01.21.20 Mallow
Our mallow tree not only has my favorite flowers of the yard, they are also edible. The bees, birds and butterflies love it too. For fear of boring you with another green for salads, I took inspiration from Sespe’s recipe in the book, The Tiny Mess, to make mallow dolmades.
Making dolmades is a two day process. You begin by collecting about 20 mallow leaves. They need to be at least 5-6 inches long or you won’t have enough to work with. In a pot of boiling water, cook the leaves for 2 minutes. Then, immediately transfer them to a container with ice water to stop the cooking process. From here, you will place them in a large glass cooking dish. Spread them out carefully, over lap is fine. Cover them with the juice of one lemon and enough olive oil so that they are submerged. Cover and leave out over night.
For the stuffing:
In avocado oil, sauté a diced onion for 5 minutes and add in a few minced cloves of garlic for the last 30 seconds.
Add in a full head of cauliflower rice (just pulse it raw in a food processor until it looks like rice).
Add one diced tomato and 1/2 tsp of paprika. and a tsp of salt.
Cook for another five minutes, and add in about 1 1/2 cup of minced herbs you have on hand (I used dill, mint and parsley)
Rolling Dolmades:
On a cutting board, place a mallow leaf smooth side down. Add about a TBS of the stuffing and wrap the sides in first. Follow by tucking in the top and bottom. It’s a bit like swaddling a newborn. This takes little bit of trial and error. After the third one, you will get the hang of it. Arrange them on a platter with the leftover stuffing in the middle.