Nicole Is Cooking

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Fantôme Chocolat and I like to stuff stuff. Peppers, squash, spring roll wrappers… we have stuffed them all. So when What the Hell Does a Vegan Eat Anyway? featured dolmas and mini stuffed peppers I sent him the link thinking he would find the mini stuffed peppers as awesome and cute as I did.

Instead he decided we needed chard to replicate the dolmas, stat.

Luckily I already had my email letting me know that I would be getting a pound of chard at my CSA pick up that Saturday.

“Make sure you pick really big leaves” was his response. And so a dinner was planned. It also seemed like a really good way to clean out the refrigerator.

Fantôme Chocolat arrived with some mushrooms and we got to work chopping things for the stuffing.

The stuffing contained whatever was in the refrigerator plus mushrooms. What went into it? Eggplant, peppers, summer squash, carrots, fresh herbs, Morningstar crumbles (a meat substitute), and…

Fantôme Chocolat’s lentil rice made with brown rice and orange and green lentils. We chopped so many vegetables, we cooked the stuffing in three batches.

We always cook our stuffing ahead of time since vegetables have such a high water content in general you want to get some of the liquid out so whatever you are stuffing does not end up overly soggy.

Ultimately, very little rice was added into the stuffing.

We had a lot of stuffing. We realized there was more than enough to make the chard dolmas and some other stuffed stuff for later in the week. At the farm, I had also picked out some 8-ball squash and some smaller peppers that I knew would be good for stuffing so we prepped those as well.

Hollowed out 8-ball squash.

Squash with stuffing.

Cooked stuffed squash.

Unlike autumn squash, summer squash has a much thinner skin that is easily edible and digestible. I would not recommend peeling an autumn squash prior to baking it if you were going to use it this way. However, summer squash are much easier to eat with this type of preparation since you can eat this preparation whole and do not have to struggle with separating the flesh from the skin as you eat. The squash were cooked for about 30 minutes at 350 F.

Sweet peppers ready to stuff.

Peppers ready for the oven.

Finished peppers.

We probably cooked the peppers a bit too long, but they were still quite tasty. They were also cooked at 350. Keep an eye on the cooking time based on the size. 15 minutes is probably sufficient for smaller ones.

Now on to the chard dolmas!

Chard is a beet plant grown for its leaf at the expense of its root. It is a fabulous natural source of vitamin A and also contains other minerals such as calcium and iron. Chard is fairly perishable once picked and you should try to use it within 3 days. As with other greens, do not wash it prior to storing to maintain optimal freshness. According to my research to make this post, the leaves are favored in the US and the stalks are favored in Europe (more on the stalks later!). It can be used raw in a salad but it is typically cooked. Chard is very tolerant of cold and frost. In the US, the plants can produce well into November. The bitterness of the plant typically mellows in colder weather. You can substitute it in recipes that use spinach or kale.

I read up a bit on traditional dolma preparation to get some ideas on how to work with the chard. First, we removed the center stem of each leaf.

A single chard leaf.

After washing the leaves, we placed them in a large container and poured boiling water over them and let them sit for about 2 minutes… just long enough to make them pliable without having them fall apart. We drained the hot water and poured cool water on top of them.

We now had a lot of half leaves. As suggested at WTHDAVEA we overlapped half leaves to make a larger one. We also trimmed a bit to make a more uniform shape. (The “scrap” pieces came in handy to wrap over holes and to provide some extra binding when needed.)

Once you have a good amount of wrapper, drop on a tablespoon or so of filling depending on how much space you have. You should leave about half an inch of space from the top edge of your roll.

I find the most efficient rolling edge to be to fold in the short top edge, fold in the sides, then roll toward the bottom (this is my spring roll technique and it worked well here too). Then tada, dolma!

Since we had soaked the leaves, the dolmas were a bit wet. We put them in the oven for about 25 minutes at 350 F to dry them out a bit and make the leaves more tender.

Wet dolmas.

Cooked dolmas.

The squash, peppers and dolmas were all fabulous.

Stuffed stuff is a great meal and there are many possibilities. You can easily create a complete meal by using a protein source (beans, a meat substitute) in your stuffing. You can jazz it up with a sauce (I recommend cooking that separately and adding it when you serve it otherwise your vegetable will be too soggy). If you are working with small vegetables, omit the rice in the stuffing and serve your stuffed items on a bed of rice (or quinoa or couscous) instead. I think one of the best ones we ever made was Poblano peppers stuffed with Gimme Lean Sausage Style, pine nuts, tart apple, pomegranate seeds, and smoked Gouda (yum!). Your stuffed stuff can be a simple, quick meal or made of complex flavors.

Fantôme Chocolat had decided while we were working on everything to give the chard stem a try.

I didn’t know until I was looking at chard info for this post that it was the favored part of the plant in Europe. There it is used like asparagus. We opted to braise it with some garlic, white wine and a bit of the leaf we had left.

I wasn’t overly fond of it. I would probably eat it if it ended up on my plate, but I won’t go out of my way for it. I might try it again if I stumble across an interesting recipe for it. Until then, if I end up with more it will probably end up in my vegetable stock bag. Fantôme Chocolat said the consistency, texture and the way it cooked reminded him of celery. I am not sure if he ate it all later in the week.