I will show you the principle of making mahshi, for example, grape leaves and eggplant. Prepare the filling:Wash thoroughly the rice. Let all the water drain. Add all the spices (salt to taste - takes me 2-2,5 tsp., black pepper, chilli, dried mint, coriander, dried peppers), mix thoroughly. Finely chop one very large (or two small) onions and 3 cloves of garlic. Finely chop thoroughly washed greens (I had 6 little bundles of dill, parsley and cilantro, each type of greens for 2 beam); take your favorite greens, but it should be plenty. Chopped greens, I turned a full circle in 0.5 l Thick stems set aside, they will come in handy. Prepare the tomato paste: tomatoes peeled, whisk in a blender and cook on a medium heat until the liquid is evaporated. Combine the rice (with spices), onion and garlic, herbs, tomato paste, mix thoroughly. Add 50 ml of vegetable oil. Again mix thoroughly. The stuffing is ready.

Going to do grape leaves. If you have fresh - wash them carefully, carefully lower into boiling water for about 30 seconds, be careful, the leaves are very tender. They will tear and unravel when farshirovannye, if you overdo them in hot water. I had frozen leaves, which I defrosted and dropped into boiling water for 30 seconds.

Next, you need the leaves to separate, flatten and remove all the tails. I prefer to cut with scissors. Spread out the leaves in 2-3 different groups, so they the heat has not spread.

Put the bottom of the pan thick stems of greens that we put off to mahshi are not burnt while cooking. Begin to stuff. Put closer to the bottom of the sheet some of the filling (1 tsp), the thinner you spread it, the thinner work roll. Wrap the filling with the base of the sheet, then the side parts in turn and then tightly roll up roll. Look at the photo.

So come with all the grape leaves, firmly placing the bottom of the pan in a circle. The small plates can be connected in one sheet. Also the location of the burst sheet can be covered with small leaves (or parts of another sheet), to maximize the use of all grape leaves. 250 gr grape leaves, I turned 57 mahshi in 2 layers in a pan (try not to make more than 2 levels, the max - incomplete 3rd level), and used about half the filling.

Prepare the eggplant. They must be up to 12 cm in length. Cut the tails and a special knife to get the flesh of the eggplant so as not to damage (not pierce or penetrate) the vegetable. The pulp is removed, almost all, there is only 2-4 mm of the pulp.

Stuff the eggplant so that the stuffing was not very tightly compacted, but not too weak. 2-3 mm from the cut leave blank. Do the same thing if we stuff zucchini, bell pepper, dense little tomatoes.

I have some fillings, and I decided to make 2 tomatoes and 1 bell pepper. I had the "wrong" pepper for mahshi. It needs to be smaller and thinner, usually green. In a separate saucepan, prepare the broth. Can take light meat or chicken broth, add spices to taste, bring to a boil and pour over vine leaves to the middle of the second level (the tomatoes were preparing for a couple), and the eggplant so that the water completely covers them, 1.5-2 cm of the top of the eggplant. I took the usual salted water. Be careful with the salt: the filling we have already salted, and grape leaves have a slightly sour taste. Mahshi bring to a boil, reduce heat to very low and simmer under cover for about 40 minutes or until tender. Immediately when it is ready, drain all the water, otherwise mahshi fall apart and lose shape.

The principle of cooking cabbage mahshi is like we stuffed a grape leaf. Thin cabbage leaves need long to cook in boiling water until tender, remove thick part of the leaf, cut into strips with a width of 7 cm and stuffed mahshi (each roll should be not too thick: 2.5-3 turns). This is my favorite mahshi, but unfortunately, the season cabbage has not started yet.

For potato mahshi come from small potato tubers (5-6 cm diameter) and removed the inner part of the potatoes. Blanks are fried in vegetable oil 5 minutes, variruyutsya with minced meat (fried with onions and spices) and baked in a light tomato sauce in the oven. On the website there are similar recipes, if I'm not mistaken.