Stuffed Grape Leaves with Marie Daniels

TRANSCRIPT:
[Animated Heritage NL logo; Marie Daniels and Andrea O’Brien stand in Marie’s kitchen. There are ingredients laid on the counter in front of them.]
Andrea O’Brien (AO): I’m Andrea O’Brien with Heritage NL and today we’re in Corner Brook with Marie Daniels and Marie is going to show us one particular Lebanese dish. Before  we get started I’d like to ask you how did you learn how to cook Lebanese food?

Marie Daniels (MD): Well I started going out with a Lebanese boy when I was young and he happened to be Lebanese and we eventually got married and I learned all the cooking from his mother.

AO: So did his mom was she an immigrant directly from Lebanon or?

MD: Yes.

AO: Okay so she came directly from Lebanon. And in your I guess collection of dishes that you make about how many Lebanese dishes would you think are?

MD: Oh there’s probably about maybe 25 or 30 but like I’m always open to trying new recipes that are Lebanese and I actually try them on Lebanese people and sometimes they’re a success and sometimes they’re not right?

AO: Yeah so what are you going to make for us today?

MD: Today I’m going to make a grape leaves, stuffed grape leaves.

[Ingredients:
-jar of grape leaves
-1 lb ground meat (lamb or beef)
-pepper to taste
-1 tsp salt
-lemon
1/4 cup rice

Utensils:
Two bowls, cutting board, knife, scale, measuring cup and spoons, and casserole dish.]

AO: If you want to walk us through the process of stuffed grape leaves?

MD: There are leaves that come off the grape trees. [Still image of grape leaves. ]

AO: These ones are in a brine. 

MD: These are in a brine but uh when I learned how to cook his mother they couldn’t get any Lebanese food here in Corner Brook and they would order their food from Montreal uh to a Lebanese store there and it came to salt packed. [Marie holds jar of grape leaves.]

AO: Salt-packed okay so she’d have to probably soak the salt out of them first.

MD: Everything would have to be soaked.

AO: And how do you prepare these ones?

MD: These here I’ll just take them out and I’ll put them in some boiling hot water for a few minutes to get some of the salt in that off it and the hot water also softens them up a little bit so that they’re easier to work with and uh and then I’ll dry them off a bit before I make the mixture to uh to stuff them with and the stuffing is simple. [Marie points to the rest of the ingredients including ground meat, salt and pepper, lemons.] Yes when she made them a lot of times they would make them from lamb only but we make them traditionally over the years with beef but occasionally when it’s a special occasion we’ll probably have either all lamb or we’ll combine lamb and half lamb and half beef okay so today we’re doing lamb and half beef, salt and pepper uh lemon juice, and rice and when they’re cooked they’re served with a fermented milk mixture I guess [Marie picks up container of labeen.] and I guess originally the old country was probably lamb or goat, goat’s milk that they made out of and it was called labeen and I have some here today that I mixed up last night and this is from a culture that’s probably over 100 years old and it’s still you just have to keep it going and.

AO: So that’s been passed down those generations of Lebanese people in Corner Brook.

MD: Tom’s mother and his sister were probably some of the biggest contributors to like keeping that kind of thing going amongst the Lebanese people who were interested in and making Lebanese food so we have some of that today but this is something that you can buy on your shelf in the groceteria [Marie picks up Astro Yogurt.] and it’s Astro original and that’s one product that I find to be close enough to this so [Still image of Astro Original Balkan Yogurt.] so sometimes I’ll use that if if I don’t have any done up right away.

AO: And what kind of occasions would you make grape leaves for? Was there any particular occasions or was it just a meal that you would have?

MD: Just any meal at all and it depended on whether like the big, the big feast would be like if you were having kibbeh. Cooked kibbeh and raw kibbeh and we would make flatbread so it’s time consuming to do Lebanese food. A lot of the time you know you have to be prepared in advance. [Marie touches the jar of grape leaves, meat, bowl, and rice.] I’m going to rinse these in very hot water and for a few minutes and let them soften and I’m going to measure up my meat. I’m going to use a pound today so I have the ingredients there just for that. And then I’m going to wash the rice and I’m going to mix the rice in with it. I’m going to add a little bit of lemon juice, salt and pepper to that and mash it all together until it’s sort of tasty and then I’m going to take my leaves out one at a time and I’ll have the stems cut off and I’ll take a little portion. It’s a little bit bigger than probably your finger, your index finger you know and make them. They’re, they’re small in size. They’re probably no more than about two to three inches long you don’t want, it’s not, like sometimes cabbage rolls are really really big. Nothing like that because it’s a side dish to go with.

AO: Like an appetizer.

MD: Yes exactly and quite often we have made them too for appetizers like you know if you have people coming in in the evening. So then when I when I unroll them this is what they look like look. [Andrea is out of the frame, and Marie holds up a grape leaf to show how they unroll.] And they got holes in them and some of them aren’t perfect so you just work with what you have. So what I did was I took out about as many grape leaves I thought I was going to use and I put them in boiling hot water. The  kettle was just boiled and I left them there for a few minutes and it helps to get the brine and everything off your grape leaves and also softens them up a bit sort of a little bit of cooking. And then I’ll drain them now and now they’re ready for me to stuff after I get the the meat mixture put together. [Marie stands with a large plates of grape leaves in front of her. She moves those out of the way and starts putting ground beef and lamb into the bowl. Marie wipes off her hands and adds tsp of salt, and shakes pepper into the meat.] This is my beef yeah and right now I’m just going to do up enough for a pound.

AO: And you said you like to choose extra lean if you can get it.

MD: Yes extra lean and the the lamb that I have today traditionally they would probably would do them with all lamb but over the years that has changed. And today I’m going to put half beef and half lamb and that’s that’s quite nice too. Now in some of the recipes they were also heavy on the salt in the old days okay so, so my other cooking I got it down to a teaspoon of salt for a pound of meat whereas like if you look at a recipe you might get a pound and a half and they want three teaspoons of salt. I mean even by your own standards probably that would be too much right.

AO: So was salt and pepper the main flavorings?

MD: Yes and a lot of Lebanese people uh depending on where they’re culturally from I think do use spices and this family didn’t they use whatever. They would use mint in salads and garlic a lot of garlic in their in their food but but not like cinnamons and allspice and things like that which some other families here and even in Corner Brook.

AO: Yeah.

MD: It just depended on what their tradition was.

AO: And geographically where they might have come from.

MD: I’ve got a pound of meat here and I got a quarter cup of uncooked rice. [Marie puts rinsed rice into bowl with meat and spices.]

AO: And you wash your rice.

MD: And I washed the rice and drained it before I put it in okay. And I’m going to put a little bit of lemon juice in with the meat mixture okay. [Marie squeezes half a lemon into the meat mixture.] And grape leaves are something that people like some people like it really really tart and others like it less tart so you judge it by what you’re cooking eating audience is going to be, right. [Marie mixes the meat mixture by hand.] We tend to like it fairly tart. So I’m mixing up the rice and all the ingredients salt, pepper. Everything is pretty basic. Until everything is sort of evenly distributed. If it gets a little too dry you can always add a few drops of water but this seems pretty good with the lemon juice. If you don’t have enough water in it it’s it’s sticking to your hands and it’s hard to work with. Now these stems are pretty tough look. [Marie picks up the grape leaves and removes the stems with a knife.] So I’m going to cut all them off so I’m going to start off with probably doing a dozen. And they are all various sizes and it doesn’t matter what size it is I’ll fill it. Sometimes they’re a little bit too small like that’s a little on a small side but it’s the smaller ones are the most tender the larger ones are a little tougher. [Marie places a grape leaf on a cutting board. She takes a bit of meat mixture and rolls it in her hands until it is about 1” wide by 3” long. She places the meat at the bottom of the grape leaf rolling in the sides like a parcel as she goes.] So I just flatten them out here and take a little bit of meat and I’ll roll it in my hands and it’s normally fatter than that right. And I’ll take them up and then like a parcel. [View of Marie rolling a grape leaf from above.] So the other thing about baking them is they recommend in the cookbooks to not like not put four or five layers on top of one another use a low casserole dish and probably no bigger than two, two levels and then if you have one level filled you’d go crosswise with the other ones. [Marie motions to the glass casserole dish that she is filling with grape leaves.]

[Cover stuffed grape leaves with water;  cover casserole dish with foil and bake at 350°F at 45 minutes.]

AO: So these are ones we just took out of the oven. [Marie places a metal casserole dish on the counter. Andrea is back in the kitchen with her.]

MD: Yeah.

AO: So you cook them at what temperature?

MD: 350.

AO: 350 for how long?

MD: At least maybe 45 minutes and then I’ll always check them and if I had a double layer on top of that it might take a little bit longer.

AO: And you cover them with tin foil?

MD: Yeah.

AO: And you put water?

MD: [Marie moves the glass casserole dish and discusses how she would fill it.] I when I like with with this dish of once I get it filled now if I were making looks like that dish is too small for that so I’ll probably transfer that out so what I would do is I would sprinkle the rest of the lemon and put it on that and then I would fill it up with water to to cover.

AO: Okay.

MD: And then I would put the tin foil on and put it in the oven.

AO: Okay and then some of the water gets gets absorbed into.

MD: Yeah.

AO: Into the rice I guess. [Marie shows Andrea how to eat the stuffed grape leaves. Andrea has a forkful of stuffed grape leaf.] Traditionally you would have this some flatbread.

MD: : Some flatbread and I’m going to try it with this now this is the labeen. [Marie spoons some labeen on Andrea’s plate and places a small amount on the stuffed grape leaf.]

OB: So dip this in.

MD: So what you would do is just put a little bit on that.

AO: Okay.

MD: And eat that like that.

AO: With the bread or just this first? [Andrea eats the stuffed grape leaf, and picks up the flatbread.]

MD: It’s tarty.

AO: It’s yummy!

MD: And you haven’t eaten a grape leaf before.

AO: It’s yummy. I can taste the lamb in it.

MD: Yeah.

AO: the lamb is really nice so then you would just eat this along with it.

MD: Yeah and you can eat that before or with or after doesn’t matter.

AO: It’s, it’s really really good. [Still image of Marie holding a metal casserole dish of stuffed grape leaves.]

MD: Okay good!

AO: Thank you so much.

MD: I’m glad you like it.

[Bonus labeen recipe from Favorite Recipes of the Basha Family cookbook courtesy of Lillian Basha George.

Labeen Recipe reads:
Labeen-Lebanese Yogurt
-(Jeeby’s)

1qt. Milk
1 pt. Half & Half
2 T. Starter (make this heaping, using “Rowbay” or Yogurt)

Heat milk and Half and Half on low, until it comes to a boil. Remove, and cool until just lukewarm. (To test, put little finger in pot, and let stay to the count of 10.) Add starter, stir well. Place in a corner, on the draining board, wrap with blanket or quilt, and let stand for 6 1/2 hrs. Remove from covers, place in refrigerator. (This lasts indefinitely.)]