A Spicy, Versatile Meat Sauce

Monday April 4th, 2016Sunday June 12th, 2022 aglaia Leave a comment

Spicy Ground Meat is one of the latest all-purpose sauces I try to have in my fridge or freezer, divided into cups.

Ground meat, from the local free-range veal of the island, is something that I use a lot. The dark red meat is delicious, but quite tough and stringy, and for that reason I prefer to choose a nice piece, usually soon after my butcher has slaughtered an animal, and mince the meat somewhat coarsely. Unlike most of our neighbors, I rarely make Keftedes, but sometimes I do make my kind of burger, mixing the minced meat with bacon, onion, herbs and plenty of breadcrumbs or ground rolled oats.

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It makes no sense to cook less than one, or better two pounds of ground meat, as I did the other day. I mince the onions, garlic and add either grated carrots or mashed corn kernels, then the spices and flavorings, as well as the herbs. It only needs to briefly simmer with wine and lemon juice, and it is ready for many uses. It is insane to go to all the trouble and prepare just 2 cups of Spicy Ground Meat.

The resulting, pre-cooked Meat Sauce can be used simply with pasta, to make my kind of Eastern Mediterranean Bolognese with penne, tortiglioni, or any other large, hollow pasta shapes: Boil the pasta 1 min. less than the package suggests, reserving 1 cup of the water. Then warm the meat sauce over medium heat, toss with the pasta (3-4 cups meat sauce for 1 pound of pasta) and if it is too dry, pour in ½-1 cup of the pasta cooking water. Just before serving, I love to fold in coarsely chopped cilantro from the garden that makes everything more delicious. The sauce is flavorful enough, so you can omit the cheese; at least we do. (more…)

My Green Taramosalata

Monday March 14th, 2016Monday March 14th, 2016 aglaia 1 Comment

Lately I have moved from rengosalata –smoked herring or kipper spread— our family’s traditional Kathari Deftera spread, back to the common taramostalata –carp or cod roe spread.

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Fortunately, we can now get good quality carp roe, a far cry from the salty and tasteless, red-dyed one, that was the basic ingredient for the iconic meze. I guess my mother had chosen to make the more time-consuming smoked herring spread because she couldn’t stand the pink, salty, yet flavorless taramosalata that the majority of taverns and homes served.

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She prepared rengosalata using the roe of smoked herring (kipper) carefully choosing a herring with swollen belly to make sure it had enough roe for the spread. In the turn of the 20th century wealthy Athenians used Russian caviar, or avgotarraho for the iconic, elegant Kathari Deftera meze. (more…)

Instant Pies with Greens or with Chocolate and Nuts

Wednesday March 9th, 2016Sunday March 13th, 2016 aglaia 3 Comments

Skillet pies –tiganokouloures or tiganopsoma in Greek, and gözleme or saç böreği in Turkish— have become our everyday project these days.

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There are three reason for this late obsession of ours: First because Costas has almost completely mastered the art of rolling perfect phyllo and he is eager to use his new skill as often as possible; second, we gather plenty of wonderful, juicy spinach as well as chervil, fennel and other aromatic herbs from the garden; the third, and probably the most important reason of these repeated attempts is the newly acquired electric saç (hot-plate) that I brought from Istanbul.

Not that skillet pies cannot be cooked perfectly on a griddle or ridged skillet. They are ingenious creations of the frugal Mediterranean cooks who prepared in minutes a delicious snack or meal with whatever they happened to have at hand: wild or cultivated greens and herbs, grated zucchini or squash, eggplant, pepper or even cooked grains or beans, usually flavored with cheese and/or sausage. The recipe I have in my Mediterranean Vegetarian Feasts can be prepared in any kitchen, either here, or on the other side of the Atlantic. And this has been proven, since David Tanis chose to publish it at the New York Times, calling it ‘Greek Pie on the Skinny Side’.

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Cabbage Revisited: with Dried Mint and Other Spices

Friday January 15th, 2016Friday January 15th, 2016 aglaia Leave a comment

We had just gotten an enormous cabbage from our neighbor’s garden and I was contemplating using the outer leaves to make lahano-dolmades –stuffed cabbage leaves— or maybe my simpler stuffed cabbage logs.

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Then I saw Ozlem Warren’s recipe for kapuska, a kind of de-constructed stuffed cabbage leaves, where cabbage, ground meat and bulgur are braised together. I also remembered that in my book The Foods of the Greek Islands (published in 2000) I had a kapuska recipe from Chios; it was pork with cabbage in a fragrant, and spicy tomato sauce.

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Here is what I wrote in the head-note:

“This dish is called kapuska in Olympi, an unspoiled medieval village on the island of Chios. The word is probably Slavic, and it is also used in Turkey for a similar dish. (more…)

EPIPHANY: The Day of Lights when the Waters are Blessed

Monday January 4th, 2016Monday January 4th, 2016 aglaia 1 Comment

(I wrote and photographed this a few year back; I doubt that I could do it better today…)

Despite the usually bitter cold of the January morning, there are always brave young men, different each year, who dive to retrieve the cross the third and final time the priest casts it into the sea… Photon double

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Epiphany (January 6), or Day of the Light –ton Photon in Greek— is an important religious and cultural celebration that marks the end of the holiday season. Up until the 4th century A.D. Epiphany was considered the first day of the year, observed as a three-day commemoration of Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan River. People believed that on the eve of the 6th the skies open, granting the prayers of the devout.

Some anthropologists link Epiphany with the ancient Athenian ceremony of plynterion, the cleansing of the goddess Athena’s statue. During that ceremony, she was taken to the seaside in Faliron to be washed in the sea, thereby renewing her mythical powers. Similarly, as the anthropologists have noted, the church icons are often washed prior to the Epiphany celebration.

Nearly 2000 years ago the first Christians celebrated with long street processions, white candles in hand (a tradition modern Greeks preserve during the Resurrection ceremony, on Easter), hence the term Epiphany, the Day of the Light. Jesus intrinsically blessed the water by his immersion in it, and each year Greek Orthodox priests perform a ritual, casting the cross into the water, replenishing Jesus’ blessing in the water and on the community, as well.

All over Greece different forms of fried pastry are prepared in celebration: dilpes, pastry squares or ribbons, like the spectacular kserotigana of Crete, and loukoumades, dough puffs similar to Italian zepolli; photopites, the spicy-sweet fritters of Amorgos are the most interesting of the kind. (more…)