While visiting friends Demetris and Marina in their mountain house at Kyperounta, Demetris had a surprise for us. A whole bunch of grape leaves cut from his own grape vines.
This meant that within the next few days I would make stuffed grape leaves, Koupepia, with a slight variation from my original recipe of Koupepia-Dolma. The most noticeable of the differences is the addition of tomatoes only in the meat mixture/filling and not over the Koupepia, and in this case canned cubed tomatoes. You give it and try and let me know.
Thank you Demetris and Marina!
Koupepia
Have a look below at the full recipe. Don’t forget, you can always print it.
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I hope you enjoy it!
Koupepia
Ingredients
- 750 g Pork Loin not filet, double minced
- 180 g Long Grain Rice
- 60 Grape Leaves
- 1 ½ Yellow Onion finely chopped
- 400 g Tomato Pulp canned
- 100 g Tomato Passata
- 3 tbsp Tomato Paste diluted in 50ml water
- 100 ml EVOO Extra Virgin Olive Oil
- 3 tbsp Lemon juice
- 1 ½ tbsp dry Mint ground
- 1 tsp All-Spice ground
- 1 tbsp dry Oregano ground
- 1 tbsp dry Coriander ground
- ¾ cup fresh Parsley leaves picked and finely chopped
- 1 tsp Sea Salt
- 1 tsp freshly ground Black Pepper
Instructions
- Place a sauteing pan on medium heat and add 20ml of the oil. Allow to heat up and add the onions, sauteing them for about 5’ until they soften and become translucent. Remove the onions from the pan and keep aside.
- In the same sauteing pan add 20ml more of the oil. Again, allow to heat up well and add the minced meat. Break the meat with a wooden spoon and cook for about 5’ until lightly browned. Remove from the pan and keep aside.
- Place in a large bowl the minced meat, rice, onions, mint, parsley, oregano, coriander, all-spice, salt, and pepper along with 30 ml of the oil. Pour the tomato pulp, the passata and the diluted tomato paste and mix.
- Place a medium pot into high fire and bring to a boil. Remove from the fire and add in batches, the grape leaves and cook for about 30” to soften. Drain and repeat for the rest of the grape leaves while you fill the leaves.
- Open one by one the grape leaves with the non-shiny side facing upwards making sure that the stem is cut and removed. Take a tablespoon full of the meat mixture and place it in the widest part of the leaf. Tuck in the side ends of the leave and roll tightly.
- Each of the rolled leaves is placed in a non-stick casserole where we have added few grape leaves at the bottom to ensure that the koupepia don’t stick at the bottom. Each koupepi is snugly placed next to each other creating a circle of koupepia with the end of the leaf facing the bottom of the casserole.
- Pour on them water, the rest of the 30 ml oil and the lemon juice, making sure that the koupepia are submerged. Place a plate on top of them to make sure that they stay submerged and keep their shape.
- Cover the casserole and place on low heat to simmer for 45’.
