Variety of grape leaves, culinary use. Calorie content, benefits and harms when consumed. What kind of food and drinks can I cook? Interesting facts about grape leaves. Direct harm from grape leaves is for women in the first and third trimester of pregnancy. Abuse can provoke uterine tone and terminate the pregnancy. Also, restrictions apply to lactation, so as not to provoke increased flatulence and chronic diarrhea in infants.
Recipes with grape leaves
The product is eaten raw, boiled, pickled, salted. It is stewed, steamed, fried. How to cook a grape leaf, everyone decides independently, depending on their own taste and preferences.
You can even walk up to the vine, pick the freshest leaf and chew. There will be no harm to the body. But do not get carried away with conservation. Fresh grape leaves contain enough acids and sodium, while pickled and salted leaves increase the amount of these substances.
Before preparing national dishes, you need to learn how to choose the right leaves. Preference should be given to green grape varieties - their leaf plates are soft, shiny, without embossed edges.
Recipes with grape leaves:
- Suluguni … Suluguni cheese 0.5 kg is cut into thin slices and wrapped in leaves. One is missing, two are used. Mix 100 g of buckwheat honey with 2-3 cloves of crushed garlic and paprika. Fry the wrapped cheese in a hot frying pan in a mixture of butter and vegetable. Served hot, greased with spicy honey sauce.
- Dolma in grape leaves … Collect fresh large leaves, remove the tough part. You can slightly flatten the veins with a wooden crush, only carefully so as not to break through the plate. Water is put on the fire and the sheets are lowered there. Boil until the color darkens. Then put it in a colander to glass the water. You can try to blanch the leaves, but there is a good chance that they will wrinkle and break. Grate the onion on a fine grater, turn the meat through a meat grinder. You should not use a blender, hard streaks and films will remain. The proportions of meat and onions are 3: 1. Rice is boiled until cooked. Mix meat, onion and rice, add some salt, pepper. Wrap the minced meat in grape leaves, starting from the stem part. Spread in a saucepan in a thick layer, stew over low heat under a lid until the meat is completely cooked.
- Casserole … On a fine grater, rub one medium-sized zucchini, 100 g of hard cheese. Greens - cilantro and parsley are chopped, 3 eggs, 200 g of cottage cheese and 6 tablespoons of flour are added. Salt and knead soft dough. Chicken meat is used to make meatballs, ground into minced meat with onions. Salt to taste. A thick layer of grape leaves is spread on a baking sheet, a layer of dough on top, and small meatballs in the third layer. The oven is heated to 200 ° C, baked for 40 minutes. 15 minutes before the end of baking, the pan is taken out and sprinkled with grated cheese on the casserole. The dish is served warm with sour cream.
- Preparation for the winter … Most of the nutrients are retained if the leaves are frozen. To do this, collect undamaged plates, without tears, with a whole juicy elastic cutting. They are folded one on top of the other, sealed, rolled into strong rolls and wrapped with cling film. In this form, they are placed in the freezer. If the greens are pre-washed, you must dry them thoroughly. There are other ways of harvesting: dolma is made from canned grape leaves, they are included as ingredients in salads, but freezing is preferable - all useful substances that are destroyed during heat treatment are preserved. To defrost, the leaves are dipped first in cold water, then in warm water.
- Cabbage salad … 200 g of white cabbage leaves are chopped, grape leaves are cut into thin strips to make 4 tablespoons. Grate 4 green apples on a coarse grater, crush 4 cloves of garlic, grind 2 tablespoons of walnuts. All ingredients are mixed. The salad is seasoned with homemade yogurt or unsweetened yogurt, and salted to taste.
- Conservation … Knowing how to pickle grape leaves, you can cook dolma all year round. Tear off the leaf blades along with the cuttings, washed, laid out on a paper towel to remove excess moisture. The dried leaves are rolled up. The jars are sterilized, 4-5 black peppercorns and 2 allspice, 2 clove buds, 3 bay leaves are placed on the bottom of each. The volume of cans is no more than 0.5 liters, since sheet rolls should be placed vertically, filling the can without gaps. Pour boiling water over the container, cover with lids, leave for 8 minutes. Pour the water into an enamel pan, put it on the fire, add salt without iodine and sugar in the same amount. When all the spices are completely dissolved, pour in 9% vinegar, turn off immediately. For 1 liter of water - 1 tablespoon of salt and sugar, 2 - vinegar. Pour the rolled leaves with boiling marinade, cover with lids and place in a wide saucepan of boiling water to sterilize. The lids that will be rolled up are sterilized separately. After 15 minutes, the jars are closed, turned over and placed under a blanket to cool. Best kept refrigerated.
- Cabbage rolls in grape leaves with lamb … The meat is cleaned from the films, the pickled grape leaves are poured with cold water to remove the taste of spices and excess salt. Lamb and a piece of fat tail are turned with onions, raw washed bulgur and spices of your choice are added to the minced meat. If the minced meat is thick, dilute with boiled water to the desired consistency. The leaves are washed, lightly dried with a towel, laid out face down. Cabbage rolls are formed. Spread in several layers in a pan according to the following principle: the first layer is leaves, the second is dolma, and so on. Cover with a plate on top, like oppression, pour in slightly salted water, cook for 30-40 minutes. Melt butter in a frying pan, remove the foam from the surface, fry a shredded mixture of mint leaves and onions. There should be enough oil so that it does not evaporate. As soon as the onion is soft, remove the pan from the heat and beat the contents well with a whisk. Dolma is served with mint sauce.
Grape leaf drink recipes
Teas, alcoholic beverages and decoctions of grape leaves quench thirst, tone up, help to recover from physical exertion.
Drink recipes:
- Infusion … Dissolve sugar in water in a proportion of 2.5 liters of liquid per 1 glass. Fill the jar tightly with fresh, short-cut cuttings, approximately half way. Insist for at least a day. The longer it stands, the richer the taste. It reminds a bit of birch sap.
- Tea … Mix a tablespoon of green tea, 3 shredded leaves of green grapes and 5 crushed berries. Pour a glass of boiling water, leave for 5 minutes, double the amount of liquid, insist again. Honey and mint are added to improve the taste.
- Wine … Pour 7 liters of water into a large enamel pot and bring to a boil. Turn off, fill 1/3 with grape leaves. The layer should be dense. In order to tamp, use a wooden crush. The container is wrapped in a "soldier's" blanket and removed for 3 days. No need to shake. The sour brown wort is drained, mixed with half a glass of granulated sugar and 2 handfuls of seedless raisins. Ammonia is poured there: for every 10 liters - 3 g. Leave to ferment, closing the neck of the container with gauze, constantly checking the taste. It should be sweet. Sugar is added as needed. Intensive fermentation ends when the darkened head of foam subsides. The drink is poured into plastic bottles, leaving them empty by a third. Passive fermentation continues, if the recommendation is disregarded, the bottle will burst. Gas is released as required. As soon as passive fermentation ends, the wine is poured into clean glass bottles. Store in a cool place.
Interesting facts about grapes
Grape leaves gained popularity much earlier than berries. On the first vines, they were small, sour, almost never used for food. But already in Ancient Greece and Rome the vine was called "paradise" because of the berries - the sweetest varieties have already been bred.
Interestingly, historians and archaeologists are still arguing about the origin of the vine. The Bible says that the first plant was planted by Noah on Mount Ararat. And if you believe the results of excavations, then fragments of lashes and leaves were found in the cultural layer on the territory of modern Turkey and Iran.
The amount of sugars and the content of nutrients in the leaf plates depends on the grape variety. If the berries are red and black, beta-carotene is a part of the nutrients, sweet - more starchy substances, green sour - the amount of citric and acetic acid increases.
Watch a video about grape leaves:
If the goal is not just to diversify the daily diet, but to improve your health, young spring leaves, collected before the flowering of the vine, should be harvested for the winter. Thanks to this prudence during the epidemic season, it will be possible to save on antiviral and anti-inflammatory drugs.
