Authors: Victoria Wise
To make the meatballs, place all the ingredients in a medium bowl, and knead with your hands until thoroughly blended. Form into 12 walnut-size balls. Set aside on a plate at room temperature for up to 30 minutes, or cover and refrigerate for up to overnight.
To make the soup, heat the oil in a large pot over medium heat. Add the bacon and leeks, decrease the heat to medium-low, and cook gently until both are wilted, about 2 minutes. Add the water and salt and bring to a boil over high heat. Decrease the heat to maintain a simmer and cook, stirring occasionally, until the bacon fat is translucent, about 10 minutes. Add the meatballs and continue cooking until they rise to the top, about 5 minutes. Stir in the greens and cook until they are soft but still bright green, 3 to 5 minutes more.
Place a portion of rice in each of 4 large, wide bowls. Ladle the soup over the rice and serve right away.
My love of rice paper began in childhood with candies that came packaged in colorful boxes, mostly pinkish and with children pictured gleefully jumping. Inside were gummy candies, chewable like jujubes, only softer. The fun part was unwrapping the outer paper and getting to the inside wrapping. At first it seemed like another layer of paper, a bit stiff like cellophane. But then you would pop the candy into your mouth and let the wrapping hydrate until soft enough to chew. I always found it a thrill “eating” my way from seemingly inedible paper to edible candy. So it is with rice paper wrappers for Vietnamese spring rolls. What seems at first glance a large plastic disk not for consumption, with hydration becomes supple enough to enfold all manner of comestibles.
MAKES 6 SPRING ROLLS
Sausage
½ pound ground beef
1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh cilantro
1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh mint
1 teaspoon finely chopped scallion
¼ teaspoon chile flakes
1 tablespoon Thai fish sauce
1 teaspoon fresh lime juice
Dipping Sauce
¼ cup finely shredded fresh mint leaves
1 teaspoon finely chopped small green chile
1 small clove garlic, finely chopped
1 teaspoon sugar
1 tablespoon Thai fish sauce
3 tablespoons fresh lime juice
2 tablespoons water
Peanut or canola oil, for sautéing the sausage
6 dried rice paper wrappers, about 8½ inches in diameter
6 large red- or green-leaf lettuce leaves
Handful of bean sprouts
1 carrot, peeled and coarsely grated
½ cup coarsely grated daikon
2 scallions, white and light green parts, thinly slivered lengthwise
To make the sausage, place all the ingredients in a medium bowl, and knead with your hands until thoroughly blended. Use right away, or cover and refrigerate for up to overnight.
To make the sauce, combine all the ingredients in a small bowl and stir to mix. Set aside.
To cook the sausage, film the bottom of a medium sauté pan with oil and place over medium-high heat. Add the sausage and sauté, stirring to break it into small clumps, until browned, 5 to 6 minutes. Remove from the heat and set aside.
To make the spring rolls, lay 1 or 2 of the rice paper wrappers on a counter and spray or brush them generously with water without saturating them. Let hydrate and soften until pliable, 1 to 2 minutes. Place a lettuce leaf in the center of each wrapper, top with about ¼ cup of the sausage, then with some bean sprouts, carrot, daikon, and scallion. Roll up the wrapper burrito-style, first folding the edge nearest you one-third of the way over the ingredients, then tucking in the sides, and finally folding the rest of the way to make a fat cylinder. Set on a platter and cover with plastic wrap to prevent drying out while you continue to fill the remaining rice paper wrappers. Serve right away, or leave at room temperature for up to 4 hours before serving.
To serve, remove the plastic wrap and accompany with the dipping sauce.
WORKING WITH DRIED RICE PAPER WRAPPERS
Dried rice paper wrappers are generally available in supermarkets and upscale grocery stores that maintain an Asian foods section. To use the wrappers, they must be hydrated. I have found that the best way to do that is to use either a spray bottle that emits a fine mist or a pastry brush. One or two at a time, moisten the wrappers with just enough water to dampen them without puddling, or they will disintegrate before your eyes. Let them sit for a minute or two until pliable enough to fold up easily without cracking (still too dry) or tearing (too wet). This usually takes one or two practice runs before you get it right. Don’t despair, however. Packages contain many wrappers, so you can sacrifice a few for the sake of beauty and finesse. Once filled and rolled, the packets will keep covered with plastic wrap for a few hours. The unused wrappers will keep in the pantry virtually forever.
LAMB BECKONS AN AMAZING VARIETY
of ingredients to join it at table: yogurt; dried fruits; nuts; aromatic spices like nutmeg, cardamom, peppercorns, cumin, and turmeric known only to the Old World before the Age of Discovery; Old World grains like pearl barley, bulgur, and rice; and staple legumes such as chickpeas and lentils. Lamb itself was an Old World meat, but once it was carried across the Atlantic to the New World, it easily cozied up with the native vegetable offerings there: tomatoes, potatoes, bell peppers, chiles, green beans, zucchini. In other words, lamb’s “natural” culinary companions quickly spanned the globe. In this chapter, an international menu of sausage recipes shows off lamb’s agility in adapting to nearly whatever the pantry holds.
Lamb and Rice Sausage for Stuffing Leaves and Vegetables
Bell Pepper and Tomato Dolmas with Lamb and Rice Sausage on a Bed of Potatoes
Grape Leaves Stuffed with Lamb and Rice Sausage
Lamb and Bulgur Meatballs in Green Bean and Tomato Soup-Stew
Lamb and Chickpea Meatballs with an Almond Center in Coconut Milk Curry
Turkish-Style Lamb Sausage with Fig and Fennel Seed Marmalade
Merguez and Apple Tagine over Couscous with Harissa
Shepherd’s Pie with Northern Isles Lamb Sausage and Potato-Horseradish Crust
Scotch Broth with Northern Isles Lamb Sausage, Pearl Barley, and Turnips
A constant—an icon—of my Armenian American childhood were grape leaves, cabbage leaves, bell peppers, zucchini, and tomatoes wrapped around or stuffed with lamb and rice sausage. My mother, a native of the American Southwest, married my father, an Armenian who enjoyed the honor of being the first of his direct family line to be born in the United States. So, in our family it was he who carried forward the Armenian tradition of lamb at table. That was not difficult for my mother to accommodate: her father was a rancher who raised sheep from time to time. In other words, lamb was a food that my parents easily shared through their more than half century of marriage.
Interestingly, though the sausage stuffing was the same whether it was tucked into grape leaves, cabbage leaves, or vegetables, there was a name distinction: wrapped in leaves, the dish was called
sarma
, but stuffed into vegetables, it was dolma. Dolmas and
sarma
made with cabbage leaves were considered family fare, and they were a dinner staple in our household. Stuffed grape leaves, which require more time and earnest effort, were festive fare, so they were saved for family get-togethers or special birthday requests (mine in particular). For how to blanch and separate the leaves for making stuffed cabbage leaves, see the
recipe for sausage wrapped with cabbage leaves
.
MAKES ENOUGH FOR STUFFING 14 TO 16 MEDIUM-SIZE TOMATOES OR BELL PEPPERS, 60 TO 70 GRAPE LEAVES, OR 20 TO 24 CABBAGE LEAVES
1 cup
steamed long-grain white rice
, cooled
1 pound ground lamb
1 yellow or white onion, very finely chopped
¼ cup tomato paste
2 teaspoons chopped fresh oregano or ½ teaspoon dried oregano
½ cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1½ teaspoons kosher salt
¾ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
Combine all the ingredients in a medium bowl, and knead with your hands until thoroughly blended. Use right away as directed in individual recipes, or cover and refrigerate for up to 3 days.
Nowadays, dolmas are standard fare throughout the eastern Mediterranean and Caucasus. But it is interesting to ponder how they became so in ancient lands that never had New World ingredients until seafarers carried them to the Old World on their return journeys. To complicate the story, they put ashore in Atlantic ports, so it was still a long trek to get to the eastern Mediterranean. Nonetheless, they did, once again demonstrating the scope and power of food as a pathway of global interconnections.
Adding a bed of potatoes as infrastructure in this dolma is a particularly Greek touch, and a good one. The potatoes soak up the juices rendered as the vegetables cook and collapse into them, making a crude sauce on the bottom of the dish. I prefer green bell peppers, but it seems these days red bells are equally, if not more, favored, so I make a mix of them, including some yellow and orange ones that add sunny color to the array.
SERVES 6 TO 8
6 bell peppers, red, green, or yellow, or a mixture (6 to 8 ounces each)
8 tomatoes (6 ounces each)
Extra virgin olive oil
2 russet potatoes (about 1¼ pounds total weight), unpeeled
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
Lamb and Rice Sausage for Stuffing Leaves and Vegetables
¼ cup water
1 cup plain yogurt, whisked smooth
Cut ½-inch-thick caps off the peppers and tomatoes and set the caps aside. Scoop out and discard the seeds from the peppers and set the peppers aside. Scoop out and discard the seeds from the tomatoes, then cut the pulp out of the center of each tomato, leaving a thick shell (some seeds clinging to the removed pulp is okay). Set the tomatoes and pulp aside separately.
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Lightly oil the bottom and sides of a baking dish large enough to hold the peppers and tomatoes in a single tightly packed layer.
Slice the potatoes into ¼-inch-thick rounds. Line the baking dish with the slices, overlapping them, and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Spread the reserved tomato pulp over the top and season with salt and pepper. Fill the peppers and tomatoes with the sausage, and set the stuffed vegetables in the dish side by side, arranging them snugly. Replace the caps on the peppers and tomatoes and pour the water into the dish around, not into, the vegetables. Cover the dish with aluminum foil.
Bake until the potatoes and peppers are fork-tender and the tomatoes are beginning to collapse, about 1 hour.
Serve hot or at room temperature, with the yogurt on the side.
Without doubt, stuffed grape leaves are one of my favorite foods. I even planted two Thompson seedless grapevines, the preferred variety for Armenian stuffed grape leaves, in my small urban garden, primarily to harvest their leaves rather than their fruit. Fortunately, you don’t have to be a weekend backyard gardener to have the grape leaves. Due to the influence of Greek, Turkish, Syrian, Lebanese, Georgian, and Armenian cuisines and their growing numbers in America, jarred grape leaves have become available in markets around the nation, even supermarkets. Because they are large and sturdy enough not to tear as you roll them, yet still supple, I prefer jarred leaves from California’s Central Valley, home to a large population of Armenian farmers who grow tomatoes for canning, fruit for drying, and grape leaves for brining. Some cooks recommend rinsing jarred leaves, but I don’t. I like the briny taste they impart.
MAKES 60 TO 70 STUFFED LEAVES
60 to 70 brined grape leaves, not rinsed (one 28-ounce jar, with a few left over)
Lamb and Rice Sausage for Stuffing Leaves and Vegetables
1 lemon, very thinly sliced
¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
Working in batches according to the size of your space, lay the grape leaves, smooth side down and with the stem end facing you, on a work surface, and trim off the stems with a sharp paring knife or scissors. Place about 1 tablespoon of the stuffing in the center of each leaf. Fold each side of the bottom up over the stuffing, roll up the leaf a half turn, and then fold the sides in toward the center. Continue rolling to the top to make a tight, neat cylinder. Pack the rolled leaves in a large pot, tucking them together to make a tight layer, or two, depending on the size of the pot. It’s okay to have two layers, as long as they are tightly packed.
Place a plate that will fit inside the pot over the leaves to keep them from floating up, and pour in water just to cover. Bring to a boil over high heat, cover the pot, and cook for 10 minutes. Remove from the heat and let cool, still covered, until no longer steaming, about 20 minutes. Pour off the water, pressing down on the plate to drain thoroughly and keep the leaf packets intact. Set the pot aside until the packets are completely cool. Carefully transfer the leaf packets to a platter, cover, and chill, preferably overnight, to firm and intensify the flavor.