A Greek picnic with the F-word

Johanna wrote about what was going on at the back stage of the newest Gordon Ramsay show, F-word. Intrigued by Johanna’s entry, I sat myself in front of Channel 4 last Thursday night, accompanied by my friends Maarika and Age. As I’m on the mission of internationalising the palates of my Estonian friends (the Chinese meal, Indian feast etc), then this time I prepared a simple and easy Greek meze platter, served on a tablecloth on the living room floor – almost like a real picnic:)

On the meze platter were yet another load of Greek meatballs, this time with feta cheese and black olives, boiled Charlotte potatoes with herbs, olive oil and lemon, feta-spinach mini omelettes and mini plum tomatoes.

I was especially pleased with the mini omelettes. The recipe is from the Finnish foodmag Ruokamaailma (4/2004) and is very simple. Even simpler than the tomato, rocket, feta frittata I made a forthnight ago. Here’s a slightly modified version of mine:

Feta and spinach mini omelettes
(Spinati-fetaomletid)

5 large eggs
0.75 dl milk
0.5 tsp salt
a pinch or two of freshly grated nutmeg
1 dl (defrosted) chopped spinach
100 grams of chopped feta cheese

Break the eggs in a bowl with a fork or mini whisk, add milk, seasonings and spinach. Ladle the runny mixture into buttered muffin tins (I used a regular 12-hole muffin tray). Sprinkle feta cheese on top.



Bake at 200˚C for 20 minutes, until egg mixture has set. I was a bit suspicious, if they'd set easily, as the mixture was very runny (see above). But they turned out just beautiful!



Mini omelettes raise in the oven nicely, but will collapse a little when taken out of the oven.



Serve with a green salad. Or as part of a Greek meze. A definite keeper. If you like the classic Greek combination of feta and spinach, you’ll love this.

As for the programme, I didn’t enjoy that. I understand that Gordon is a talented chef and that many of you like his (dessert) recipes. And whereas I did really enjoy his programme Kitchen Nightmares, other programmes have left me cold. Talented or not, I’m too distracted by the arrogance and rudeness that dominate his programmes and end up overlooking his recipes and impressive cooking skills.. So no, I will not be having TV dinners in front of telly on Thursday nights...

UPDATE: here is another picture of these tiny omelets (click to enlarge)

Cooking Greek (or something like that): feta, tomato and rocket gratin

Here's my Monday supper, a faithful recreation of the recipe for snabba vegolådan* alias quick vegetable gratin from the Swedish dairy producer Arla.

I was quite happy with the result, though I used a totally wrong dish for it (too high and too small). Cooking it in a wide and shallow dish would mean a lot faster and much more presentable dinner..

It's not as much Greek as Greece-inspired. After all, it has feta cheese in it. And tomatoes. And rocket. Which must mean it's Greek after all:)

Feta, tomato and rocket gratin
(Lihtne feta-tomativorm)

3 tomatoes, sliced (and drained, if necessary)
200 grams feta cheese, cubed
a small cup of roughly chopped rocket leaves
4 eggs
a cup of single cream
salt
black pepper

Layer the tomatoes, feta and rocket into a buttered oven dish. (I used yellow and red mini plum tomatoes bought at the Farmers Market for extra colour).
Whisk eggs and cream together, season with salt and pepper. Pour over feta and tomatoes.
Bake in the middle of a 225˚C oven for 30-40 minutes.
Serve with salad.

I think it'll be a nice addition to my expanding list of Greek dinner staples (i.e. to accompany my deconstructed moussaka, papoutsakia, meatballs and my feta-spinach pie that I am yet to write about).

* Note that the picture on the Swedish site is wrong, so I've copy-pasted the original Arla picture here, too (top right).

Deconstructing moussaka

Susan Hoffman writes in her The Olive and the Caper: Adventures in Greek Cooking that moussaka

"comes in two versions: with an inner tier of saucy and succulent meat between layers of vegetable, and purely vegetarian. The two versions, of course, have many small variations, almost as many as there are Greek cooks. More white sauce or less. An eggplant with no potato, or a layer of potato as the foundation. A long-simmered meat center or a quick dash of meat and spices. (p. 313)"

Thus every Greek cook has their special moussaka recipe. Hoffman says that for the topping, 'redolent nutmeg cannot be bettered as the spice to accent curdy kefalotyri cheese'. Theodore Kyriakou uses cinnamon and kefalotyri in his version. Whereas Hoffman suggests either lamb or beef, Kyriakou prescribes lamb alone. Where Kyriakou layers both aubergines and courgettes (or eggplans and zucchinis:), Hoffman prefers the former alone. This is 'my' version - and remains so, until I feel confident enough to tackle the 'proper' version.

This was the very well-received welcoming dish on Friday night. It is from BBC Good Food April 2004 issue, where it is called Hob-to-table moussaka. So don't think of the heavy, but flavoursome, oven pie dish* that is served in many a Greek restaurant. It's not the traditional layered affair at all, but cooked in the frying pan on the hob. Think of it more like deconstructing the Greek national dish, and serving it in a much lighter and simpler way. That is, omit the Saltsa Besamel and kefalotyri cheese, which have been replaced with feta cheese. May not necessarily be lighter, but it is definitely simpler.

Hob-to-table moussaka
(Pannimoussaka)
Serves 4



Ingredients:
2 tbsp olive oil
1 large onion, minced
2 minced garlic cloves
500 grams minced lamb
400 grams chopped tomatoes
2 tbsp concentrated tomato pure**
2 tsp cinnamon
200-300 grams of roasted eggplant/aubergine slices in olive oil, roughly chopped
salt
black pepper

To garnish:
200 grams feta cheese
fresh mint

Heat the olive oil on a big saucepan (feel free to use the oil drained from the eggpants). Add onion and garlic and fry gently, until soft.
Add the mince and fry until the meat is browned.
Add chopped tomatoes and tomato pure, season with cinnamon and generously with salt and pepper.
Simmer on a low heat for about 20 minutes***, adding aubergines half way through.
To serve, sprinkle with feta and mint (I used basil mint from my window sill).
Serve with fresh salad and toasted pita or plain naan bread.

Simple, delicious, aromatic, and very very Greek:)

Kali orexi!

* Susan Hoffman writes that 'The word moussaka refers to any layered vegetable casserole - only with tourism has the term become synonymous with the meat and eggplant version' (p. 316).

** Or replace chopped tomatoes and tomato pure with tomato perasti, if available (it's kind of thick and intensely-flavoured Greek tomato passata).

*** I cook the sauce for 30-40 minutes, stirring regularly and adding a bit of red wine/stock if necessary. I like the extra depth that slow cooking gives to tomato-based sauces.

Suggestions, suggestions

Like many other foodbloggers, I have a list of favourites on the right hand side of the screen: other foodblogs I visit, favourite places to shop, books I like, books I want etc. Mainly it's a way to provide shortcuts for myself - I find it's easier to click from my site than to go to the favourites' bar in my browser and look up bookmarked websites. It's also a sneaky way to suggest what to get me if someone is struggling with birthday/Christmas/random gift ideas:)

My Greek beau moved to Amsterdam to start his PhD at the end of August, and came over for a visit last weekend. Few days earlier I had received a parcel from Amazon. I was a bit confused, as I hadn't ordered anything from them recently. At least I couldn't remember ordering anything from them lately. When I opened the parcel, I realised immediately what was going on, and it brought a big smile to my face. The parcel contained a book I've wanted for a while, The Real Greek at Home. My Greek beau claimed that he only ordered it because it was at the top of my Books I Want list, although I suspect he had some alterior motives. I think he was suggesting what I should/could cook this weekend. Just in case I was struggling with the idea:)

I must admit that although my usual food repertoire includes some Greek dishes (my feta-spinach pie has been one of the favourites for almost a decade now and I'm quite a fan of tzatziki), my love affair with a Greek food is new. I went to Greece for the first time in July 2002, to attend an IVSA conference on Santorini (see the pic on the right). And to be honest, I didn't eat much. It was 40 degrees Celsius, it was hottest and sunniest place I'd ever been to and, to be frank, I was struggling to stay alive (interestingly, dipping in and out of a 100˚C sauna doesn't seem to drain me as much. Maybe it's the sun?) In any case, food was the last thing in my mind, and I was on a diet of frappes and gallons of water for two weeks, having some light nibbles in the evenings when it was cooler. And even then I was on a self-imposed diet - as most of my friends were keen to try various seafood dishes in various seaside establishments - deep-fried squid, grilled octopus etc - I was inevitably left with another plate of horiatiki. I don't eat shellfish & molluscs, you see.

I spent another few days with a Greek friend on Sifnos after the conference, where I had a pleasure of trying his Granny's fabulous meatballs and a traditional Sifnos chick-pea dish - tsoukali revithia alias 'revithia se sifniwtiko tsoukali'. My friend Stam (who was also a student in Edinburgh, but always returned home for summer) mixed chickpeas, oil and seasonings in a special clay pot - tsoukali revidion, which he then took to a communal oven in the evening (see pic, it's hard to see but all clay pots have family names written on them), where it slowly cooked over night. Apparently it's done every Saturday night, and the chickpeas are then picked up on Sunday morning and eaten during the day. I also brought along some really tasty almond and nut biscuits from the local bakery which I still miss occasionally.

But overall the culinary side of Greece remained somewhat unexplored back then. I did buy a Greek cookbook on the way back in the airport, but that turned out to be utter crap - for instance, it has a taramasalata recipe that forgets to mention fish roe etc, it's full of typos and it annoys me more than educates me.

I was again in Athens in October 2003, this time attending a really beautiful and romantic wedding of my friends Anna & David. As it was much cooler - the temperature was a very agreeable 20˚C or so - my appetite was much bigger. And I got to try some really lovely Greek dishes at the banquet and dinner.

Since early this year I've been flirting much more regularly with all the delicacies Greece has on offer. I've read a lot about Greek food, and tried out several dishes. Mostly with a great success. Only my Cypriot halloumi & mint bread got a lukewarm reception, but I think this had more to do with personal politics than my cooking skills, as the bread was finished quickly by non-Greek eaters:) I made tsoureki and stifado for Easter, and have cooked spanakopita, moussaka, gigantes beans, paputsakia, Greek meatballs, roasted feta with olives and red peppers, on other occasions. To sum up - feta cheese and Total Greek Yogurt are some of my kitchen staples nowadays. And last weekend saw me preparing another Greek meal. For inspiration, I scanned both The Real Greek Food that suggestingly appeared in my mailbox, as well as the fabulous The Olive and the Caper that I had bought few months ago. Eventually, as I was running out of time and could not lovingly simmer a tomato sauce for an hour before baking it for yet another, I stuck with an old and tested favourite - hob-to-table moussaka. And I'll tell you all about it soon.

Lovely Greek(ish) meatballs

This is a very simple recipe for very tasty meatballs. It's adapted from a Finnish journal Herkkutori (10-11/1999), and is called kreikkalaiset lihapyörykät or Greek meatballs. My culinary Greek 'guinea pig' wasn't sure about the Greekness of those (Greek meatballs usually contain lots of bread and herbs), but they were tasty and easy to make and disappeared very quickly. So who cares whether they're Greek or not. I did add some Greek oregano to the mince mixture in order to give at least some element of Greekness to my meatballs..

Greek meatballs with chilli sauce, mustard and oregano
(Kreeka hakklihapallid)



400 grams of lean steak mince
1 onion
0.5 Tbsp olive oli
1 tsp salt
0.5 tsp black pepper
1 Tbsp sweet chilli sauce
1 Tbsp mustard
1 tsp dried oregano

Mince the onion and cook in microwave for a minute or two. Mix all ingredients thoroughly for 2-3 minutes. Form into 30 or so small walnut-sized meatballs. Fry gently in oil.

You want them to be nice and golden. Stop eating them before they reach the table!!!

I served them with green beans and some crusty bread, but they would be lovely on a meze table.

Baking: Mint and Halloumi Bread

I bought Paul Hollywood’s 100 Great Breads few months ago when I was in a serious bread-baking mood. I had used his recipe for the Greek and Cypriot Easter bread Tsoureki during the Orthodox Easter this May, though back then I didn’t manage to find mahlepi (sour cherry pits) nor mastic (gum resin from mastic tree) anywhere in Edinburgh. I’ve since then managed to buy some in a small Greek shop in London, Bayswater* and am looking forward to baking with these unusual spices (Hollywood has recipes for Cypriot village bread koulouri, and Cypriot Laganes Bread, and I’m also looking forward to trying tsoureki again, this time with all the seasonings; I’ve found several recipes using mahlepi and mastic in Susanna Hoffman's The Olive and The Caper, and Claudia Roden mentions these as well).

Paul Hollywood’s book is alright, with quite a few interesting looking and unusual bread recipes that I’m tempted to try. It has a short introductory chapter about the history of bread and some useful breadbaking hints and tips, but it’s a book for wide rather than specialist audience. I suspect lots of the recipes have been simplified, which is good, especially if you’re looking something easy to bake on a spur of the moment late at night. However, I have a feeling that recipes have not always been properly tested and the editing is poor as well. Think of the above mentioned mastic and mahlepi. On page 78 Hollywood specifies that ‘mastika and mechlebe are spices and seeds used in many Greek/Cypriot dishes. They have a similar flavour to fennel or aniseed, which you can use to replace them. However, most good health food shops will stock them’. But in the Index of the book there are entries for ‘meclebe’ and ‘methlepi’!?!? How did they get the spelling wrong twice and didn’t it occur to them that ‘meclebe’ and ‘methlepi’ are the same thing and should actually be spelt ‘mechlebi’, as it was in the recipes? Or maybe mahlepi, as it is usually spelt in English.

Incorrect spelling and amounts aside, the recipes are tempting. The first recipe I tried was Halloumi and Mint Bread (p 80). I quite enjoyed the recipe, though again, I think the recipe wasn’t correct. Trying to mix 2 packets – that’s 500 grams – of chopped halloumi cheese into a dough made with 500 grams of flour is ambitious. I also think that 20 grams of dried mint (that’s 4 commercial glass spice pots!!!) is outrageous, especially as on the accompanying photo the bread is anything but full of mint (I simply omitted the ‘0’ from the recipe). I’ve also more than halved the amount of salt in the recipe, as cheese is quite salty already**. I suspect that Paul Hollywood’s recipe was originally for more than 1 loaf and while reducing the amount of flour, amounts for some of the other ingredients have remained unchanged. But the bread itself is easy and tasty, soft and dense at the same time and duly recommended. I think I’ve got the amounts correct here.

Halloumi and Mint Bread
(Halloumileib)
Adapted from Paul Hollywood's book 100 Great Breads

500 g strong white flour
1 tsp salt
4 tbsp olive oil
30 g fresh yeast
2-3 dl warm water
250 g halloumi cheese cut into small pieces
a generous tbsp of dried mint

Mix flour, salt, olive oil and yeast in a big bowl, adding water gradually (you may need less, as you’re just trying to bring the ingredients together). Knead for about 8 minutes (or 5, if you are using a mixer). Cover the bowl with a clean towel or clingfilm and leave to rise for 1 hour.
Line a baking tray with parchment paper.
Add the cheese and dried mint to the dough and shape into a longish loaf. Lift to the baking tray and leave to rise for another hour.
Dust the top of the loaf with some flour and bake in a preheated 220˚C/425˚F oven for 25-30 minutes. The bread should be golden brown and crisp on the top.
Transfer to a wire rack to cool, and cover with a kitchen towel if you want just slightly softer top.

Here’s a version I made in early June – with 2 packets of halloumi cheese trying to escape the bread :)
And here’s a slightly modified version I made yesterday – using mint as well as some Greek oregano, 1 packet of halloumi cheese (that proved to be more than enough) and some pitted Greek style black olives that I had in my cupboard after making my entry for the Paper Chef # 8 (therefore the dark speckles that you may have mistaken for burnt cheese):

And finally a close-up of the bread – note the salty white dots of halloumi cheese:

It's almost time for lunch now, so I'm going to have some of the halloumi, olive, mint and oregano bread with some tea..

* Athenian Grocery, Greek-Cyprus & Continental Specialities, Wines and Spirits, 16a Moscow Road, Bayswater, London W2 7AX, Telephone 020 7229 6280
** I also had to modify his recipe for Tsoureki considerably, as I was reluctant to use 30 grams of _dried_ yeast and 15 grams of salt per half a kilo of flour again:)