Article | The Ethnobotany of Sarma

Article | The Ethnobotany of Sarma 

Sarma is a dish of grape, cabbage, monk's rhubarb or chard leaves rolled around a filling usually based on minced meat, or a sweet dish of filo dough wrapped around a filling often of various kinds of chopped nuts. It is found in the cuisines of the former Ottoman Empire from the Middle East to the Balkans and Central Europe. Sarma comes from Turkish language, from the verb sarmak which means 'to wrap' or 'to roll'. Yaprak sarma (grape leaves with meat) is sometimes called yaprak dolması 'filled leaf' or simply dolma 'stuffed thing'; although dolma strictly speaking applies to stuffed vegetables, it is often conflated with sarma. Yaprak sarma without meat (grape leaves filled with rice flavoured with pine nuts, currants and spices) is usually called yalancı dolma" 'fake dolma'. 

Besides the savory dish of leaf-wrapped filling, sarma in Turkish can also refer to sweet pastries similar to baklava, saray sarma and fıstık sarma, which are prepared by wrapping phyllo dough around a mixture of crushed nuts and syrup. 

In Turkey, the "sarma" is considered a national food and generally used together with the word "zeytinyağlı" (with olive oil) for stuffed vine leaves (zeytinyağlı yaprak sarma), cabbage (zeytinyağlı lahana sarma), chard, or cherry leaves (kiraz yaprağı sarması) when the filling does not contain meat and the resulting dish is eaten cold. These sarmas filled with rice and cooked with olive oil also have currants, pine nuts, and herbs such as parsley and dill, and spices including cinnamon and black pepper. The "hot" sarmas, which usually contain minced beef or veal, onions, and a small amount of rice or bulgur, may interchangeably be called dolma. Hot sarma is often served with a garlic yogurt sauce, very common in the Turkish cuisine. "Also: mutton, chopped into small pieces, a spoonful of which is placed on a vine leaf and rolled up like a krapfen [a pastry with a filling]. They add hacked sour plums and boil the whole. This is considered a good and fine dish, the vine leaves for it are on sale everywhere."SEE Article and Mavi Boncuk Link... A Renaissance German on Turkish food  

 Mavi Boncuk |

Of the importance of a leaf: the ethnobotany of sarma in Turkey and the Balkans

Yunus Dogan , Anely Nedelcheva , Łukasz Łuczaj , Constantin Drăgulescu , Gjoshe Stefkov ,Aida Maglajlić , Jonathan Ferrier , Nora Papp , Avni Hajdari , Behxhet Mustafa , Zora Dajić-Stevanović ,Andrea Pieroni

Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine December 2015, 11:26 First online: 03 April 2015 

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• • Abstract
    Background
    Sarma - cooked leaves rolled around a filling made from rice and/or minced meat, possibly vegetables and seasoning plants – represents one of the most widespread feasting dishes of the Middle Eastern and South-Eastern European cuisines. Although cabbage and grape vine sarma is well-known worldwide, the use of alternative plant leaves remains largely unexplored. The aim of this research was to document all of the botanical taxa whose leaves are used for preparing sarma in the folk cuisines of Turkey and the Balkans.
    Methods
    Field studies were conducted during broader ethnobotanical surveys, as well as during ad-hoc investigations between the years 2011 and 2014 that included diverse rural communities in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Kosovo, Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Romania, and Turkey. Primary ethnobotanical and folkloric literatures in each country were also considered.
    Results
    Eighty-seven botanical taxa, mainly wild, belonging to 50 genera and 27 families, were found to represent the bio-cultural heritage of sarma in Turkey and the Balkans. The greatest plant biodiversity in sarma was found in Turkey and, to less extent, in Bulgaria and Romania.
    The most commonly used leaves for preparing sarma were those of cabbage (both fresh and lacto-fermented), grape vine, beet, dock, sorrel, horseradish, lime tree, bean, and spinach. In a few cases, the leaves of endemic species (Centaurea haradjianii, Rumex gracilescens, and R. olympicus in Turkey) were recorded.
    Other uncommon sarma preparations were based on lightly toxic taxa, such as potato leaves in NE Albania, leaves of Arum, Convolvulus, and Smilax species in Turkey, of Phytolacca americana in Macedonia, and of Tussilago farfara in diverse countries. Moreover, the use of leaves of the introduced species Reynoutria japonica in Romania, Colocasia esculenta in Turkey, and Phytolacca americana in Macedonia shows the dynamic nature of folk cuisines.
    Conclusion
    The rich ethnobotanical diversity of sarma confirms the urgent need to record folk culinary plant knowledge. The results presented here can be implemented into initiatives aimed at re-evaluating folk cuisines and niche food markets based on local neglected ingredients, and possibly also to foster trajectories of the avant-garde cuisines inspired by ethnobotanical knowledge.