Delicious stuffed cabbage rolls with lentils and rice
It’s a kind of dolma or tolma or sarma and I got heavily influenced by the Armenian Pausa Tolma I tasted from Maria Katchadourian. Since I did not have chickpeas that needed to go in, I subbed with red lentils: it made them creamy and sooo very delicious you just cant stop eating them. The caramelized onion adds to the fame. This is something that if you end up reading this you need to give yourself this dish: i promise you will not regret it.
1 big (preferably flat) head of white cabbage
1 bunch of parsley
200 g of red lentils
150 g risotto rice
2 onions
olive oil
2 cloves of garlic
2-3 generous spoons of sweet Turkish or Armenian paprika paste (tatli biber)
2-3 tsp of dried mint
optional: cinnamon
Aleppo pepper
2 ripe tomatoes
sumac
Take of the leaves of the cabbage and just blanche them for few minutes in salty boiling water. Leave to drain. Put the red lentils with the risotto rice into the water with some salt and cook until soft but not quite a puree. Leave to drain. Meanwhile chop finely the onions and fry golden in olive oil. Grate the garlic. Mix the golden onions, the freshly grated garlic, the paprika paste and the dried mint into the lentil rice mixture. A hint of cinnamon can be nice too. Season to taste with salt and Aleppo pepper. Take the soft cabbage leaves and cut out the hard grain. Halve them if they are big. Spoon a little bit of the rice lentil mix on the bottom side of a leaf, form a thin ‘sausage’ and roll nice and tight like you would roll a sleeping bag, the sides are open and that’s how it should be. Repeat until all the filling and leaves are gone. Cut the tomatoes in slices and cover the bottom of the pan, with some olive oil. Divide the tolma or dolma over it in a nice circle and sprinkle with some sumac and some olive oil again. Add around 300 -500 ml of water until they ¾ under water (depending on your pan), cover with a plate (that loves to be cooked!) and slowly cook in around 45 min. to an hour until they are totally soft. Eat them hot or cold, equally good. Some yoghurt or labneh on the side is heaven if you like.
