Kim Iversen **Disclaimer: This post may include affiliate links, which means we receive a small commission if you buy through the link on our website (at no additional cost to you). Using our affiliate links helps support our blog, which means we can provide you more content that you love.
As spring turns into summer, more and more of the edible garden comes to life. Rhubarb, chives, and sage are the first of the more common edibles to emerge from the ground around the Suburban Farmhouse. These are then followed by an abundance of other herbs, cherries, and of course all the food in the vegetable garden as we progress through the summer and into fall.
We are always looking for ways to increase our harvest and be more self-sufficient. This year we decided to explore exactly what else in the yard might be edible, and try our hands at some new recipes. As a result, we’ve been collecting rose petals, lavender, and other delicacies to try in various concoctions and recipes. While sitting on the back patio one day, enjoying the shade of the grape vines, we realized what an abundance of food we could already be harvesting and putting to use. Not to mention helping to tame the ever growing beast of a vine!
That said, we have never eaten grape leaves despite being familiar with dolmaden and loving mediterranean food. As fate would have it, the timing coincided with a get together with friends where we promised to bring an appetizer. Now, not only could we try something new, but we could enlist the help of friends for ideas on how to improve the recipe moving forward. So off to the internet we went in search of recipes.
As we combed through recipes, many of them included a combination of some kind of meat and rice. These we set aside to try at a later date since we wanted something lighter to bring as an appetizer. Ideally as many of the ingredients as possible would come from our garden as well. Food and Wine had the perfect recipe – Goat Cheese Stuffed Grape Leaves.
Step one of the recipe required 12 jarred grape leaves. Hmmm…back to the internet to find a recipe for how to prepare our grape leaves. One of our favorite recipe sites, The Spruce Eats, came to the rescue with their Preserved Grape Leaves recipe.
Following the first four steps of the recipe, we started by harvesting and weighing twelve grape leaves for our project.
We weighed the leaves because we are trying to track how much the garden is producing this year. Once the leaves were weighed and the weight logged into the spreadsheet, we washed the leaves in preparation for preserving.
After washing the leaves we did a little bit of mise en place, French for “putting in place”, and prepared the water for boiling and ice bath for cooling the blanched leaves.
Working in batches, all the leaves were blanched for 30 seconds in the boiling water. Prior to boiling, enough salt was added to make the water taste like seawater.
After blanching, we plunged each leaf into the ice bath in order to stop them from cooking.
Now that we had our cleaned, blanched grape leaves we had to get cracking on assembly or we’d be late to our friends’ house. First up, we drained the leaves, then chopped up some fresh lavender leaves since we did not yet have any dried ones. Since we’d like to make the recipe again, we quickly added some leaves to the dehydrator so we can have dried lavender moving forward. Note to self…plant more lavender next year!
After chopping the lavender leaves and combining them with the dry thyme and dried rosemary we finally started the assembly process. Step one was to lay out one of the grape leaves in readiness for the goat cheese. Then slice the goat cheese into wheels, and roll the wheel in the herb blend.
Place the herbed goat cheese wheel on the grape leaf, sprinkle with salt, and drizzle with olive oil. As we worked our way through the goat cheese we realized that super chilling the cheese in advance would have made things much easier, and reduced the temptation to lick all the goat cheese off of our fingers. To super chill the cheese simply place in the freezer for 15 minutes prior to slicing.
Next is to fold the leaf over the cheese. We started with folding one of the sides first, followed by the bottom of the leaf, the second side, and finally folding the top of the leaf down.
At this point we had a beautiful little grape leaf envelope containing the herb crusted cheese wheel. After brushing the packages with more olive oil, we were ready to pack them into a container for transport. Once we arrived at our friends’ house we heated a grill pan and grilled the grape leaves.
We all loved the flavor combinations of goat cheese, thyme, rosemary, and lavender. The lavender especially provided a wonderful floral note to the appetizer.
Lessons Learned
- Omit the oil from inside the package. We all agreed that this made the grape leaves quite greasy…and made eating them quite messy.
- Grill the leaves until they are crispy. We did not do this and as a result the leaves were rather chewy.
- Try grilling the packages on the actual grill instead of on a grill pan.
- Try smoking the packages on the smoker.
- Consider trying other oils, like truffle oil.
- Explore how to serve the goat cheese packages with bread. The recipe suggests serving with bread, but it’s not quite clear how to eat them. Do you place the goat cheese package on the bread? Take a bit of goat cheese, then a bite of bread? We were all left scratching our heads.
All in all the goat cheese stuffed grape leaves were a success, and we will definitely be making them again in the future!
Recipe
https://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/goat-cheese-stuffed-grape-leaves
Ingredients
- 12 jarred grape leaves
- 1 teaspoon minced dried thyme
- 1 teaspoon minced dried rosemary
- 1 teaspoon minced dried lavender
- One 12-ounce log of soft goat cheese, chilled
- Salt
- 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for brushing
- Grilled bread, for serving (optional)
Directions
Bring a medium saucepan of water to a boil. Add the grape leaves and boil for 30 seconds; drain. Blanch the leaves a second time in fresh boiling water. Drain again, pat dry and cut off the stems. Spread the leaves out on a work surface, vein sides up.
Light a grill or heat a grill pan. In a shallow dish, combine the thyme, rosemary and lavender. Cut the goat cheese into 12 equal rounds. Lightly roll the edge of each round in the herbs. Set a round in the center of each grape leaf and season lightly with salt. Drizzle each round with 1/2 teaspoon of oil and wrap them in the leaves. Lightly brush the packages with olive oil.
Grill the packages over moderately high heat for 2 minutes per side, until the leaves are crisp on the outside and the cheese is slightly melted. Serve with grilled bread.
-Kim
