Oh, I meant to ask yesterday and forgot by the way, what is the sauce on the chicken?

It’s interesting, too, on the rice mixture - I had made the Greek ones before, and had always cooked the rice before stuffing the grape leaves. So I was surprised when I saw the method of doing it without - it would seem like if you really sealed them well, the rice wouldn’t absorb enough liquid to cook. But, it does, leaves being porous and it not truly being sealed. They also seem to end up firmer this way - with precooked rice, the firmness of the rolled packages is pretty much a function of how well you roll them. This way, the rice expands to fill every nook and cranny, and makes a very nice, tight package.

Reading your post on Middle Eastern food and in particular the part about the stuffed grape leaves & “baharat”, I couldn’t help but leave a comment.

As for the vegetarian version of the stuffed grape leaves, it is a popular dish here in Turkey, as popular as the meaty version, but as opposed to the meaty version, eaten as an appetizer (and always cold). It is like the Greek “dolmades” (Turkish is called dolma, literally meaning stuffed in Turkish, or “sarma”, meaning “rolled up”), though our version is sweeter - spicier and and not eaten with the Greek avgolemono sauce but just with some freshly squeezed lemon juice. The filling is different than yours as well, and can be used to stuff all kinds of vegetables (green peppers are next to grape leaves in popularity, followed by eggplant and white cabbage). Your filling sounds like a more savours one, the Turkish version is somewhat sweeter. Rice is one of the maind ingredienst naturally, but the second one is onion, actually you have to use quite a lot (and I mean a lot, for a middle sized pot of dolmas you use 5-6 middle sized onions!), the sweetish taste is given by the onions, slowly baked until they release all their sugar. The complete filling, including the rice, is pre-cooked, rice is added to the onions after they are nicely browned, together with some water, pine nuts, raisins (very small black ones, I don’t know their name in English, or if they would be available there) and a different mixture of “baharat”. Our version tastes more like cinnamon and allspice and is called “dolma bahari”. There is another one used for meatballs, called “kofte bahari” and it is more like the baharat you have described. Baharat is actually a general name for spice in Turkey, “bahar” meaning spring, the word (which itself is Arabic) must be related to nice fragrances.

Your version also sounds delicious by the way, I should try it some time. It sounds like a fresher tasting recipe, with the addition of cardemom and cilantro, both of which I love and use a lot! Cilantro is unfortunately not used at all in Turkey and many people hate it, until a few years ago you could not even find it anywhere, luckily these days some grocers sell it, though at a criminal price!

Aaahhh I got so hungry writing all this and reading your menu