When life gets hard, the only thing you can do is cook up a mess of Greek food, have the family over, and sing along (loudly, with feeling) to Momma Mia. God Bless Abba for all those easy to sing to songs, and Playtone for filming at one of the most beautiful islands in Greece. If Wikipedia is to be trusted, it was mostly filmed on Skopelos. Yes the movie is silly, and that’s exactly what I want when I’m looking for escape, and good food and family make it all the more fun.
For this escape plan I purchased:
Greek Olives
Gigantes (giant white beans-sold at the olive bar)
Naan Bread (pita bread almost always seems stale, I prefer Naan bread, it’s fresher and doesn’t crumble as easy)
Haloumi
I made:
Fried Haloumi
Tzatziki
Skordalia
Spanakoptia
Souvlaki
French Fries
Mom’s Lemon Rice Pudding
Kalouria
Shortbread (ok, not Greek-but I had some Irish butter in the house I wanted to use up)
My sister in law brought:
Sugar Snap Pea and Asparagus Salad (which was lovely, crunchy and refreshing)
Let’s talk food:
I’m not providing recipes since all these recipes will be in the Greek cookbook I’ve been working on for 30 years, apparently I see no need to rush! However I will talk you through the menu, because truthfully the best way to cook is without recipes. Cooking without recipes is so freeing, the food is truly yours, and it allows you to add herbs, or spices, and other ingredients to see how they change the character of the dish. Several of the items I prepared can be found in my portfolio, and I have linked to those. But please do try to make these recipes your own.
Of course I used Greek yogurt for the Tzatziki, but I used Straus Greek Yogurt. I really love the flavor and texture of it, it’s thick and velvety. I used Persian cucumbers, I peeled them and thinly sliced them, sprinkled them with salt and set them aside for about10 minutes so that they would release their liquid. This step is important when making tzatziki, if you don’t, your tzatziki will be runny. I added a half of bunch of fresh mint, chopped, and about three green onions chopped, and salt and pepepr. It’s good to make this several hours before serving so the flavors can develop. When I serve it, I always drizzle it with olive oil, I love the mixture of the cool yogurt dip with golden olive oil on a piece of warm Naan bread.
Skordalia is a garlic potato dip. Many recipes call for things like ground almonds or breadcrumbs in the dip, my family has never made it that way. Ours is made with potatoes, vinegar, olive oil, an egg yolk, salt, pepper, and lots of chopped fresh garlic. I wanted a milder skordalia so I boiled several garlic cloves with the potatoes and didn’t add any raw garlic. Love this stuff! I use it as a condiment on grilled meats or seafood, or just eat it with a fork when I run out of bread or crackers.
I wanted individual Spanakopita instead of making a pan. The individual ones are much easier to eat out of hand. My filling consisted of spinach, green onions, fresh mint and oregano, crumbled feta, salt, pepper, and shredded cheddar cheese (surprise!). Cheddar cheese definitely is not a Greek ingredient, but I had some to use up, so there you go. And I live in a world where there is never enough cheese in a recipe.
Souvlaki was my father’s specialty. It was one of my jobs as a kid to assist him in the marinating, skewering, and grilling of souvlaki. For our sing a long, I made beef souvlaki. No matter what the protein is the marinade is always comprised of olive oil, red wine, red wine vinegar, lots of dried oregano, red onion, garlic, salt and pepper. I cut the beef into cubes, marinated it overnight and skewered with with pieces of red onions and red pepper.
Greeks love potatoes and you will see French Fries served all over Greece. My grandmother typically fried big fat slices of potato in olive oil. They would come out crispy around the edges and sweet and creamy in the middle. Last week I saw a recipe for french fries on Smitten Kitchen. You place cut potatoes in a cold pan, add enough oil to just cover the potatoes, place on the stove cold, turn on the heat and cook them for 25 minutes. They came out perfect and trouble free! I still had about 3 cups of used oil to discard, but it’s much easier than the classic deep frying techniques. After I pulled the fries out of the oil, I quickly used the hot oil, without the heat turned on, to fry the Haloumi. It only takes a minute or two for the Haloumi to brown. Quickly remove it from the oil and liberally season with lemon juice and serve.
Occasionally Mom would make a Lemon Rice Pudding that consisted of cooked rice, lemon meringue pie filling (out of a Jello Box), and Cool and Creamy (ouf of a tub in the frozen section). We loved this dessert, but to be fair, we loved all of Mom’s desserts. Because I’m a snob, I make mine with sweetened basmati rice, lemon curd, and lightly sweetened softly whipped cream.
I use Mom’s Kalouria recipe, a dough made with butter, olive oil, orange zest, anise, flour, sugar and eggs. The trick with Kalouria is getting the dough just right. Soft enough for a tender cookie but malleable enough to roll into shapes. A simple, unadorned cookie, perfect dipped in coffee.
Shortbread
I absolutely LOVE shortbread, and spent most of the month of February making pistachio shortbread hearts. Because of St. Patrick’s Day I became compelled to buy Irish butter, and then of course I became compelled to try it in shortbread! Since this recipe won’t appear in the Greek book, I published it to my recipe portfolio and can share it with you now. Click here for the recipe…
Sandwich these cookies with strawberry ice cream for an outstanding spring ice cream sandwich.
Kali Orexi!
