Persia and the Caucasus · Volume 12, The South Caucasus and the Disputed Table
Tolma
Armenia
Illustration
- Time
- 1 hour 30
- Researched
- 8 sources cited
Armenian sources reserve "tolma" for stuffed vegetables and use "dolma" for the leaf-wrapped version specifically; usage is not perfectly consistent across the tradition, and this chapter follows the leaf-wrapped recipe below under the name most commonly given to it.
As tradition built it
Serves 6. About 1.5 hours.
Ingredients
- 60 fresh or brined grape leaves
- 500 g ground lamb, preferably slightly fatty
- 200 g rice
- 1 onion, finely chopped
- to taste fresh herbs
- to taste salt
- to taste pepper
- a generous knob butter, for layering
Method
- Blanch fresh grape leaves briefly, or rinse brined leaves well.
- Combine the lamb mince with rice, onion, herbs, salt and pepper.
- Lay a leaf vein-side up, place a spoonful of filling near the stem, fold the sides in, roll firmly but not tightly.
- Line a pot with spare leaves, pack the rolls tightly in circular layers, dotting butter between layers.
- Weight with an upturned heatproof plate, cover with water, and simmer until the rice is fully cooked through.
Notes
Precise fill-per-leaf and cooking time were not pinned down with confidence in the sourcing behind this chapter; "a teaspoon of filling per leaf" appeared in one source and should be treated as indicative only.
What a modern chef changes
The leaf and the rice both given the attention the wrapping deserves.
Rung 6
Method
- Toast the rice briefly with the sautéed onion before adding the mince, the same pilaf principle used elsewhere in this atlas, for a firmer, more separate grain inside the roll.
- Use fresh young grape leaves where they can be sourced at all, rather than defaulting to jarred, per Rung 6; a genuinely better result, not just a more authentic one.
- Weight the pan properly, an inverted plate that just fits inside it, so the rolls cannot unravel as the rice expands.