In Good Taste #54: Stuffed vine leaves

A recipe from the weekend's supper club; ageless Brett Anderson, immersive theatre and silly blockbusters

Well, hello there! How are you?

Good I hope. Thank you so much for being here.

(Not up for the chitchat? Completely get it. Click the email title to go to a web-based version then jump straight to the recipe or Cultural Fun.)

Thanks to everyone who made it to my Newington Green supper club at the weekend and, of course, to the staff at Lizzy’s for being so lovely and making the thing go like a dream. In common with the June event I was anxiously checking the weather forecast for a fortnight before. Over the days the percentage chance of rain gradually decreased and, on the day, became glorious sunshine.

I’m sure there is a lesson here on the futility of worrying about thing you can’t control…

I forgot to take any photos of the event itself (does anyone have any?) but here are a few plates of food:

Kimchi devilled eggs; slow cooked lamb with fava purée; charred greens, peach and mozzarella salad; apricot noyaux ice cream pavlova.

I bumped into my neighbour the next morning (who had come along with friends) and he told me that as they walked home discussing their favourite dishes, everybody had chosen something different. Which I thought was lovely and gladdened my heart no end.

But I do think a lot of people loved the eggs so I’ll bring you the recipe for them next week. Today though, let’s have a look at what to do with those vine leaves we fermented a couple of weeks back…

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Recipe: Preserved lemon and saffron stuffed vine leaves

Makes approximately 50

When I tried to write “dolmades” in my to-do app, the spellchecker changed it to “soulmates”. I do not think stuffed vine leaves are my soulmates but I am very fond of them indeed.

My ideal dolma is lemony and herby, spiced but not overwhelmingly so. They are (obviously) tasty but much of the pleasure is textural: soft rice in its taut leaf wrapper studded with solid little pine nuts and plump, sweet sultanas.

My recipe contains saffron which was inspired by some vine leaves James and I ate on the last night of our honeymoon at a lovely restaurant called Ochre in Oia, Santorini’s prime spot for sunset-botherers.

Also preserved lemon because, well, you know. I am slightly obsessed with the things. But you could easily leave out the saffron and swap the preserved lemon for lemon zest if you prefer.

Ingredients

• 50 or so vine leaves (fresh or fermented - see note)

• 3 tbsp olive oil

• 1 onion, finely diced

• 5 cloves garlic, crushed

• 1 tsp ground cinnamon

• 1 tsp ground cumin

• 1 tsp ground allspice

• 200g short grain rice

• 50g pine nuts

• 50g sultanas

• generous pinch saffron

• 1 litre vegetable stock 

• 1 tbsp preserved lemon paste

• small bunch dill, finely chopped

• small bunch parsley, finely chopped

• 2 tsp dried mint (or a handful of fresh leaves, finely chopped)

• 1 lemon

Method

1. Soften the onion. Heat your oven to 180°C. Put the oil and onion in a large, heavy-bottomed pan (for which you have a lid) over a low heat. You want it soft and sweet and translucent but don’t let it brown.

2. Prepare the additions. Meanwhile toast the pine nuts in a dry frying pan over a medium heat or on a baking tray in the oven. They are notoriously easy to burn so watch them like a hawk. It will only take a few minutes in a pan (shake regularly) or 5-10 in the oven. Transfer to a bowl as soon as they are nutty-smelling and golden. Also put the sultanas and saffron threads in a small heat-proof bowl and add enough boiling water to cover.

3. Add the garlic, spices and rice. When the onion is translucent and tender (about 10 minutes) add the garlic and spices. Stir in and let them cook for a minute until fragrant. Then add the rice, stir again to coat it in oil and spices and cook for another five minutes.

4. Partially cook the rice. Add 300ml of stock to the pan. Put a lid on the pan and let the rice cook for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. You want it soft but still a bit chalky in the middle as it’s going to absorb more stock in the oven. Check as it goes and add more water if necessary. When it’s ready, stir in the preserved lemon, herbs, pinenuts and sultanas in their saffron water. Taste and season with salt if necessary and a few generous grindings of black pepper. Allow to cool. You might want to spread the rice on a tray as it cools so it doesn’t continue cooking in its own heat.

5. Shape and roll. Wait until the filling is cool enough to handle and then stuff your leaves. Line a baking dish with any spare leaves you have (anything very small or torn or weirdly shaped can find a home here). Then, working in batches, lay some vine leaves on your work surface and put a small amount of filling on each, just below where the stalk used to be. A teaspoonful is plenty for a small leaf, a big one can take up to two. Compact the filling and then roll the leaf over it from the top. Fold in the sides before continuing to roll into a neat little cylinder. They should be firm but not too tight as the rice will continue to swell whilst cooking. Put each finished parcel in your baking dish, making a neat layer.

   

   

   Or you can do this the other way up, rolling from the bottom. Whichever you find easier.

6. Bake the dolmades. Squeeze the lemon over the finished dolmades and pour on enough of the remaining stock so they are just submerged (you might not need it all). Cover the dish with foil and cook for 45 minutes. Allow to cool to room temperature then drizzle with olive oil before serving.

Notes (If Ifs And Ands Were Pots And Pans…)

• If you’re using fresh vine leaves rather than fermented they will need to be blanched. Boil a pan of water and have a bowl of iced water ready. Snip any stalks from the leaves and stack them into into piles of 10 (this means they are orderly when it comes to rolling). Plunge each pile into the boiling water for 1 minute (using tongs is easiest) then remove and put them in the cold water. Drain and set aside. Repeat until all the leaves are done.

• If you have any spare filling it can be cooked in the dish alongside the dolmades and is tasty on its own, as an accompaniment to meat or as stuffing for a pepper or a tomato.

• These are nice as part of a meze spread and particularly good served with tzatziki.

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Cultural Fun

I went to see Suede and the Manic Street Preachers at Ally Pally last week. I was with my friend Andy who’s been a Manics fan since his teens and must have seen them 20 times or more but it was my first. I really enjoyed the set. Highlights were Motorcycle Emptiness (always my second favourite Manics song), La Tristesse Durera (my all-time favourite) and The Anchoress coming on to duet with James Dean Bradfield on Little Baby Nothing.

But (for me anyway) they were blown out of the water by Suede who were just incredible. Brett Anderson is apparently 56 but there must be a painting of him decaying away in an attic somewhere as he was a snake-hipped and louche as ever, prowling energetically around the stage and regularly allowing himself to be sexily mauled by rabid fans in the front row. I was also impressed by his ability to get up from a rock’n’roll kneeling position without doing a middle-aged “oof” noise.

I keep saying I need to go and see some bands that I haven’t been into for 30 years or more (Suede’s self-titled debut came out in March 1993! I owned it on cassette!) but middle-aged nostalgia is a powerful drug.

Immersive theatre. Hmmm. You can barely go to the theatre these days without being immersed in something. The phrase has begun to be a bit meaningless and the scene is filling up with gimmicky “experiences” like the Monopoly Lifesized attraction. But Punchdrunk were originators of the form and their shows are always worth experiencing. The first time I was aware of them was their extraordinary, Edgar Allen Poe-inspired, Masque of the Red Death that took over the BAC in 2007/2008.

I went twice and had a totally different experience each time. Likewise with the even bigger and more ambitions Drowned Man in 2013/14, a drama based on Buchner’s Woyzeck but transposed to a sleazily glamorous Hollywood setting, took over four stories of a disused Post Office building in Paddington.

I was less enamoured of The Burned City, last year’s Trojan epic, but it was still incredibly impressive. In all of these productions the masked audience wanders the expansive sets, scenes between characters playing out before them and then dissipating. You might stumble across something that only you are witness to or be ushered into vast set-pieces, become part of the action.

You were always encouraged to leave your group and explore on your own. So part of the experience was meeting up with people afterwards and saying: “Did you see the madman in the basement?” “No, I missed that! What happened? Did you see the hoedown? Did you find the secret bar?” The scale, ambition and precision was dazzling.

Punchdrunk’s latest, Viola’s Room, is a real departure. Firstly there are no actors. And secondly you can’t wander at will, but are instead led though a specific route as a story unfolds.

Although you stay in a group (just six at a time) and experience everything together it still feels like a very individual experience as you are wearing headphones through which Helena Bonham Carter reads you a fairy tale. You are told to “follow the light” and are directed by soft, cloud like glimmers that lead the way down tunnels to reveal dioramas and scenes. Also you’re barefoot so you feel really connected with each scene, the floor beneath your feet changing as the story progresses.

Perhaps not as genuinely immersive as exploring a world at will but totally magical in a different way. I’m still thinking about it several days later and hoping to return before the end of the run.

If Punchdrunk was our “high” culture of the week then we brought balance to the universe by also seeing Twisters, the remake of Twister, Michael Crichton’s storm chaser drama from 1996.

It was very silly indeed and I wouldn’t exactly recommend it. But a solid two-and-a-half-stars bit of mindless entertainment was exactly what I was in the mood for on Sunday afternoon.

Sometimes you want to be immersed in an intricate fairytale and sometimes all you want is an air conditioned cinema, a large Pepsi Max and some beautiful people battling adverse weather events…

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Bye! See you next week!

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In Good Taste is a Sycamore Smyth newsletter by me, Clare Heal.
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