Design Captures:
I have found that as I age, I spend more of my culinary energy in the garden growing food rather than trying to manipulate it in the kitchen. Because of this, I try growing one or two unique vegetable plants every year. This year I grew sesame and a few other random grains from the Slow Food seed package.
The idea of making dolmas came when I was looking at the full-grown leaf of the sesame plant and it reminded me of the size of a grape leaf. I have cut and preserved grape leaves before so maybe I could do this with sesame leaves that have a distinctive flavor.
One great advantage to working with clay is that there is no waste, unlike cooking or woodworking. I keep all of my used clay that was either trimmed away or a piece that took a left when it should have taken a right. This collection of reclaimed clay had three different varieties of clay creating the marbled effect.
The platter I used as a mold is one that I use a lot so it was nice to replicate it. Next time I need to use a rolling tool because I left a few too many fingerprints in the clay. Also, I tried to chef-it-up a little too much with that splash of orange glaze. Boooooo!
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