In Jaffa, the picturesque old city next to Tel Aviv, Margaret Tayar has a famous seafood restaurant specializing in Moroccan cuisine prepared in her distinctive way. Her food –highly spiced and fragrant– is delicious. She is known for her fish couscous and for her simple and delicious spicy grilled fish. The recipe is my adaptation of Margaret’s fresh and zesty salsa that so well dresses the charcoal-grilled bream. Serve with steamed potatoes, zucchini, and carrots.
Serves 2 (more…)
A fast, plant-based pasta dish that we cannot stop eating these days. I cooked the spaghetti first, al dente, the traditional way, then added it to the briefly braised fava pods flavored with onion, garlic, lemon juice, and plenty of wonderful parsley that we happen to have in the garden.
Lemon zest and plenty of coarsely ground pepper give the dish a lovely kick, while crumbled feta adds a very welcomed tanginess.
This is the more conventional and elegant way to make the dish, besides the One-pot version with Fava, Asparagus, and Spinach that I posted last year.
Serves 3-4 (more…)
While in most parts of the world pasta is closely associated with butter and cheese, in Greece we have lots of traditional plant-based pasta dishes, without a trace of animal components. They were the staple of the numerous Lenten days, almost half the year –according to the old Orthodox calendar.
A humble leftover lentil soup becomes a delicious vegan pasta with complex flavor, while in my Mediterranean Vegetarian Feasts I created the Lebanese-inspired Linguine with Spicy Lentils and Caramelized Onions.
Our plant-based, vegan dishes are not contrived, but created by the women who had to bring a delicious, filling dish to their family’s table.
I love to make risotto with our Mediterranean wheat berries (farro) or with pearl barley. I use the grains on their own or complemented with some rice; in these combinations I prefer to add the long, basmati rice instead of Arborio or medium gran rice.
The cooking is a variation of my usual risotto with leafy greens, but on this occasion I prefer to cook the grains with a more substantial green, like kale or cabbage.
A few years back we managed to grow some Russian, as well as Tuscan Kale in the garden; but unfortunately we have not been able to grow these wonderful greens again, so I use cabbage for my hearty grain risotto.
See also Kapuska: Cabbage with Ground Meat and Cabbage.
Serves 4-6 (more…)
This is the meat-less version of the famous Russian and Eastern European hearty, winter beet soup, which David Tanis brilliantly changed, creating a refreshing summer treat.
I slightly adapted Tanis’ recipe, basically omitting the celery, because Costas is not fond of it. Kale is not available here, but the beets come with their greens which I used; you can alternatively add chard, kale, or any other green you like.
I simply top the wonderful soup with thick strained yogurt instead of the cream and freshly grated horseradish, which would be fantastic, if only we could get it on Kea!
In his introduction to the recipe, David Tanis talks about “…the long-gone resorts of the Catskills, in the so-called Jewish Alps. During their heyday, in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s, these summer resorts hosted generations of Jewish Americans, at a time when virulent anti-Semitism prevented their admittance to non-Jewish resorts. Families would spend the whole summer in these mountains enclaves to escape the sweltering city. There were daily activities and nightly entertainment. Comedians who worked the circuit called it the Borscht Belt. And quite a lot of cold borscht was served in that era before air-conditioning.”
Serves 6 (more…)
