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Mediterranean kiwi
Kiwis don't move around a lot. They stay pretty much in one country, mainly because they can't fly. Being nocturnal creatures, they are hardly ever seen. In New Zealand, they are considered an endagered species. But in these globalised times, one particular kiwi managed to escape. She reverted to a more natural body clock, and, having arrived at her final destination (a kitchen on an island in the middle of the Mediterranean), she realised that she had actually come back home. This is the story of her journey. I'm an ex-pat New Zealander now living in Hania, Crete, Greece; I originally started out this blog with a view to recording memories for my children's future use. I have now incorporated stories that will remind my children of the few years they will have spent in their parents' company, in the hope that they will have a better understanding of where their loopy mother came from.
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Sunday, 7 February 2010

The five-minute interview with a celebrity chef (Ένα πεντάλεπτο με μιά διάσημη σεφ)

On the occasion of my birthday, I proudly present you with a personalised version of the 'five-minute interview', based on the same questions asked to Nigella Lawson in a BBC interview with her, which, sadly, I can't embed here for your amusement, because the beeb is quite particular about who copies what from them, and I wonder what they'll have to say about seeing me copy most of their interviewer's questions. The funny thing is that 90% of the time, I'm giving the same answers as Nigella, which may be taken as firm evidence that celebrity chefs are no different to ordinary people. For maximum enjoyment, open Nigella's interview in another window, and listen to it, then read my one. Some questions have had to be modified appropriately.

Matthew: (being led by me into my kitchen) What an honour! So this is where all the action takes place!
Mrs Organically Cooked: Hmm... my kitchen is practically my office.

kitchen
The kitchen

Matthew: I thought it would be a bigger kitchen, actually.
Mrs Organically Cooked: Well, I'm not a big person myself, am I, but I'm certainly not a 'small woman', either, so this space is just right for me. At least that's what I understand when I'm in the classroom which is my normal work environment, I make my presence known there; my English students know just where to locate me, if you know what I mean.

Matthew: So, do people judge you a lot before they meet you, do you think?
Mrs Organically Cooked: Well, the ones that have been talking to my husband before they see me always say, "Oh, you're not as fat as I thought you'd be," which makes me wonder just how fat he makes out that I am when he talks about me.


Mr OC, cooking his favorite meal (BBQ)

Matthew: OK, Maria, I've been thinking about setting you a challenge. I want you to name one favorite dish per minute.
Mrs Organically Cooked: (staring at the cameraman) Oh, er, starting now?

Matthew: No, we haven't started yet, and you're already flirting with the camera, aren't you?
Mrs Organically Cooked: No, I'm just checking to see if the record button is working.

Matthew: OK, let's start then, so, Maria, what is your favorite dish?
Mrs Organically Cooked: My favorite dish - pad thai, made with organic Chinese rice noodles, and whatever's in my storage cupboards and fridge.

pad thai singlina
If you can't get it made for you, you have to cook it up yourself - pad thai, a la moi.

Matthew: And what is your naughtiest kitchen secret?
Mrs Organically Cooked: Don't have one, sorry. There aren't any secrets in this house.

Matthew: (in an insistent tone) You must have one.
Mrs Organically Cooked: Well, let me think, I suppose the only thing that I'm ashamed to admit is that I don't cook every day, which is something that most people assume I do, and since we eat takeaways only every now and then, I suppose that means that I'm always serving up meals cooked from earlier in the week, or that I've made from scratch and frozen to be used on a day when I can't be bothered cooking, which is like every second day, at this rate.

Matthew: Do you yourself ever eat takeaways?
Mrs Organically Cooked: Oh yes, 'course I do. I grew up on the stuff, remember? And who doesn't love a really good souvlaki every now and then? If good cheap Asian takeaways were available in my neck of the woods, I'd have those too, so maybe I wouldn't make pad thai from scratch so often.


Matthew: Do you ever eat in bed?
Mrs Organically Cooked: No, never, it's not a Cretan thing, if you get my gist. Cretans don't eat in bed, the dust in our lives is bad enough without the olive oil stains in every room of the house... and anyway, most people don't have a sit-down breakfast, which is the classic in-bed meal according to you Brits, isn't it? No, breakfast in bed is out of the question. Breakfast is always a sit-down meal in our kitchen, and you'll only ever find me in bed when no one's wanting me to prepare any food for them.

Matthew: Now, we all know your husband's a keen hunter, and...
Mrs Organically Cooked: Mmm.

Matthew: So, do you have--
Mrs Organically Cooked: No, before you start I'm gonna say--

Matthew: -- a favorite game meat, a favorite hunting ground, ...
Mrs Organically Cooked: Hare.

trigoni game hunting
Mr OC indulges in a bit of this every now and then - trigonia caught in Paleohora.

Matthew: -- a passion for hunting?
Mrs Organically Cooked: (deep breath) It's interesting to enter a different world, but I don't really like to get led down commenting-type paths on the moral rights of hunting or environmental issues.

Matthew: We're well into the second half of the interview, so...
Mrs Organically Cooked: Yes, I know, you've just wasted a part of the interview talking about my husband, haven't you?

Matthew: (laughing) Yes, I know, I'm sorry.
Mrs Organically Cooked: That's OK.

Matthew: Another favorite dish?
Mrs Organically Cooked: Tandoori chicken with curried rice and vegetables.

Matthew: (looking perplexed) Do you eat that a lot?
Mrs Organically Cooked: Only when I go to London. I don't have a tandoori oven in my house.


When I first went to this restaurant, I wasn't food blogging. How nice it feels to be able to replace this internet shot with one from our upcoming trip to London - Lahore Kebab House in Whitechapel, London.

Matthew: Do you read a lot?
Mrs Organically Cooked: Yes, I do, naturally, I've always read a lot, and the whole family complains that when they beg me to come and sit in the living room and watch a movie altogether as a family, they say I'm only pretending to do this, because I always come with reading material in my hands.


A very small section of my cookbook library - my general library is overflowing...

Matthew: And you write of course, but you started off having a very different career, a very serious career, ...
Mrs Organically Cooked: Hmm, ...

Matthew: ... a fairly serious career, an English teacher, ...
Mrs Organically Cooked: ... mm, yes, ...

Matthew: ... well, quite a serious career.
Mrs Organically Cooked: Well, food is also serious too, isn't it, but, OK, I take your point entirely.

Matthew: Are you very organised?
Mrs Organically Cooked: Well, I'm not as organised as I used to be when I was an English teacher, because, admittedly, I was paid to be organised, but I know I'm now discussing subjects like the ones I used to discuss in my evening classes with children, teenagers and young adults, but I just can't remember which view I took back then (Matthew chuckles), and these days, anyway, the members of my family interrupt my organised schedule with coughs and colds, emergencies, after-school activities, tasks, chores, and of course, meal requirements, and the older I get, the harder it is to be organised, so I just try to attain a level of organisation just before the highest Richter scale chaos level, and I can keep on top of things.

Matthew: OK, this is probably a difficult question, but is there anything tongue-in-cheek about the way you write about certain topics or present various characters in your stories?
Mrs Organically Cooked: Well, I don't think so, because I believe that my regular readers are intelligent people who know that many times they have to read between the lines in what I write. I don't mean to be tongue-in-cheek, maybe ironic sometimes, I know that sounds odd, but at least I'm openly ironic, I'm not trying to be coy and I'd never want anyone to think I was being offensive on purpose in any way.

Matthew: When you're in the kitchen, you're very flirtatious, coquettish, aren't you?*
Mrs Organically Cooked: Thank you. And attractive, right?

Matthew: (laughing) Oh, I forgot to add that!
Mrs Organically Cooked: Well, most Greek women, in any case, are very flirtatious, sexy and coquettish, and it's never been easier to do that than in our times, so I think it's just a matter of how much money each one of us devotes to such matters. All women know when the moment calls for any of these qualities, and it really doesn't take much to win a man's heart when he watches a woman cooking. My husband loves to do this, and he especially gets worked up when I try to shoo him out of the kitchen. In Greek, we have a saying: love passes through a man's stomach.

Matthew: I'm not sure if we've had another favorite dish...
Mrs Organically Cooked: Fava, the Greek yellow split-pea dip, with lots of thinly sliced raw onions, finely chopped parsley and shrimps cooked in lemon juice.


Greek fava and shrimps

Matthew: Do you have any food hates?
Mrs Organically Cooked: No, unfortunately, and sometimes I wish I did, so that I could stop myself from eating whatever is offered to me. Tofu, perhaps, but that's not available where I live, so it doesn't really count as food, does it?

Matthew: I won't be the judge of that!
Mrs Organically Cooked: I don't like tofu. And soy meat. And soy mince. But I'd still eat them if I was offered them.

Matthew: Do you... eat a lot of fruit?
Mrs Organically Cooked: I eat a lot of everything, I'm afraid. It shows, doesn't it?

apple varieties in a fruit bowl
There's always some fresh seasonal fruit to be found in our house.

Matthew: There are a lot of noises in the background, aren't there?
Mrs Organically Cooked: Well, when you have children in the house, there are always a lot of noises in a house.

ancient statues
Where there are kids, there is noise; on a recent trip to the Acropolis.

Matthew: You're a very attractive woman, and you're a very real woman...
Mrs Organically Cooked: (looking down her blouse) Oh yes, my watermelons are definitely real.**

Matthew: ... and you send out signals to society that you don't have to be skinny to be attractive.
Mrs Organically Cooked: That's a difficult thing to comment on. All women worry about their weight, but it's wrong to assume that the thinner you are, the more attractive you are. That's really all about fashion codes, which differ across time periods, cultures and races. If I were desperate to look like a fashion model, I could take up the 'free' Bodyline offers that I regularly get called for via telemarketing, but if I do that, then I would have to give up time from doing other things that I enjoy doing, like writing, and eventually the free offers would become paid offers, because there really is no such thing as a free lunch, and since I've been used to stretching an already tight budget, I wouldn't be able to indulge in what I call 'luxuries', like buying books and DVDs online, or setting aside some money for a domestic or overseas holiday for all the family. I know I can't have everything, so I just settle for some things.

Matthew: So you're not a slave to fashion?
Mrs Organically Cooked: Anyone who knows me can vouch for the fact that I don't even know what the word 'fashion' means! Never was and never will be. Food and knowledge have always been more important in my life, and I can see they always will be.

Matthew: Are you sporty?
Mrs Organically Cooked: Tremendously. And if you had watermelons growing on your chest, you'd be totally supportive of me. (Matthew laughs) I'll never forget the one and only time when I was chosen as captain of the softball team at primary school, just because the teacher wanted to instil some confidence in me, and I had to choose my team from among my classmates, and everyone just let out a groan every time I picked them. The signal was loud and clear: butterfingers.


A halved version of my current self being honoured for our win in the Sister Cities Dragonboat Race in Wellington some time at the end of the 1980s.

Matthew: You had--
Mrs Organically Cooked: I have acted in the past as manager of the Wellington Greek Community Dragonboat racing team in the Sister Cities Dragonboat Race, but I never had to get into the boat myself, I just had to make sure our team won, and I did manage to succeed in doing that the couple of times I was manager. I used to lie to the team and tell them we had practice at 6.30am, even though I knew it was 7.00am, so I'd turn up at 6.50am, and they'd ask me why I told them to come so early, even though they had probably come at 6.45am and I'd tell them that if I had said to turn up at 7.00, they'd all be getting up at that time instead, because they were always running on Greek time.

Matthew: What was it like being the daughter of Greek immigrants who owned a fish shop in New Zealand?
Mrs Organically Cooked: Well, sometimes we were called 'greasy Greeks' by other children in playground taunts, and some kids would call me 'Maria Veryfarty' as a play on my name, but that was about all, because as a Greek girl, I didn't stand out in society. People couldn't guess my nationality if I were walking on the street, like they do with Asians, and sadly, nowadays, Asian immigrants are targeted constantly in New Zealand, with racist comments and actions directed against them, and it's clearly obvious that skin colour is behind this, as might be the wearing of a hijab or a burkha, because you stand out against mainstream society, which upsets me a bit about New Zealand these days, because I never felt racially targeted against while I was growing up there, but when I went back only six years ago, even public figures like bus drivers were making blatantly racist comments in full public hearing against other drivers on the road about their driving habits, or even the passengers, like when they didn't have the right change for a ticket, or something trivial like that, and all just because they would pick up on their looks - they looked different - in other words, they were being judged by their skin colour, so I was quite shocked, to be honest. Racism is something I encountered more blatantly when I arrived in Greece, but what I hear here seems benign compared to what I was exposed to on NZ buses.

yiayia maria
Yiayia Maria

Matthew: So why do you think people read your blog?
Mrs Organically Cooked: Well, most people who land on my blog are looking for a specific Greek recipe, or a quintessential New Zealand one like afghans or pavlova, but my regular readers are probably more interested in the combination I present of Greek food and Greek life. I think the women come in for the recipes, while the men come in for the food, if you get what I mean...

Matthew: (laughs) Well, the five minutes are almost up. So, tell me the secrets of your name, because I know it was your grandmother's name.
Mrs Organically Cooked: My paternal grandmother's name, yes, and since I was the first-born, traditionally, if you're a boy, you get your father's father's name, and if you're a girl, you get your father's mother's name, so I was called Maria. But my father could've given me his father's name if he wanted to, which was John, so I'd have been called Joanna, in the feminine, but he decided to honour his mother instead, which I'm glad about, because none of his brothers and sisters called any of their daughters Maria, and I remember it made my grandmother very happy. I suppose he thought the next one might have been a boy, so he'd still have a chance to give one of his children his father's name, but it didn't actually work out that way.

Matthew: Favorite dish, quick, time's almost up, another one!
Mrs Organically Cooked
: Oh, aahhh, sausages and chips. And paua fritters with oysters, if I could ever get them here, but I can't.

Matthew: Well, it was lovely talking with you.
Mrs Organically Cooked: Nice to meet you, too.

* If I were really being interviewed, I suppose the interviewer would have said that anyway.
** Nigella didn't say this - but then her watermelons are considerably smaller than mine.

You can say a lot in five minutes, can't you?

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.

Wednesday, 3 February 2010

Chocolate beetroot muffins (Κεκάκια με μπατζάρι)

In the summer, I don't mind making as much chocolate cake as my kids can get enough of, because I always add grated zucchini and mashed banana into the mixture. It's like they are getting their fruit and vegetable 5-a-day intake all in one. The kids have no idea what they are eating - it looks and tastes like chocolate cake. In the winter, I can't do this because, for a start, the zucchini season is over, and secondly, because I don't freeze any zucchini - my deep freeze can't handle any more bric-a-brac, what with one compartment completely filled with kalitsounia, another two compartments jammed with tins of ready-to-cook moussaka, boureki and papoutsakia, and the usual deep-freeze staples. My kids often wonder why I stop making chocolate cake; they think it's a seasonal food product.

Now I needn't worry, since I discovered beetroot and chocolate cake, via two other bloggers, Jo and Nic. Beetroot is available all year round, like other tuber vegetables, carrots, potatoes, and so on. But they are not commonly made into anything more interesting in Crete than a boiled salad. Recently, beetroot mixed with yoghurt (similar to tzatziki dip) has been seen being used here and there around the town, but that's about it.

The purple tinge of the processed beetroot adds another dimension to these muffins, which do not taste of beetroot at all. The purple colour in the batter fades away when the muffins are cooked - no one will now how these chocolate muffins retained their moisture! Just make them when no one is looking - and get rid of all the evidence, like purple stains on your benchtop, knife and fingers.

chocolate beetroot muffins

For a dozen good-sized muffins, you need only a few simple ingredients. I adapted the recipes from the other bloggers' links (above) and came to the following ingredients list:
a glass of oil (we only use olive oil in our house)
a cup of sugar
2 vials of vanilla sugar
5 small beetroot bulbs, boiled and pureed in a blender
half a cup of walnuts processed in the blender (this is optional: you can substitute this with chocolate drops, raisins or other dried or fresh berry fruit like blueberries and cranberries, or even walnut chunks)
100g cooking chocolate, melted (I also added 2 tablespoons of cocoa powder in order to ensure that the chocolate flavour would emanate from the muffins and no one would be able to guess the vegetable addition)
2 eggs
300g self-raising flour
Place the oil, sugar, vanilla sugar and pureed beetroot (and walnuts, if using) in a bowl, and mix well. Add the melted chocolate and mix again. Beat in each egg with a wooden spoon. Add the flour and beat into the batter, making sure that the batter remains smooth. I preferred to add the flour in slowly, stopping when the batter resembled porridge. If the mixture feels too dry, add some a few drops of milk to smooth it out. Pour into a prepared muffin tin (or into cupcake casings) and cook for 25-30 minutes, or until a knife comes out clean when inserted into one of the muffins.


Making beetroot and chocolate muffins is like getting two meals out of one cooking process. Beetroot in Greece is sold with the lovely green frond on the top of the head, and these are actually eaten too, something that surprises a lot of people who are used to seeing beetroot being sold only as a bulb. It is turned into the most delicious horta dish, dressed in olive oil and vinegar. So when you boil your beetroot for the muffins, use the tubers for your muffins and set aside the red stalks and green leaves for a salad.

A word of warning: beetroot juice doesn't create a red, crimson or even pink dye for Easter eggs - they go brown, as I discovered when I tried an experiment a few Easters ago!

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.

Saturday, 30 January 2010

Choice cuts (Καλή μπουκιά)

The beef and pork stood out at the meat counter of the supermarket, which always looks splendidly full on a Saturday morning, and especially inviting on a cold winter's day, when most people are trying to decide what they'll be cooking at home during the weekend.

french beef beef and pork
French beef is sold in large multinational supermarket chains (INKA, the locally owned supermarket, sells only Greek beef); I bought a kilo each of beef (left) and pork (right).

But take note: the beef displayed here is not local food; this beef is imported from France. We prefer French beef to the locally reared beef, mainly because the locally reared beef is very stringy and fibrous; it takes ages to cook, and never seems to have that melting quality about it that French beef has. France has a longer history in raising beef; Crete has a tradition in pork and lamb/goat, but not beef.

Whole onions, preferably small ones (scallions), are a traditional feature of Greek stifado.
beef stifado

For the beef, I decided on Souvlaki for the Soul's stifado, a stew cooked in the traditional Greek style, with dry spices and lots of onions. Stifado is often served with fried potatoes in Greece, but it also goes well served on a bed of rice or mashed potatoes. We had this with some green salad, sourdough bread to mop up the sauces, and some imported English ale, which is now becoming easier to buy - competitive supermarket price and product wars are all part and parcel of the more globalised place that Crete has now become.

pork and quince
This is what the pork dish looked like when it went into the oven - we forgot to photograph it once it was cooked!

For the pork, I sliced up a ton of onions, placed them in a baking tin and laid the pork in thick slices on top of the onions, filling in the gaps with quince slices, which gave the whole dish an enticing aroma. There was no real recipe to this; its simplicity won over in terms of taste. Quince cooked with pork is a popular combination in Greek cuisine.

This kind of cooking style is typical of my Sunday meat dishes. They are usually simple, but they are always cooked with olive oil, using high-quality fresh ingredients.

*** *** ***
When shopping, I usually go to a range of stores. It isn't uncommon for me to go to two different supermarkets on the same day if I'm searching for food items that I know are only available in the one or the other. For example, we like the bread found at the local supermarket, but prefer the beef at a branch of a multinationally-owned supermarket. Here's what the meat counters looked like at two different supermarkets on the day I bought these cuts of meat.

the local super the local super
Above: the local super. Below: the multinational super.
italian chickens the multinational super the multinational super

Notice how animal's tail is still attached at the local store. That's how people buy their meat in such a store: this way, they know it's a goat and not a lamb. Likewise, they ask about which village or farm the animal was raised, what it was fed on, and if the animal was a male or female(!). This kind of information is clearly not available in the multinational store, where all meat is displayed in an almost packaged form. To be global, or not to be global, that is the question these days...

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.

Thursday, 28 January 2010

WOW salad (Σαλάτα WOW)


I don't know why my life has suddenly become so busy. These days, I don't have time to do much more than go to work, prepare and cook meals, and do a general clean up of the house. Sometimes I eat spectacular meals, but I don't have time to tell you about them. This post may seem a bit rushed, but I am sure it will inspire you to try out this amazing salad, which doesn't really have a name, but everyone who tried it thought the same as I did: "Wow".

Here I present a spectacular vegetarian salad that probably everyone will enjoy, because they will all find something in it that they particularly like to eat, be it sweet or savoury. The chef at MAICh, John Apostolakis, makes this salad often in the winter, although it looks a little different to what I have presented here; he serves it up as student nosh, so it looks quite functional, but that feeling disappears when you try it. Eaten with some good quality sourdough bread, it is a complete meal.

You need:
some Cos lettuce, shredded (torn leaves don't work well here)
some citrus segments (chef uses orange segments cut in half, but grapefruit, tangerine or mandarin - which is what I used - also work well; make sure you remove the pith, as it spoils the texture of this salad)
some mushrooms, sliced thinly (canned mushrooms don't give the right flavour, but they will also do - I used some, ultra-expensive foodie-gourmet dried porcini mushrooms, reconstituted in white wine)
grated cheese, preferably something like Cretan graviera or regato
olive oil
balsamic vinegar
salt (optional)

Place the prepared lettuce and citrus fruit in a bowl. If using canned mushrooms, they must be drained very well before being added to the salad. The mushrooms (either fresh or canned) may be lightly sauteed in a little olive oil (like I did here) before being added to the salad, so that they wilt slightly but retain their shape and texture. Add them to the salad. The dressing depends on your personal preferences. Pour a few drops (or tablespoons as we would do in Crete!) of olive oil, and a little balsamic vinegar over the salad. Sprinkle with salt, again to your liking - warning: the cheese may be quite salty! Toss the salad lightly so that the ingredients are mixed well but the salad keeps its fullness.

Enjoy.

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.

Sunday, 24 January 2010

Cheese pie - Tiropita (Τυρόπιτα)

Dina hates cooking. She readily admits that she isn't a good cook, and even I can vouch for that. A few Christmasses ago, she invited us to a party she was giving to her friends and relatives on Christmas Eve. There were more than 40 guests, and that number didn't include the children. There was plenty of good food for everyone, but none of it was cooked by Dina. Whoops, I tell a lie - in fact, Dina did cook one dish that night: macaroni and cheese. Two huge tins of it. For a Christmas Eve feast.

Dina's despicable cooking skills are not actually a sign of slovenly laziness on her part. She may hate cooking, but her house is clean, her teenage children are good students at school and have very polite manners, and Dina is a highly respected Greek literature high school teacher. She works in a busy lower secondary school with a large roll, and even though she has only 16 teaching hours a week, she is at school for more than 30 hours weekly, due to administrative duties. At the end of the working day, which never really finishes for a teacher, she comes home and prepares lunch for her family. (It might be a simple meal, but she does make the effort, apparently). The afternoon is taken up driving her kids to their after-school lessons around the town, waiting in the car until they finish their class so that she can take them to the next one, before they all finally go home. If she had to name a passion, it would be education - and she really does want the best for her children.

When the family finally gets home in the evening, there is really very little time left for Dina to prepare an evening meal. For a start, the children need help with their homework, the house needs a quick tidy-up, and there's her own students' homework and essays that need to be marked and class preparation to take care of before the next day begins. Most of the time, the evening meal is pre-prepared and store-bought. Unless she has some time to make something simple, like a self-crusting cheese pie.

I visited her one day when she was in the middle of making this tiropita, and it was cooked in time for my family to try it out. Yes, it's true, I did worry somewhat about how my digestive system would react to it, but I felt reassured as I watched my own children relishing Dina's tiropita that it must be edible, so I asked her for the recipe, because this tiropita really did look very easy to prepare, and I must admit that there are times when I get frazzled by the day's business, and I don't always have time to cook something that is easy, healthy, wholesome, tasty and nutritious all at the same time for my children.

To make the easiest, and at the same time, tastiest cheese pie in the world, even if you believe you are the worst cook in the world, you need:
1 litre of milk (if you have some leftover cream or yoghurt, you can also add that; it makes a smoother looking filling)
1 cup of fine semolina
200g melted butter or margarine (you can also use those novel butter-yoghurt spreads for a healthier version)
3 cups of a mixture of grated/crumbled cheeses, one of which should be feta (the others could be regato, gouda, emmental, etc - I added the local curd cheese, mizithra, for a creamier texture)
2 eggs, beaten

Grease a baking tin or pyrex dish well with olive oil. Pour the milk into a large saucepan and add the semolina. Stir well to smooth out any lumps, heat it till the milk is warmed up, then switch off the cooker. Add the melted butter (or add it to the cold milk and stir constantly while the milk heats up, melting the butter simultaneously), cheeses and eggs, mixing well to blend the ingredients. Pour the mixture into the prepared tin, and let it cook for an hour in a moderate oven. The pie top will take on a golden brown colour, and you can test to see if it is ready by inserting a knife in the middle, bringing it towards the edge of the tin; if it feels like it has set and slices cleanly like a cake, then it's ready.

tiropita cheese pie
A square tin would probably be more appropriate if you want the perfect slice. But look at how cleanly the slice comes out of the tin; the pie was still warm when I cut it.
tiropita cheese pie

Working mothers really don't have it easy these days when it comes to cooking healthy meals for their family, so a pie like this, with its nose-punching aroma while it's cooking in the oven, is a good solution for a quick and easy evening meal. It slices well even when it is warm, comes out clean from the tin (no need to scrape it clean), stores well in the fridge, and can be heated up as a leftover meal the next day. For some variation, you can add thinly sliced mushrooms and/or roughly chopped ham or boiled eggs to the mixture without altering the recipe, which makes a more substantial pie, so you will need a larger baking tin.

tiropita cheese pie
And the same cheese pie mixture (minus the margarine) can be used as a filling in a crust pie. This crust was made with a simple flour-water mixture with a pinch of salt and a few drops of olive oil to make the pastry more elastic. The pyrex lining was cooked blind, then filled, topped with another sheet of pastry and sealed. The top was brushed with beaten egg.

You really don't have to be a spectacular cook to feed your growing family. If you care enough for them, you'll make sure, in whatever way you can, that your family will eat something healthy and filling to satisfy their hunger after a long working day. Your food will be prepared with love, and your kids will not forget that.

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.