Cabbage Salad in Orange-vinegar Dressing

Wednesday November 17th, 2021Wednesday September 7th, 2022 aglaia Leave a comment

Cabbage is associated with winter in Greece. “You can’t have tender, sweet cabbage before the winter cold,” a farmer in Kea told me one October morning. The trick to turn almost any cabbage into a good salad is to “knead” the finely shredded leaves with salt and lemon juice. Here, instead of lemon a combination of orange and white ‘balsamic’ vinegar is used. The cabbage and carrots wilt and shrink, becoming juicy and delicious. A dressing based on this ‘marinade’ is wonderful with all kinds of salads (see variation).

I first tasted the cabbage and carrot salad at Ourania’s Tavern, on Samos island, and was fascinated. Ourania, the owner and cook, told us that the longer you leave the salad in the fridge, the better it gets; she was right, of course.

Adding fruity olive oil and maybe 1-2 teaspoons Dijon mustard her ‘marinade’ becomes my go-to vinaigrette for all kinds of seasonal, mixed salads.

4 to 6 servings

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Spicy Carrot Jam with Oranges, Apples, and Lemons

Monday October 25th, 2021Monday January 24th, 2022 aglaia Leave a comment

I have never tried to make carrot jam, as the ones I have tasted were sickly sweet, lacking any aroma or distinctive tang. But I was intrigued by the ‘Carrot Cake Marmalade,’ at Food & Wine. The recipe originated from “ Molly’s Rise and Shine in New Orleans, where diners rave about the yogurt bowl served topped with marmalade,” as the recipe’s intro states.

I liked the idea of adding warm spices, but increased the number of other fruits –oranges, apples, and particularly lemons—which beautifully complement the carrots’ one-dimensional sweetness. Also, I didn’t over-process the fruit to get a very smooth jam, as the recipe suggests.

My carrot jam is somewhat tart, much closer to my most favorite citrus-fruit marmalades. But you can add more honey or sugar to make it sweeter, as most people probably would prefer it…

Serve with creamy, thick yogurt, with fresh cheese –like myzithra or ricotta– or with the very creamy manouri cheese. I also like to spread it on slices of my Orange, Lemon or Tangerine Olive-oil Cake.

At Molly’s Rise and Shine in New Orleans their very smooth carrot jam is served with granola and yogurt, topped with orange segments and blackberries.

PHOTO from the restaurant’s FaceBook page.

Makes about 2.2 quarts (liters) (more…)

Lemon-marinated Carrots with Finocchio, Mint, and Arugula

Wednesday June 2nd, 2021Wednesday June 2nd, 2021 aglaia Leave a comment

This is a salad even the more avid meat-eaters –like my friend Stathi— will love. I first made it for our joined Easter table, early in May, inspired by a salad we had whipped up some years back with thin slices of butternut squash that I had marinated in lemon, then served with equally thin slices of zucchini. I think I had sprinkled the mixture with crumbled feta, but I don’t remember, really. This carrot salad was a big success, and our friends, in whose house we had the Easter lunch, loved it, saying that the leftover were even better the next day.

As I was writing this, I remembered another carrot salad, that one a classic from North Africa: The Tunisian Carrot Salad is also laced with lots of lemon juice, and unexpectedly scented with caraway seeds. Dietician will tell you that lemon makes you absorb all the wonderful nutrients of carrots; but this is an added bonus to the really brilliant combination of sweet and sour, that we, in the Mediterranean, adore!

Note the beautiful stoneware ceramic bowl my dear friend Hara Bahariou has created. I am so happy to have many of her exquisite creations in which I serve my dishes; makes such difference at the table!

Serves 4-6 (more…)