Think of grape leaves as nature’s spring roll wrapper.
I mean, the Greeks certainly did. So too did the Persians, the Turks, the Lebanese, the Egyptians, the Romanians, the Armenians, even the Vietnamese!
The otherwise unassuming grape leaf certainly has fans in high places. The Greeks say the most famous grape leaf dish, dolmades, was served on Mount Olympus to the gods themselves. Back down on earth, when Alexander the Great laid siege on Thebes, the natives apparently stretched what little meat they had left by wrapping it in grape leaves, thus birthing the dish we know today.
And yet, the source of the dish is up for debate. Indeed, the very word “dolma” is Turkish in origin, from the verb meaning “to be stuffed.” In Armenia, an annual dolma festival is held to reassert the dish’s Armenian roots. Arabian cuisine is replete with stuffed vegetables of one kind or another, so it stands to reason that they would have stuffed grape leaves, too, giving birth to what they call “wara ‘enab.”
And did you know that there’s even a Swedish version called “kaldolmar,” stuffed cabbage leaves served with boiled potatoes and lingonberry jam?
No matter the origin, I love having stuffed grape leaves in the refrigerator as a tasty antidote to afternoon hunger pangs. Truth be told, I’d always turned to canned dolmades instead of making my own. Yet I was shocked at how easy they are to make myself.
For a change, inspired by the current national obsession with transforming cauliflower into an entirely different animal (cauliflower steaks, couscous, mash, Buffalo cauliflower “wings”), I decided to stuff them with cauliflower “rice,” which I spiced Turkish-style with ground allspice and mint. The result are lighter, quicker-cooking stuffed grape leaves that will satisfy everyone, from the low-carb/Paleo devotees to (I would hope) Zeus himself!