Armenian · Starter
Pasuts Tolma
- Advanced
- 50 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
- Vegan
Leads with fresh herbs arguing happily on top, an earthy, grounding base, finishing long and savory.
Ingredients
- 16 large sour cabbage leaves, from a brined head
- 150 g coarse bulgur (dzavar)
- 100 g short grain rice
- 200 g cooked red kidney beans
- 150 g cooked chickpeas
- 100 g cooked green lentils
- 2 onions, about 300 g, finely diced
- 120 ml sunflower oil
- 60 g tomato paste
- 30 g red pepper paste
- 1 tbsp dried mint
- 1 tsp ground allspice
- 1 tsp black pepper
- salt
The skills inside
Rolling dolmasBrining & curingThe bare simmer: holding liquid below the boil
Allergen screen
Found: gluten
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Cook the onions in the sunflower oil over medium heat until soft and pale gold, then stir in both pastes and keep going until the colour deepens to brick and the raw tomato smell has gone.
- Off the heat, fold in the bulgur, rice, beans, chickpeas, lentils, mint, allspice and pepper. The grains stay raw. Season carefully: the leaves are already salty.
- Shave the thick rib flat on each leaf, lay a heaped spoonful of filling along the base and roll tight, tucking the sides in, filling each leaf only two thirds full.
- Pack the rolls seam down in a heavy pot in tight layers and set an inverted plate on top to hold them under.
- Add water to just cover, bring to a bare simmer and cook covered until a roll cuts cleanly and the bulgur has swelled through, about 1 hour. 60 min
- Let them cool completely in the pot before lifting them out, and serve cold with a thread of raw oil.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Brining & curing 88 recipes
- Fully committed either way: in a wet brine nothing floats clear of the liquid, and in a dry cure every face carries salt, seams and cavities included.
- The time was measured against the weight and the thickness rather than the recipe’s convenience, and it stayed cold for all of it.
- The change is visible and can be felt: the flesh is firmer than raw and its colour has deepened or gone more translucent, rather than still being slack and pale.
- Rinsed and dried as the recipe asks, and anything meant to crisp afterwards has a surface dry and tacky to the touch before it goes near heat.
- Cooked and tasted, it is seasoned right through to the centre rather than merely salty at the surface, and not so salty that the dish cannot be eaten.
Where it goes wrong It sat in the brine well past its time because a few extra hours seemed harmless; the surface is over-salted and the texture has gone from firm to spongy and wet, and no cooking takes salt back out.
The bare simmer: holding liquid below the boil 183 recipes
- The surface is read rather than assumed: bubbles break slowly in one or two places, or the surface merely shivers, and it does not reach a rolling boil at any point.
- It was held there: the pot was watched and the heat adjusted rather than set once and left, and there is no tide mark up the pot wall from a boil-over.
- The liquid stayed as clear as it should be: no clouding from agitation, and no fat churned into an emulsion through it.
- Whatever is in the liquid is still intact: nothing shredded, broken up, or worried apart by movement.
- The level is roughly where the elapsed time should have left it; a large drop is the evidence that it ran hotter than this while nobody was looking.
Where it goes wrong It was brought to a boil and then left on the same heat, so it churned for the whole cook: the liquid clouded, the fat emulsified into it, and the solids broke apart into the broth.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Chianti Classico or Barbera d’Alba
- Also Right
- Vermentino for the lighter plates
- From the Taps
- Italian pilsner
- Zero-Proof
- San Pellegrino Sanbittèr
Tomato’s acid demands equal acid: Italian reds evolved beside the sauce, and the regional pairing is the safest law in wine.
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