Mixed Stuffed Cabbage, Vine Leaves & Courgettes

Mixed mahashi platter: our three Levantine stuffed vegetables on one dish, cabbage rolls (malfof), whole courgettes (koosa) and vine leaf rolls (warak enab), each filled with rice, so a single platter carries two tastes. The cabbage and the courgette share one filling: rice we work through a tomato sauce we have already cooked down with cumin and coriander, both ground, with salt and a little pepper, white, red and black, then lift with chopped dill, parsley and coriander leaf, so both come out warm and savoury with tomato and cumin in front. What separates them is the bite: a cabbage leaf, rolled thin, all but disappears around its rice, while a courgette is cooked gently until its wall gives and soaks up the sauce it is served in. The vine leaf brings the other taste: we cook its rice with onion before anything else, then turn it through tomato, parsley and salt with pomegranate molasses and a good measure of olive oil, and roll it slim and firm, so the leaf comes out dark and glossy with oil, sour from the molasses with a little sweetness behind it, a sharp note between two savoury ones. That is why the platter goes to the centre of the table rather than in front of one person: whoever wants warmth takes cabbage and courgette, whoever wants sharpness takes the vine leaf, and everyone finds a piece they like.