While in Richmond for the wedding, I asked my grandmother to help me learn some of her cooking. I grew up eating this stuff, and it has deep meaning for me. It's to the point that feeding people is a way of showing them my love. I think it's the same for her, and I've watched her feed & otherwise care for us all for many years.
I wasn't able to do as much hands-on as I had hoped, because I was chasing my 3 kids around and needed to spend time with other family. Still, I got to learn more about how to make these dishes:
- Wara' dawali, aka stuffed vine leaves, aka grape leaves.
- Makloubeh
- Kifta
When we got back home, I first made a batch of hummos, which turned out awesome. I particularly like hearing Dylan say "hummos". I also cheated at making lebneh, by just straining Strauss whole milk yogurt. Good news, though: it's really good yogurt, so the result was very tasty lebneh. Unfortunately the food co-op put Strauss yogurt on sale, so now they're out of stock.
Yesterday I made wara' dawali. It turned out really good, especially considering it was the first time I made it on my own. I particularly liked the fact that it tasted like what I grew up with, which is different than what you get at retaurants around here. I used way, way too much salt, but still not as much as my grandmother!
I still have some leaves left (I ran out of rice, and couldn't stuff them), and I need to figure out how to get brown rice to cook well in this context (my family always uses Uncle Ben's converted), so more practice to come.
I look forward to making this dish for friends.
2 comments:
Do you think you can send me a jar or two of grape leaves? I can find them online but the shipping costs are murder, no one will ship USPS.
I'll send you mac nuts in return?
I'll have to find them first! The jar we had was in our cupboard for a long time. But when we find some, yeah, we will send some your way.
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