But if the idea of using something that isn’t a “from scratch” ingredient irks you, feel free to make your own salsa out of stewed tomatoes, hot peppers, cilantro, citrus, garlic, and onion. The thing is, all of the ingredients in salsa would otherwise go into the filling separately but when you use prepared salsa, the garlic, spicy peppers, and tomato are already together in one delicious, convenient package, and it’s nice to save a step in a recipe that is already very time-consuming, without sacrificing any quality. The filling is made with very traditional ingredients, although the addition of salsa might seem surprising. If you’re using the kind from a jar, you just need to make sure you rinse them first and use a little less salt, lemon juice, and oil in the recipe (taste a grape leaf to determine how you want to adjust the seasoning). If you have a reliably safe source of grape leaves, you can use them here, but otherwise, the kind that come from a jar will work too. To develop the recipe, I’ve used fresh grape leaves, which my mom and I foraged. This recipe for prakhe is in some ways very traditional and in some ways a little untraditional. So saying you like “dolma” is a little like saying you like dumplings-what kind of dumplings? In this case, what kind of dolma? Vegetarian or beef? Stuffed mixed vegetables, grape leaves, cabbage leaves, or cored apples? Spicy? Plain? Lemony? Herby? With raisins? Furthermore, from what region? Greek? Palestinian? Iraqi? Syrian? Lebanese? Serbian? Within these regions (and many more), the dish can vary from family to family, so even coming up with regional categories doesn’t narrow it down enough. There’s a whole world of dolma out there, and my family’s prakhe’t soma is my favorite. In Assyrian, we call the grape leaf versions of dolma “dolma’t prakhe” or “prakhe” for short, and when the dolma is vegetarian, we call it “soma,” because it’s suitable for fasting. And in most languages, including our own, “ dolma” is a general category of stuffed leaves or stuffed vegetables, and not a particular dish. While my family calls this dish prakhe, it’s also known as yaprukh, warak dawali, warak enab, and many other names in other languages. And once she was allowed to stuff and roll the grape leaves, she was only allowed to put her amateur rolls in the big family pot, instead of the special pots for her uncles (although she would sneak her rolls into the special pots when her grandmother wasn’t looking). She’s certainly paid her dues, and so last weekend was her first time being the head cook. They started her with the easiest job, separating the grape leaves and draping them over the side of the bowl while they worked. Last weekend, I made a small pot of prakhe (stuffed grape leaves) with my mom. Growing up, she would help her mother and grandmother make prakhe almost every weekend, and she’s helped them make it many times since then.