DINNER LIFE - FORAGED & FED
We continue our foodie series with Daisy Watson @Dinner.Life by visiting the Dolma Bar in Margate for a Balkan Recipe
Don’t know if you’ve heard yet, but Margate is a bit of a ‘foodie’ destination now. With home-grown talent, originality and energy bursting out of every Lido sinkhole, Margz is now attracting creatives from all corners.
And many of those people are giving a little bit of themselves to the seaside renaissance. I had a chat with Aleksandar Taralezhkov (@taralezhkov), the man bringing his own bite of Bulgaria to Kent.
Bulgarian food was a bit of a mystery to me before eating at Dolma Bar (@dolma.bar). Which, to be honest, I’m happy about. Not many experiences in life get me as excited as eating something totally new for the first time ever.
The menu playfully explores Balkan cuisine through dolma (stuffed) and sarma (wrapped). Layers of spiced meat, fruit, vegetables or rice are intricately bundled into peppers, vine leaves and cabbage leaves, then gently stewed. Aleksandar brings his own touch to these traditional recipes, often introducing Asian flavours. The kimchi sarma, with pork, rice, cumin and Szechuan oil is unbelievably tangy and unctuous. You really gotta try it.
Wherever possible, produce for the restaurant is home-grown or locally foraged. This way of sourcing food has always been a part of life for Aleksandar. He told me about growing up in Bulgaria’s capital, Sofia.
“We used to have a house with a huge garden. We had a rose garden, a vegetable patch. We had cherry trees, sour cherry trees, quince trees and walnuts.”
His first memory is of pulling a carrot from the earth in the garden with his grandmother. I love that. I’m always envious when I hear people describe these kinds of formative culinary experiences. When I was growing up, British food culture didn’t have a great reputation, if it had a reputation at all. For me, food always felt incredibly disconnected from its origins. So I find the idea of collecting or cultivating your own food really exciting.
“In Bulgaria we don’t have a word for foraging. It’s just part of life.” It’s easy to forget we live among our own unique ecology of tasty plants ripe for the picking. Probably a smart idea to brush up on what’s good before you start shoving wild mushrooms into your gob with reckless abandon, though. (Apps exist now!)
“Along the cliffs there is a lot to pick. The wild rocket is pretty good. It’s really peppery and spicy, and because it’s along the coast it’s quite salty.”
Aleksandar explains how hunting out these undervalued local ingredients for yourself is a great opportunity to get experimental in the kitchen. “The seaweed is edible, too. You can make stock out of it. You can make crisps out of it, or seaweed salt. There are so many different ways of approaching these things”
To me, being more self-reliant in our approach to sustainable eating seems like a step in the right direction for our planet. I love Aleksandar’s way of thinking about food. The soul of his cooking feels rooted in his tradition, but a healthy dose of creativity and personal style really makes Dolma Bar an exciting place to eat.
Aleksandar’s Recipe:
For Bulgarian chicken rice you’ll need:
Ingredients:
6 chicken thighs
1 cup rice
2 onions
2 carrots
1 bell pepper
50ml vegetable oil
50g butter
Bay leaves
Peppercorn
Salt
Pepper
Method:
Boil the chicken for 30 minutes with 1 onion, 1 pepper, 2 carrots, 2-3 bay leaves, 10 peppercorns and 1tsp salt per litre of water. You want nice salty stock.
While your chicken is cooking, preheat oven to 180. Then, wash the starch from your rice and leave it to soak in lightly salted water.
Chop the second onion finely and fry in vegetable oil for a few minutes. Drain the soaked rice and add to the frying pan. Cook for about 5 minutes on a medium heat until translucent; then transfer into a baking dish.
Layer your chicken on top of the rice in the baking dish, then season with more salt and pepper. Add 3 times the amount of stock to your rice. (So, 3 cups in this case, since we have cooked 1 cup of rice. But with this method you can scale the rice up and down as needed.) Finish with a piece of butter on each chicken thigh.
Place the dish in the oven and cook for 40 minutes. Once the rice has cooked through and the chicken is golden-brown, it’s ready! Set aside under a cloth and let it rest for 10 mins before eating. That’s that!
