panArrange the rolls seam side down in a single snug layer so they hold shut, and lay a plate or a spare lettuce leaf on top to keep them submerged.
Dolma comes from the Turkish verb dolmak, to be filled, and covers any stuffed vegetable or leaf across the former Ottoman territories, from stuffed peppers and courgettes to the vine-leaf rolls most English speakers now mean by the word. Lettuce and cabbage leaves are genuine regional substitutes, often said to stand in when vine leaves are out of season, and lamb with rice is the standard filling. The finishing sauce is avgolemono, the egg-and-lemon emulsion that stands in for cream throughout Greek cooking and appears on everything from soup to braised greens. The recipe's shape here — cold cooked meat bound with rice and reheated in a wrapper — reflects the cookbook habit of filing foreign dishes under uses for the remains of yesterday's roast; the dish appears under a bracketed heading, ‘(Greece and Turkey.)’