Stuffed Mallow Leaves: A Spring Sarma

Same technique, different leaf. The leaf of wild mallow — khubbayza — stands in for the vine leaf: it is filled with lamb and rice, or with rice alone, and rolled to the thickness of a finger. In the region it goes by sarmet al-khubbayza and dolmet al-khubbayza.

Why not a vine leaf

Vine leaves keep all year in brine. Mallow does not. The leaf is wild and seasonal, picked in spring from field edges and threshing grounds. So the dish runs on the calendar. Outside the weeks when the leaf is up it does not reach the table, and no jar waits in reserve.

The texture differs too. A mallow leaf is softer and thinner than a vine leaf, so the rolls cook faster and come apart more easily in the mouth.

What goes inside

Lamb and rice, or rice on its own. The filled leaf is rolled finger-thick and packed into the pot. Yoghurt comes alongside, with the meat version and the meatless one alike.

Where it is cooked

In the Jazira — around Hasakah and Qamishli — it is common on Kurdish and Syriac tables. It is cooked in the Damascus countryside as well. It sits in both the Syrian and the Kurdish culinary classifications at once, so the question of whose dish it is has no single answer.

A restaurant is the wrong address for it. The yabrak entry on this site covers the vine leaf and its year-round table; this one is its spring-bound sibling.