Risotto with Greens, Herbs, Garlic, and Lemon

Thursday April 8th, 2021Wednesday October 13th, 2021 aglaia Leave a comment

I fondly remember a light and delicious herb-lime risotto I enjoyed one sunny September day some years ago. I was at La Fenière, the celebrated hotel and restaurant in Loumarin, Provence, and this was one of the dishes chef Reine Sammut’s offered in her Mediterranean olive oil tasting lunch.

She served the risotto topped with thin strips of braised cuttlefish, drizzled with a few drops of its deep black ink sauce. The seafood was excellent, but the fragrant, fruity rice was the real revelation to me.

Scroll down to see the impressive ‘red risotto’ a variation using beet stems and leaves.

Adapted from my Mediterranean Vegetarian Feasts

I didn’t get Sammut’s recipe, just a description, so this is my own rendition of the dish: a simple greens, garlic, herb, and lime risotto that I make often, using any leafy winter or spring greens, and all or some of the herbs on the list, whatever my garden provides. When I don’t have fresh herbs I use the ones I often freeze; unfortunately even good dried herbs will not give the same rich result.

I conclude by folding-in grated Parmesan, which brings out the flavors of the herbs, and very often top the risotto with a 7-minute cooked egg; the deeply-flavored ones from our neighbor’s hens.

You can also serve along with Baked or roasted Fish, or complement the risotto with grilled Halloumi.

Serves 4-6 as main course; 6-8 as a side dish

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Spicy, Stuffed Bread with Broccoli or Spinach and Cheese

Saturday March 20th, 2021Tuesday February 8th, 2022 aglaia Leave a comment

Inspired from the Sicilian stuffed focaccias of Catania. The same stuffing could have been used for a traditional Greek pie wrapped in phylo pastry.

Instead of broccoli you can use spinach or any chopped greens adding lots of scallions –previously wilted in olive oil– and dill or other herbs. Scroll down to see the Variation.

Tyropita : Creamy Cheese Pie

Wednesday March 3rd, 2021Thursday March 4th, 2021 aglaia Leave a comment

As kids, my sister and I used to love this sweet, creamy tyropita. I hadn’t found my mother’s recipe since I never made this particular pie until Costas and I happened upon the mention of Tyrini, the traditional cheese-eating day. It is the last non-vegan Sunday before Kathari Deftera, the colorful beginning of Lent that precedes Greek Easter (May 2).

As far as cheese pies are concerned, we often make the crunchy Lazy Woman’s Pie. This galette-like cheese treat is the epitome of the day we devote to phyllo making during our Kea Artisanal Cooking vacation; all participants learn how to roll phyllo and the crunchy pie we whip up is such a delight!

My mother’s tyropita must have been similar to the well-explained one I found online, accompanied with a video that you can follow easily, even if you don’t speak Greek.

Since we roll our own phyllo and hardly ever make pies with commercial phyllo I had not kept up with the latest technique of spraying the sheets with seltzer or water, a very interesting suggestion that somehow prevents them from drying out completely and becoming like paper, as they usually do.

I make the creamy base using my basic olive-oil-yogurt béchamel. The olive-oil-egg wash that is brushed on the top layer is the same one we use for the delicious Chicken Pie and it makes a very big difference to the commercial phyllo.

Serves 6-8 as main course, and 10-13 as meze (11 X 15 inch –30 Χ 40 cm– pie) (more…)

An Eastern Mediterranean Staple: Ksinohondro, Trahana, and Kishk

Wednesday February 17th, 2021Thursday February 18th, 2021 aglaia Leave a comment

This traditional fermented ‘pasta,’ an ancient staple, is made in the summer with coarsely ground grains – wheat or barley – and milk or yogurt.

Adapted from Mediterranean Vegetarian Feasts

Scroll down to find the basic recipe for the traditional soup or porridge.

The two essential ingredients are transformed into a flavorful and nourishing ‘pasta’ for the winter months. Though I can’t prove it, I have a hunch that early agricultural communities, in different parts of the world, thought up methods to combine and preserve grain and dairy; this is why fermented ‘pasta’ comes in distinct regional variations throughout the Balkans and the Eastern Mediterranean.

I wouldn’t suggest that you make your own ksinohondro and/or kishk if there were good-quality commercial alternatives. In Chania, Crete, women sell wonderful homemade ksinohondro at the weekly farmer’s markets of this beautiful city; but unless you know somebody on the island to buy it for you, this delicious, traditional staple is seldom available elsewhere in Greece. On Lesbos island a similar ‘pasta’ is called ‘trahana’ and is often shaped into cup-like forms. (more…)

PASPALAS: The Rustic Pork Confit of Kea

Wednesday February 17th, 2021Thursday February 18th, 2021 aglaia Leave a comment

Like many foods we grew up with and take for granted, I have somehow overlooked until now the humble fried bits of pork used on Kea as general flavoring for eggs, greens, and any vegetable or bean dish.

Kean women prepare it each winter with leftover scraps of pork and fat, after the traditional slaughtering and butchering of the family pig. In the old days, the bits were heavily salted so that they wouldn’t spoil as they were stored in clay jars to be used much like Maggi cubes –a common European food flavoring– throughout the year. Costas calls paspalas ‘the Kea bacon,’ but unlike bacon it is not smoked and it is already fried when you use it to flavor eggs and other dishes.

Read about Pig Slaughtering on Kea as I had described it at the Atlantic.

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The importance of this rustic flavoring became apparent when I prepared it in the kitchen of Zaytinya—Jose Andres’ Greek and Middle Eastern restaurant, in Washington DC. During my annual January visit, a few years back, we were trying traditional winter dishes from Kea and other Cycladic islands for a pork and xinomavro wine feast, and Chef Michael Costa was immediately taken by paspalas’ intense and versatile flavor. We made several batches, using pieces of locally grown pork that the chef and his sous-chefs butchered in the kitchen. Besides the Kean scrambled eggs–also called ‘paspalas’ –we filled jars with the pork confit for future use. Bonnie Benwick, the former food editor of Washington Post got enamored with it, as well as with the eponymous scrambled eggs from Kea, and made the dish famous in her column!

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