1796 Foods

731. Greek Baked Fish

As I’ve only started cooking fish in the last couple of years, I’m still nowhere near as confident with cooking it as I am with most other kinds of foods. That means I’m often on the lookout for easy and tasty new recipes to try. This Greek fish dish involves making a ratatouille-like mixture of onions, peppers and tomatoes, placing the fish on top, drizzling white wine over the whole thing and then baking it in the oven. The results weren’t perfect - the veggies could have been sweeter for a start, but it was promising enough that I would definitely try making it again and improving it.

731 down, 1065 to go

720. Greek Monastery Olive Oil, 721. Greek Oregano and 722. Kourabiedes

You remember how I went to Athens in July last year? Well it’s taken me until now to realise that I completely forgot to post the picture of the various food goodies I brought home with me. D’oh. Also, forgive the weird creased background. I’d bought one of those fabric boxes you use to take product shots, and totally ignored the advice to iron the cloth before you take any pictures. Double d’oh.

The olive oil and oregano have been put to good use in all kinds of general cooking, and the kourabiedes just got eaten because they’re biscuits and biscuits don’t tend to stick around that long in my house. They’re a crumbly sort of biscuit, with almonds, and they’re covered in powdered sugar so you have to be careful or else you end up in a giant mess.

722 down, 1074 to go

696. Skordalia

Skordalia is a Greek version of mashed potatoes. They are made extra soft and creamy and are flavoured with a whole bunch of delicious garlic. I used John Torode’s recipe which basically involves boiling the potatoes and some garlic cloves in milk and olive oil rather than water until they are soft. When you drain them you keep the liquid, mash the potatoes up and add as much liquid as you need back in. They were really great and made a great alternative to regular mash.

696 down, 1100 to go

669. Fassolada

Fassolada is a Greek white bean soup. Like the Avgolemono, it’s another dish I wanted to try in Athens but couldn’t because they don’t tend to serve a lot of soups in July. This one was super easy to make at home. I just mixed white beans, celery, onions, carrots, canned tomatoes and chicken stock in a pan and then simmered it for a couple of hours - until the vegetables were all very soft and the beans had started to break down and thicken the soup. It tasted great and made for a lovely healthy lunch.

669 down, 1127 to go

637. Soupa Avgolemono

Soupa avgolemono was one of the dishes I had down on my ‘must-try’ list when I went to Athens, but I never found anywhere that sold it. Perhaps because it was the summer they did not think anyone would really be after soup (I’ll eat soup any time; I’m weird like that). Anyway, as I couldn’t try it in Greece I decided to just make it myself at home. It’s a really easy soup to make. You just have to cook a little bit of rice in a pot of good-flavoured chicken stock, then when the rice is done you mix in lemon juice and egg yolk. The egg yolk thickens it and gives it this lovely creamy, silky texture, and the lemon juice brightens the whole flavour and gives this delicious hint of sour. As a huge fan of both soup and lemon this dish was pretty much tailor made for me, so I shall definitely be adding it to my soup repertoire!

637 down, 1159 to go

538. Crudites

A while back my friends and I got together for a big picnic. We made a deal that we would have the picnic in the park nearest to my apartment on the proviso that I brought most of the food. On the basis that I’ll rarely complain about baking I figured that was a pretty good deal! The weather was really not good, so we had to abandon the park after a while and head to the pub (which frankly no-one complained about), but we had enough time to fill ourselves with far too many delicious snacks. I didn’t want EVERYTHING to be unhealthy, so I did bring some crudites (carrots, cucumber, celery and red pepper), which we had with a range of dips.

539. Taramasalata

One of the dips we had was taramasalata. I remember when I was at primary school we had this Greek food tasting day, and taramasalata was one of the things we were supposed to taste. The idea of it disgusted me completely (back then I didn’t even eat cod so the idea of fish eggs was hardly appealing) but you couldn’t get out of trying something by just saying you didn’t like it, so I said I was allergic to fish. My sneakiness worked and I didn’t have to taste it so that was a result at the time! Having now grown up (a little bit), I realise that tasting something you don’t like is hardly the worst thing in the world (doing this blog would be pretty awful if it was) so I’m much more willing to give things a try. I still don’t exactly like the taste of taramasalata, but it’s really not that bad.

540. Sausage Rolls

Sausage rolls on the other hand are delicious and I could eat them every day. Not the ones you get at the supermarket, those things on the whole are not good, but homemade ones with proper sausage and crisp puff pastry. To make my sausage rolls extra tasty, I get good sausage meat and mix it with wholegrain mustard and a little maple syrup. I also mix in just a splash of water (I learnt this trick from John Torode) as it keeps the pastry moist in the middle whilst it gets crisp on the outside. I would also consider mixing in a little ketchup but I couldn’t for the picnic as my friend is allergic to tomatoes. They all got gobbled up very quickly so I think everyone enjoyed them!

541. Raspberry Thumbprints

For dessert I made some thumbprint cookies. The list specified raspberry so I made some of them with raspberry jam, but I wanted a variety so I also made some with blackcurrant jam, blueberry jam, and nutella. I think the blackcurrant ones were my favourite.

541 down, 1255 to go

533. Kofte

So you’re going to have to forgive me with all of these upcoming posts. A lot of them are from back in the summer so they are not exactly going to be seasonal, but let’s just pretend that the weather is still sunny and we can still have barbecues and picnics and it is not actually cold and rainy outside.

I already posted some other foods I ate at my friends’ ‘international barbecue’. Well we also had these yummy homemade koftes, which I like to think of as a lamb burger on a stick. And we all know that stick food is great. These were served with a creamy yogurt dip.

533 down, 1263 to go

530. Stifado

This is the last of the Athens posts! (Finally!) This is stifado, which I have read can be made with both beef and rabbit, which seems a little odd to me as they taste nothing alike, but there you go. This was stifado of the beef variety, and was my brother’s lunch on our final day. It was good (as all the food was in Greece), though for my brother’s taste at least it had rather too many onions. I on the other hand love onions so it was not a problem for me (not raw though, raw onions are one of those devil foods like unsalted butter and canned tuna - yuck), but cooked so they’re all soft and sweet… mmm.

530 down, 1266 to go

529. Loukanika

Loukanika is Greek sausage. I saw all different types being called it while I was there, and this one was beef, and in terms of taste and texture was kind of like a merguez, which isn’t really to my taste. As far as sausages go, I love proper English sausages and nothing else compares. It is hard to beat a dinner of British pork and apple sausages with loads of creamy mash and thick gravy. Yum. But anyway… back to the Greek food. This sausage was chopped and mixed with chicken, cheese and peppers as a mixed hot mezze.

529 down, 1267 to go

528. Moussaka

Moussaka (in my mind at least) is the quintessential Greek dish, and so it was the one thing I wanted to eat there the most. Obviously I’ve had it before, but I was interested to see how the ‘real thing’ compared to what I’ve had before, so I ordered it on my very first night. It was actually a lot different. There was no thick tomato sauce, just lamb and eggplant, seasoned with a LOT of nutmeg. Then it was topped with super thick unctuous bechamel. Very good!

528 down, 1268 to go