Stuffed Dolma peppers with tomato topping and honey-mint yogurt

Ingredients for 5 servings:

• 20 small green bell peppers (Dolma-Bell peppers)
• 550 g minced beef
• 225 g long grain rice
• 4 tomatoes
• 3 m.-sized onion(s)
• 5 garlic cloves
• 20 g parsley, flat
• 225 g tomatoes, pureed
• 100 g paprika paste (Tatli Biber Salcasi), mild
• 75 g tomato paste
• 6 tbsp olive oil
• 2 tbsp dill, dried
• 1 tbsp Pul Biber
• 1 tsp cumin powder
• e.g. salt and pepper
• 350 g yogurt, Greek or Turkish
• 2 tbsp lemon juice
• 1 tbsp honey, liquid
• 2 tbsp sumac
• 2 tsp mint, dried
• n. B. Salt

Instructions

Working time approx. 30 minutes; Rest time approx. 15 minutes; Cooking/baking time approx. 35 minutes; Total time approx. 1 hour 20 minutes

Place the long-grain rice in a bowl, pour over about three times the amount of boiling water, and let it soak for about 15 minutes. Then pour the rice into a sieve and rinse with cold water. In the meantime, prepare the sauce. To do this, mix the yogurt with lemon juice, honey, sumac, and mint until smooth and season with salt. Place in the refrigerator to set. In a bowl, mix the paprika paste, tomato paste, passata, olive oil, cumin, dried dill, and pul biber and season to taste with pepper and salt. When adding salt, don’t worry, you can overseason a little, as the remaining solid ingredients will absorb a lot of the flavor. Cut the tops off the peppers, remove the seeds and inner skins, and wash the pods. Finely dice the flesh of the tops and add to the bowl. Peel and finely dice the onions and garlic, and add to the bowl. Wash the fresh parsley, shake dry, chop, and add to the bowl along with the pre-cooked rice and minced meat. Mix everything well and season to taste if necessary. Using a tablespoon, fill the peppers up to the brim with the filling and place them upright in a sufficiently large pot. The pot should be large enough to fit the peppers but small enough that they cannot fall over. Wash the fresh tomatoes and slice them so that you can place a slice on each stuffed pepper. Fill the pot with salted water so that the peppers are just below the rim. Place the tomato slices on top of the peppers. Bring the water to a boil, then cover and cook the peppers over medium heat for about 30 minutes. Once cooked, place the peppers on plates and serve with the honey-mint yogurt and flatbread, if desired. Notes: By pre-cooking the rice, the filling in the peppers hardly swells during cooking, and you can fill the pods right up to the brim. This also keeps the filling moist enough. It is, of course, more authentic to use Turkish medium-grain rice instead of long-grain rice. You can also use fresh dill instead of dried dill, but the fresh green freshness in the filling comes from the fresh parsley. Dried dill gives the filling an additional aniseed flavor. Green dolma peppers are unripe and somewhat bitter in taste, so the yogurt, which is slightly sweet from the honey, goes well with them. You can also mix all the ingredients for the filling at once, but mixing the liquid ingredients with the spices beforehand achieves a more even seasoning.