Vine leaves stuffed with meat

Wow. I looked away for a second and all of a sudden I hadn't posted for over a month, my list of unread blogs on Google Reader was up to 440 and it was very nearly Christmas. And I still haven't made any mulled wine or mince pies, let alone had another go at a gingerbread house after last year's disaster. Gah! 

Anyway, one of the things I've been up to is hosting a Syrian Saturday. As you do! The idea came about because my friend Fran and I have spent the last year struggling to learn Arabic together with a very sweet teacher from Damascus. And whenever she runs out of things to do, she starts showing us photos of Damascus and talking about the souk and the Umayyad Mosque, and generally convincing me that I want to go to Syria as soon as humanly possible. In the meantime, Fran gave me a wonderful book called Damascus: Taste of a City. It's a combination of a description of walking around the city, with recipes interspersed, all provided by a Damascene brother and sister, so you really feel like you're being shown around by a local. 

And it contains the wonderful line:

  No matter how simple it may seem, you cannot cook Damascene food half-heartedly. You have to put your whole soul into it - preferably in the company of friends.

So I had to get Fran and a few other friends around to spend the afternoon rolling vine leaves and chopping up parsley for tabbouleh. And, of course, it was also the perfect opportunity to practice to my Arabic writing skills:

Clockwise from top left: stuffed vine leaves, mutabal and tabbouleh, s'fiha, mujadarra

It was all rather tasty, but I think that the real success of the day was the stuffed vine leaves. They were fun to do and easier than I had expected. We were a bit worried about putting in the meat and the rice in without cooking it, but a quick flick through Claudia Roden reassured us that that's what she does too. We did end up having to cook them for a little longer than advertised to ensure that the rice was cooked, but it's easy enough to scoop out a little stuffed vine leaf to taste it - it's not one of those things where you have to guess when it's ready.

I've never had meaty stuffed vine leaves before, but these little babies are yummy. They're covered in lemons during the cooking process, so they take on a really lemony flavour. And I love the pine nuts for a bit of extra taste and texture too. Oh, and apparently you serve the meaty ones warm (and the vegetarian ones cold). So, if we really must be Christmassy, you could totally serve these as a snack at one of those cocktails and nibbles parties people seem to have on adverts (but no one ever invites me to).

Vine leaves stuffed with meat 

from Damascus: Taste of a City by Marie Fadel and Rafik Schami

serves 6 - 8

500g vine leaves 

500g mince (beef or lamb)

200g long grain rice

1 tsp salt and 1/2 tsp pepper

1 tsp dried mint

2 tsp thyme

1/2 tsp cinnamon

2 garlic cloves

100ml olive oil 

50g butter 

100g pine nuts

3 lemons

Remove the vine leaves from the packet and wash them thoroughly to get rid of the brine. Remove the stalks from the leaves*. Divide the leaves into two piles: whole leaves and fragments / leaves with holes in. 

In a large bowl, mix the mince and rice, then add the salt, pepper, dried mint, thyme and cinnamon and mix. Crush the garlic and mix with the olive oil. Add to the rice mixture and mix in. 

Heat the butter in the frying pan and brown the pine nuts. Add the rice mixture and mix in. 
To roll the vine leaves, place one whole leaf with the smooth side down, stalk end towards you, pointy it away from you. Spoon about a teaspoonful of the mixture into the middle of the leaf. Fold the sides over the mixture and then roll it up away from you. It shouldn't be too tight, as the rice will expand. The recipe emphasizes that holes are not acceptable, so if there's any filling showing through holes or rips in the leaf, set the leaf aside - you can use it to line the pan. Keep rolling the leaves up into small sausages.
When they are all ready, take a shallow, wide saucepan. Line the bottom and the sides with the broken vine leaves. Lay the stuffed leaves in the pan with the seam at the bottom. You want 2 or 3 layers and no more, with no gaps. Lay the different layers at different angles, so that no two are parallel. Slice the lemons and lay the slices on top of the vine leaves. Top up the pan with water to just over the lemons. Place a plate on top of the lemon slices to keep everything in place.
Put the pan on a high heat, cover and cook for 30 minutes (or a little longer in my case). Turn off the heat and leave for 5 minutes. Remove the lemons and serve the vine leaves warm.

*In yet another example of not spotting an instruction in a recipe until I come to blog it, I totally failed to remove the stalks. And to be honest, it was a bit fiddly trying to fold them into the parcels, but nobody choked on a stalk. Which was good. 

So, I hope you have a very merry Christmas, wherever you are, and it is full of mince pies and merriment.