Recipes from a Gurbetci: Grape Leaves

Gurbet in Turkish refers to separation from one’s homeland/or where one’s family, childhood and memories are; to emigrate to a foreign place. In Arabic, it is (غربة) ghurba. It is ghorbat in Farsi, kurbet in Albanian, and gùrbet in Serbian/Croatian/Macedonian. This status evokes a sense of homesickness felt across cultures, which, for those of us who cannot return home, or have nothing–or no one–left that makes it home, can only be cured through food. Food carries memories for generations–memories of warmth, a certain taste we can’t quite replicate, or our mothers’ efforts to make food stretch when money was tight.

I asked my friends for their favourite comfort food, and I got a variety of answers, but one answer stuck out to me, because although I’ve only tasted my grandmother’s version once, years ago, I still crave it. Generally, dolma refers to a variety of root-to-stalk dishes using bell peppers, tomatoes, onions, courgettes, and leaves (among others), stuffed with rice and/or meat, and featuring in cuisines across the Caucasus, West Asia, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean Peninsula. I grew up calling them dolmeh, but grape leaves were originally called sarma, meaning “wrapped.” Regardless of the name–sarma, dolmeh, warak 3nab, mahshi–it’s delicious and low-waste, and it became so popular because many could not afford to waste whatever they had managed to grow that season. This mindset of using the whole plant is ingrained in many cultures and is passed down through recipes.

My father once stopped on the sidewalk in the middle of our neighborhood to collect sumac, insisting it was safe for consumption and the same one we used in our cooking. He repurposes all seeds or scraps in our garden, and he has grown tomatoes, potatoes, bell peppers, and his crown jewel: a tall, gorgeous fig tree. This popular immigrant parent phenomenon (be it for sumac, which by the way, is only PARTIALLY EDIBLE, or grape leaves in a church parking lot) might be attributed to contemporary manifestations of a hunter-gatherer instinct. However plausible, I think instead, it is the mindset of people who appreciate the value of putting food on the table because they or their families struggled to do so through poverty, conflict, and war; so disrespecting plants and the sustenance they provide is out of the question.

There are a plethora of variations of grape leaves, even within a single region, based on the availability of meat, regional produce, and crops. In certain Turkish and Iranian provinces, bulgur is used alongside rice, and split peas, chickpeas, or lentils have been traditionally used for meatless versions, but now appear in modern meat versions, also. Ground beef is traditionally used for meat versions, but ground lamb is used too, and pork versions are popular in the Balkans. As much as I love traditional recipes, I don’t fully buy into the strict traditionalism discourse that decries any modifications to recipes, because many ingredients central to “traditional cuisine” are not indigenous to those cuisines. For instance, tomatoes were first brought from South America to Europe by Spanish explorers, and then made their way into cuisines further East through the Ottoman Empire. Thus, “traditionally,” these ingredients did not belong in those cuisines until after the 16th century, whereupon some people surely objected to the erosion of "traditional” recipes. And yet, pizza would not taste nearly as good without tomato sauce: I believe (tasteful) new variations do not overwrite traditional cuisine, but enhance it.

Nonetheless, for the sake of simplicity while maintaining traditional integrity (or as much one can hope to achieve when doing a recipe for grape leaves), here’s a vegetarian version:

1. First, blanch your grape leaves for a few minutes in hot water until they change colour to a more sage/yellowish green, and then remove, and take off their stems. If the leaves have particularly stiff “veins”, you might want to blanch them a while longer. If you’re using brined grape leaves, just rinse them under water, and remove the stems.

2. Soak some white rice (about 1.5 cups), preferably short/medium grain, in a bowl and set that aside for an hour or two before straining. Parboiling or soaking the rice helps the grape leaves cook faster, but if you don’t have time, just rinse the rice.

3. Finely chop one large onion, a few cloves of garlic, some fresh mint, and, optionally, parsley. Add it to a bowl with the rice.

4. Season the mixture with sumac, black pepper, red pepper flakes, tarragon, cumin, and salt to taste. Drizzle in some olive oil. Optionally, add about a tablespoon of tomato paste and a drizzle of pomegranate molasses for a bit of sweetness, and mix. *Note that alternatively, toasting the onions, spices and herbs in a bit of olive oil and then adding the rice with a bit of water to “parboil” it, is also an option for the stuffing.

5. Assemble: Dole about one tablespoon of mixture in the centre of each leaf and shape it into a horizontal line. Fold the bottom up, then the sides in, before rolling up. If you’ve parboiled your rice, feel free to snack as you go (until mama notices and scolds you).

6. Arrange the grape leaves by lining the bottom of a pot and stacking them tightly together to the brim (or until you run out). Top the stack with a few lemon slices, and pour over just enough water to cover the grape leaves. Then, place a heat-safe plate on top of the leaves to keep them in place while they cook, and cover with the lid.

7. Cook on the stove over medium-low heat until the rice inside has completely cooked.

Admittedly, grape leaves take time, but they’re a labour of love, and it’s best done with company. Women of the family used to gather together and roll the leaves as they watched TV and chatted. Today, though, I find that foods that take a long time to prepare threaten to become a lost art form to newer generations: our busy world leaves precious little time to sit and enjoy a cup of coffee, let alone roll fifty grape leaves for dinner. It is the lack of time that systems–such as school and work–give us, not new ingredients or experimentation, that threatens to replace traditional recipes with unfulfilling, hollow, and convenient meals. We must then defy what imperils the memories nestled into each flavourful grain of rice, so that when that familiar wave of longing washes over us, we can seek that taste of home, no matter where we are.

This article was written by Naz Fakhim!