The Gulf and Arabia · Volume 59, The Tigris Fire, the Shrine Kitchen and the Table That Left
Dolma
Iraq, and every one of its communities
Illustration
- Time
- 2 hours
- Researched
- Researched from 44 sources in the brief
The Iraqi pattern, in Nasrallah's words, is many vegetables in one pot, not one. Baghdad cooks a clear liquid and Mosul a tomato one. The Kurdistan Region's Westga calls dolma the queen of the Kurdish table and says Kurds made it their own with pomegranate molasses; it is Erbil's best known dish by a Kurdish language report; Altunci counts it among Kirkuk's; and al-Husseini, in Baghdad, says it is believed to be Turkish. Every community says it is theirs. The quantities are from two Iraqi sources: Nawal Nasrallah's Delights from the Garden of Eden for the filling, the vine leaves and the spice, and Ansar al-Madhbouh on the Alkafeel forum (2013) for the vegetables, rice, meat, tomato paste and pomegranate molasses.
As tradition built it
Serves a family. About 2 hours, including an hour of stuffing.
Ingredients
- about 20 vine leaves, blanched
- 4 small onions, hollowed, or a head of cabbage leaves
- 3 courgettes, hollowed
- 3 aubergines, hollowed
- 3 tomatoes, hollowed
- 720ml rice, short or anbar, rinsed
- 500g minced lamb or beef
- 250g onion, finely chopped
- 30g parsley, chopped
- 1 tbsp sab' baharat
- 1½ tbsp salt
- 1 tin tomato paste, in Mosul
- 3 tbsp pomegranate molasses, or sour orange juice
- to taste sumac, in Kirkuk
Method
- Mix the rice with the minced lamb or beef, onion, parsley, sab' baharat and salt.
- Stuff the hollowed courgettes, aubergines, tomatoes and onions loosely, so the rice can swell, and roll the leaves tight.
- Line the base of a heavy pot with the hollowed-out flesh and any spare leaves. Pack the stuffed pieces in tightly, the leaves wedged between the vegetables so nothing moves.
- Pour in water, or tomato paste thinned with water in Mosul, to come most of the way up, with the pomegranate molasses or sour orange (sumac in Kirkuk) and salt. Weight it with a plate.
- Cover and cook low until the rice is done and the liquid is almost gone and the base has roasted, about an hour. Rest it, then turn the pot out onto a tray, base up, so the roasted layer is on top.
What a modern chef changes
The base built on purpose
Rungs 4 and 5
Method
- Lay sliced potato under everything: it roasts into the base layer the cook is judged on and comes out as the top of the turned pot.
- Weigh the stuffing so each vegetable gets the same, and par-cook the rice two minutes so the onions and leaves finish together.
- Make the liquid with the pot's own trimmings simmered first, then the pomegranate added at the end, so the sour is tasted and not cooked away.
- Turn the pot out onto a board at the table. The roasted base is the plate.