Black Angus

My life is very busy as of late, noticeable by the times I don't go to the supermarket. Last Saturday, rather than traipse around town buying from my regular small-scale suppliers, I decided that life felt too short at this moment in time, to actively support the local shopowners, who I adore because they know me and my sharp observation skills, and I know them and their pass-one-over methods, and I get some great conversations out of them. So I headed down to the local supermarket to do the weekly shop and to pick up some meat for Sunday lunch while I was there.

Supermarket meat is often sold more expensively (at least, here in Hania) than small-shop meat, so I was aware that I would be spending more money in this setting. I wanted some mince for my freezer bifteki: Greek beef - €10.98/kg, Belgian beef - €9.59/kg. The Greek beef looked pinky-red, like it usually does, because it rarely allowed to 'sit' for longer than 2-3 days before it's sold, The Belgian meat looked just a little darker, but I preferred the shape of the cut. I chose the Belgian beef over the Greek, mixing in some Cretan pork (€6.78/kg) into the mince mixture - remember that in Crete, it is far more common to buy fresh mince that is prepared before you after you have chosen the pieces of meat that will be minced for you.

While I was at the supermarket yesterday, I also found US Black Angus at the same meat counter, selling at €9.69/kg. Like the Belgian beef, it was cheaper than Greek beef. Black Angus is one of the most highly rated beef products in the world, and we can get it for LESS than Greek beef! I've never tried Black Angus before, so I thought it was time we did. I asked the butcher to cut me three large slices.

I'm not sure what the problem is with Greek beef. Over time, it has developed a better texture. It's not as stringy as the foregin stuff. But you still can't cook it in a pan, like you can do with Black Angus. Although I'm not still convinced that beef should be eaten medium-rare with its pink colour, for the first time in my life, I am cooking beef in Greece in the oven, and I can already feel how tender it is, as the knife slides through so easily.

My first foray into Black Angus will be in a Greek-style recipe. After pan-searing the fillets, I placed them in the oven in a tomato-based sauce with the regular seasoning. It's cooking now. My husband keeps asking me: "Are you sure this will be edible?" Greek beef still has that nasty reputation of being tough. It needs a facelift if it's going to survive in this money-poor world, when cheap foreign imports are invading its domain.

UPDATE:
Black Angus stays tender throughout the cooking period and it is very juicy. But it lacks the aroma of Greek-raised meat. I guess it's true that you are what you eat - if grazing animals eat aromatic plants, their meat smells like it too.

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Beef on discount (Βοδινό σε έκπτωση)

Every Monday, I check out the protein section at one of the LIDL supermarket branches in the town. During my last visit, I was hoping to find another egg bargain, like the one I recently pounced on, something like 30 eggs for €3.30. (Normally, a dozen eggs costs more than €2.00.) Unfortunately, there was nothing in this way on Monday. So I carried on to the fresh meat counter (a relatively recent addition at LIDL), where I might be lucky to chance on some of those discounted prices for nearly-expired fresh meats: the price is reduced by 30%. There is nearly always something to be found in those 'fridge bins', as I like to call them, on a daily basis, and everything is packed in styrofoam and cling-film, so you can clearly see the contents. Whatever I find, I usually freeze as soon as I get home, unless I plan to use it sooner. I've bought cooked chicken wings from here before, as well as uncooked chicken wings, sausages and kebabs.

This time, I found something else: 2 packets of (French) chuck beef were sitting in the fridge bin. I checked the weight and price of each packet with the use of the various machines that most supermarkets have these days in their customer areas: they weighed about a kilo each, and they were selling for just €3.50/kg. We haven't had beef (except in mince form) because it's usually quite expensive to buy it in Crete.

I found some heat-n-eat cooked marinated chicken wings which are useful for a quick meal  I bought 2 packs: 500g for €1.74 each - at that price, it's cheaper than cooking them yourself - and some cheap beef selling at €4.99/kg. Two of the three beef packets that I bought were discounted by 30% due to being close to their expiry dates. 

In the past, when I used to buy fresh beef at the supermarket counter, it usually contained very little fat or fibrous bits. But it got very expensive, whether Greek or French beef, so I just stopped buying it. The discounted beef was priced at less than half the usual price of French beef, and a third of the usual cost of Greek beef. So I decided that this offer could not be passed up. I bought both the packets, even though I could see that the beef contained a bit of sinew. What worried me most was if it would cook till tender, so that it melts in your mouth; will it be stringy and chewy with all that sinew?

When I got home, I unpacked the beef and began cutting it up into chunks. I found that this beef was rather tough, even when cutting through it with a sharp knife. Perhaps I had just fallen into the trap of false economy. But there was not much I could do about it, so I set to work cooking one of the packets into a stifado. As it stewed away, I cut up the other piece in the same way (and that too was rather tough), to get tt ready for the freezer.

Not quite done...

While the beef was cooking and spreading its aroma through the house, the family began to drift in and out of the kitchen.
Stifado? Mmmm, I'll have all the onions, my daughter said.
Stifado? I can smell the orange peel cooking in it, my son said. (I add dried peel.)
Stifado? Finally, we're eating beef again! my husband said.
He asked me about the price. I explained to him where I found the cheap meat, and how I make it a habit now to check out LIDL's discounted meat section. This trend hasn't caught on at other supermarkets, in the same way that it operated in LIDL. There are some products marked down due to a close expiry date, but they are usually highly processed packaged foods, like chocolate and crisps. I want primary ingredients with which to cook, not ready-to-eat food.
I would have bought out the stock at that price! he said. You can imagine how pleased he was when I told him that this was in fact what I had done.

Ready!

I let the beef cook three hours on a very low heat on top of the stove, testing it with a knife every now and then to see how much it was cooking through, occasionally adding some water to the pot to make sure that the meat did not stick to the bottom. The beef cooked down to a perfect texture, and it practically broke apart when pressed. Not only was it tender, but if it wasn't the best meat to begin with, the cloves, cinnamon, orange peel, onions and garlic concealed this fact very well.

This meal reminded me of a recent trip to London where my hosts let on that the meal they had prepared for the six of us at the table cost less than five pounds in total. The organic (if the labels are to be believed) chicken alone cost just two pounds. They shop after work, and they know when the specials start to become available, and what is usually going at which supermarket. I remarked how this kind of shopping was not possible in our town. That was less than a year ago - we didn't take long to catch up, did we? Not only have certain food items become cheaper, but they are being packaged in more convenient ways. Even though we are a small town, the idea of shopping after work for your evening cooking needs is now becoming well entrenched in our life too.

Buying food on special - and knowing when and where it will be on special - is not a sign of being poor or stingy. It isn't even a sign of being on a low income (my London hosts could not be described in this way). It simply shows how careful you are in your spending habits. In Greece, it is also a sign of Europeanisation. It may not always feel nice, but it's what people are doing in Europe's opposite extreme corners. Being able to eat red meat is also a healthy sign; in the western world, this is used as an indicator of poverty. Finally, it also could be said that the UK and Greece are becoming ever more similar in terms of the poverty levels being reported for each country, as well as the distorted statistics used to present optimistic accounts of how the recession in each respective country is receding. In her early EU days, Greece was in a rush to catch up with the western world's wealth; now she's also catching up with the western world's problems.

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Fresh imported beef mince

The picture below shows perfectly how little Greeks understand or care for the horsemeat scandal:

 "Fresh BEEF MINCE imported breast meat"

"Fresh BEEF MINCE imported breast meat" is on special at the super-duper price of €6.49, reduced from €7.98. As a standard of measure, Greek beef (which is invariably almost always born in France, and begins its Greek life, until the time of slaughter, at the age of 5 months) is sold at prices starting from €10+/kg.

While the rest of Europe is avoiding pre-minced meat products and the horsemeat scandal has become the main topic of discussion among the EU agriculture ministers, as well as the fact that horse-beef products have been confirmed to have been sold in Greece, top-end supermarkets like this one are selling it cheaply - and from what I saw this afternoon, people are buying it, as if the horsemeat scandal could never affect us, nor that we should be worrying about it. After all, it's a European problem, isn't it? And we are what we eat, which is... Greek. 

More on Europe in a later post. 

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Cheap 'n' Greek 'n' frugal: Stifado (Οικονομικό στιφάδο)

Prices are in euro (valid in Hania). All ingredients are Greek or locally sourced; those marked with * are considered frugal here because they are cheap and/or people have their own supplies. 

Making a beef stifado in Greece illustrates how one country's frugal meals may actually form another country's luxury meals. Meat is quite expensive these days, especially beef which now costs over 10 euro a kilo for Greek-raised beef, and about the same for French beef (and a little more than that for Dutch beef), so I wouldn't call a beef dish frugal in Greek terms. Since we aren't vegetarians, we still indulge in the classic meat-based meal for Sunday lunch. The trick to making a frugal meal out of expensive meat is to find ways to stretch the dish and keep it filling and tasty.

Classic Greek stifado is basically a stew made from chunks of (usually) beef or rabbit, slow-cooked in a light tomato/wine sauce, with spices and lots of onions. I usually make this dish with rabbit, which I'm given every now and then by farming folk living in the area... but I haven't been given one in a while. I made stifado recently with some Greek beef, which takes a long time to stew to make it very tender. You can use a pressure cooker if you have one; I let my stifado slow-cook for about three hours on the element, just checking it constantly to make sure there are enough liquids in the pot.

To make stifado frugal, I cook a bit more than I need for a Sunday meal, so I can have some leftovers to use in a more frugal meal the next day (serves 4-6)
1 large onion, finely chopped* 
1-2 fat cloves of garlic, finely chopped*
a few glugs of olive oil*
1kg beef cut up into golfball-sized chunks (~11 euro)
half a wineglass of home-brewed wine*
~150g tomato sauce* (a third of a store-bought tin costs about ~30 cents)

2 bay leaves*
1 teaspoon of allspice berries*
salt and pepper*
20 small onions (~50 cents)

Pour some oil into a shallow heavy-based pan, and cook the large onion and garlic till translucent. Add the beef chunks and brown them well all over. Then pour in the wine, and let the beef cook in that (uncovered) for about 20 minutes. Add the tomato sauce, spices and seasonings, together with a cup of water and turn the heat down to the lowest point. Cover the pot and let the beef cook for about 45 minutes. It will need to be checked at this point, and you will add more water to it, but never too much: I added two more cups of water at regular intervals. If you add the water altogether, it will feel like the beef was boiled rather than stewed. Test the beef for doneness by checking if a knife goes through a chunk without too much trouble. As soon as you think you are nearing this point, add the small onions (peeled, with a small cross incised on their root side) and let them sit on top of the meat, half soaking in water. Close the lid and allow the beef to continue to cook until it is done.

Stifado is traditionally served with fries in Greece, but only with freshly-cut potatoes - don't use pre-cooked ones because you'll ruin the taste. You'll need about 4-5 medium-sized potatoes, cut into French fries and (~70 cents for the potatoes) some olive oil for frying.*

Serve 3-5 pieces of beef and a 3-4 onions per person, sitting in a good amount of sauce on the plate, and place a few French fries next to the meat. Serve the stifado with a plain green salad. Keep about 3-4 chunks of meat (with sauce and onions) for tomorrow's frugal meal...

Total cost of meal: about 13 euro; 2.50-3 euro per person.

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Corned beef (Κονμπίφ)

I usually do the supermarket shopping on my own. It's cheaper and safer than when my kids and/or husband come with me. For instance, it's very hard not to refuse to buy the kids one of those flavoured coloured sweet yoghurt pots when they are with me, while my husband simply finds so much variety bedazzling. On a recent trip when he was with me, he surprised me by wanting to buy something that does not pair at all with the as-close-to-nature transparent food lifestyle that we try to live: he wanted to buy a can of corned beef. Something must have triggered his memory when he saw the can on the supermarket shelf.

Corned beef is almost a thing of the past in Crete. This was the only kind available on the supermarket shelves, and there was a very small amount of shelf space allotted to it. On the other hand, there were quite a few varieties of canned luncheon meat on sale, containing all kinds of meat (beef, pork and chicken). Corned beef is neither cheap (this can cost 2.45 euro), nor does it come from Argentina any longer (it is French).

The can of corned beef reminded me of my parents. They liked the stuff enough to make a meal out of it during my youth. I couldn't understand why they liked it, as it resembled nothing of what my mother cooked for us. In fact, it looked quite repulsive. It was always packaged in that special can with a key on the side. On opening the can, you are faced with an oozing brown jelly fat wrapped around a dense sliceable mixture of pinky-red mince. On opening the can with that special key, the jelly would force the meat to slide out of the can when upturned. I remember we used to serve corned beef like this, straight out of the can, sliced up on a plate, and nothing more. It was considered a meal in conjunction with salad and bread, the cheap white resilient spongey pre-sliced stuff, with a zombie-like, yeasty odour and bleached and puffy crumb that we used to buy in NZ before the days of artisan bakeries. This 'meal' would be served on picnics, or when my mother had no time to cook, which was rare. What's more, it was always treated as a full and nourishing meal. It would be a long long time before I put two and two together; in fact, both my parents had died by the time I realised why they treated corned beef as a superior kind of salami.

I got six lean slices from the 200g can of corned beef. Half of them I fried in olive oil by flouring them first, while the other half of the mixture was added to a kolokithokeftedes batter (courgette fritters) and then fried in a similar way. Both patties were palatable - but would I bother to make this again?

My husband also remembers corned beef very well. There was one particular moment in his life where corned beef was in fact the only food available. After completing his studies at a local training centre for aircraft mechanics in the late 70s, he was then drafted for military duty. On arriving in Athens by overnight ferryboat, he took the train to Tripoli in the Peloponese. An army officer had been consigned to this journey, and his role was to take care of all the νεοσύλλεγκτοι, young men like himself, as they made their way to bootcamp. For most of them, it was their first time away from home, and the train journey was where they all ate their first army meal: a slice of cold corned beef, placed on a slice of stale bread. Husband, being unused to such coarse food served so roughly, threw his away, not because he didn't like corned beef, but because, as he explained to me, it wasn't cooked. He later discovered that he would have plenty of time to learn to eat cold corned beef: during training runs in the air force, each cadet would be given a slice of bread (this time, it was always fresh because there was a bakery in the camp) and a small can of corned beef to eat while they were away from the base. If they could manage to hold out a little longer, they would take their can back to the camp kitchens and eat it fried in slices.

*** *** ***

Corned beef became known to Greece during WWII. When the Nazis began confiscating people's food, the Greek people came to know hunger on a large scale. After the Nazis' departure, items like corned beef and other American food products were shipped to Greece through aid packages due to a local shortage of high energy food. Before the advent of supermarkets, not only was food expensive for the average Cretan, it was also difficult to come by so much variety. So corned beef was actually considered cheap and nourishing food, a handy and economical meat product that could be stored easily for a long time until needed.

My husband isn't the only curious person in the house. I was curious to find out why this kind of canned pork made such a sensation in the film "Christmas with the Kranks", starring Jamie Lee Curtis; apparently, Christmas just wasn't the same without this ham in their house (the shape of the can is the same as in the film, but I don't know about the texture).

I have never eaten corned beef since I left New Zealand, so I wondered how we were going to make use of the can that my husband bought. Due to the present ease of access in Crete to any kind of food that one's heart desires, combined with the abundance of fresh local food products, it was difficult to think of a moment when I would need to open a canned product to cook with.

My husband's food memories rest mainly with his mother's food. Although his family were considered poor, being the son of a taxi driver (and possibly also because he was an only child), quality food was always a top priority in their household. His father would go to the central town market, the Agora, and buy the biggest fish, which was never on display, because you had to be a 'special' customer for that kind of product. Still, corned beef made an appearance in his home. He remembers eating it often. Due to her proud Cretan spirit, his mother never served any food straight out of a can; this for her was a sign of slovenliness, γυφτιά. Similar to her recipe for canned Californian squid, she used corned beef in a cooked meal with a red sauce. According to my husband, he remembers eating this meal regularly while growing up.

You need:
1 can of corned beef (or pork, like the one I bought)
2 eggs
1 large tomato
1 medium onion
olive oil
salt and pepper

Heat some oil in a wide saucepan and add the finely chopped onion. Saute till transparent, then add the crumbled corned beef. Let the meat cook for a few minutes until it is coated well in the oil. Add the tomato, crushed as a puree, and stir it into the mixture. Season the corned beef with salt and pepper. Let the pan cook till most of the liquid has evaporated. Then add the two beaten eggs and stir them into the mixture. When the eggs have set, this casserole is ready to eat.

We had this dish served with a salad and some bread, but my husband also recalls that his mother used to cook corned beef from Argentina in this way, and serve it on pasta (spaghetti). My friend Laurene tells me that this could also be used as a pie filling, as she recalls eating in her youth.

This meal resembles sludge. I thought it would end up as the dog's meal. I was surprised that it was enjoyed by 3/4 of the family. I honestly don't think I really want to eat it again. During my husband's youth, the gap between the rich and the poor in Hania may not have been very wide, but even then, the 'not-haves' stood out like sore thumbs among the 'haves'; at times like this when fresh produce was not cheap enough for everyone to afford, this kind of meal was considered real food.

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Paupiettes de veau (Ρολά μοσχάρι)

Maria's still dreaming about French food. And just the other day, she craved some paupiettes de veau, like the ones she had for her very first meal, the first thing that she ate, in Paris a month ago at the Chartier.

But she doesn't live in Paris, she lives in Crete. Can she make these little parcels in her Cretan kitchen?

Paupiettes de veau à l'italienne (de Paulette)

Yes, of course she can! The ingredients, although not exactly the same, are all available locally:

4 escalopes de veau (these need a bit of explanation - see below)
4 petite tranches de jambon (I bought some good quality Greek low-fat ham slices)
4 tranches d'emmenthal (I used Cretan graviera - of course!)
50g de lard (i decided against using both bacon and ham in a beef dish - it's overly decadent)
2 cas de pignons ("OK, you don't really need to add those, do you?" said Mr OC - I omitted the pinenuts in the filling in deference to his culinary wishes)
2 cas de parmesan (we buy freshly grated parmesan on a regular basis, but freshly grated graviera will also do)
3 cas soupe de persil hache (I used the last of this season's parsley from our garden)
ail en poudre (no thanks, fresh garlic is just as good, very finely minced)
sel, poivre (there's nothing better than local sea salt and freshly ground pepper)
huile (extra virgin, our own production!)
concentre de tomates (last summer's tomatoes in season, their taste and freshness perfectly sealed in my home-made bottled sauce)
30cl du vin blanc (no blanc in the house today; my late father's rose production will have to do)

Greek beef is usually tough and chewy, and generally speaking, it is never seen in thin slices in Cretan butcher's displays. Not only that, but it never looks as though it has been hung to dry - it is usually overly fresh, its juices glistening. For this reason, I had to do some careful planning in order to secure the kind of meat cuts I wanted. I could have bought French beef at Marinopoulos, a French supermarket chain, but there is the problem of the beef cuts: you cannot confide in a supermarket assistant at the meat counter to take the time to prepare a cut of meat the way you want it. 

I went to my friendly butcher  in the main Agora of Hania; it's important to be on friendly terms with your butcher, to be able to explicitly state what you want, if you want anything out of the Cretan idea of ordinary (which is very restricted), and my order was definitely out of the ordinary. When I explained it to him, he gave me a knowing look, and told me that he had some German customers who ordered their meat just like that...

I chose a huge chunk of fat-less meat in his display case, and asked him to VERY THINLY SLICE six pieces, each one the size of my palm.To my dismay, I watched in horror as he cut the beef in thick slices. He stopped at the third slice. Then he got out a clean plastic carrier bag (the kind found in the supermarket), cut it on both sides to unfold it, and placed a slice in the middle of the sheet. Then he started pounding the meat with a mallet, and he didn't stop until that thick palm-sized slice of beef covered the whole sheet of plastic:

Each piece of beef yielded six strips of meat, just the right size for the paupiettes; I used only two of the three pieces of meat (and made 12 little roll-ups). The rest of the recipe was child's play: in fact, my kids helped me assemble them, by watching the video. I preferred the toothpicks instead of the string parcels, simply because it was easier to handle: here are my works of art:

   

Cooking the paupiettes was simple; they had to be nicely browned on all sides. The process for making the sauce was quite different to what I'm used to in Greek cooking, but the video made it easy to follow. The important step in the Cretan version of paupiettes de veau is to cook them long enough to make sure the meat would be soft and not chewy. To do this, once the paupiettes are added to the tomato sauce, single out one of the paupiettes, and prod it with a fork every now and then when checking on the cooking progress (it will need longer than 30 minutes when using Greek beef). While they continue cooking, make sure there is enough liquid in the pan so that the paupiettes don't stick to the bottom of the pan if they are going to get a longer-than-French-usual cooking time: try adding 3-4 tablespoons of water at a time, and no more. When you're satisfied that the meat has been cooked to tenderness, you can safely turn off the heat.

The paupiettes at the Chartier weren't cooked in tomato sauce, which is where I suppose the 'a l'italienne' bit comes in; I preferred the lighter Chartier sauce than the saucy tomato version that I made, but the latter fits better into the Greek cooking style: Mr OC was very pleased with the outcome.

The paupiettes can be made in stages: I prepared them overnight and left them to soak in a little wine before cooking them the next day. They go well with a fresh green salad and some freshly fried or roast potatoes. A friend of mine suggested that they could also be filled with vegetables instead of ham, like for example slices of aubergine, zucchini or mushroom, as a healthier alternative.

Paupiettes de veau avec pommes de terre persillees et salade au chou: this meal did not yield many leftovers!

It's not hard to bring a little bit of Paris into my Cretan kitchen; I love cooking French food with Cretan ingredients - they adapt to it so well. But I will admit to a couple of things: Firstly, the texture of the Cretan beef was not the same as what I was eating in Paris; it was less fibrous and more tender there, even though the meat was not necessarily 'French beef' per se (the Chartier uses both local and imported meat). My paupiette sauce was not clear (as in Paris) or creamy (as in the video); the beef had been beaten so much to tenderise it, that it left finely minced bits in the sauce, making it thicker and grittier.

Paupiette de veau on a bed of pilafi

Secondly, once olive oil is used in the place of butter in a French recipe, it changes the taste to the point that the meal becomes very Mediterranean rather than French. But it's also very hard for the average Cretan cook to charge ahead with the butter instead of making a grab for the olive oil canister, especially when so much liquid gold is available!

But one thing is the same: Bon appetit = Καλή όρεξη (Kali orexi)!

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Chili con carne (Tσίλι με κρέας και κόκκινα φασόλια)

Whenever I can, I cook the midday meal (which could be eaten any time from 1pm to 4:30pm, depending on work and school committments) the evening before. I really hate my daylight hours stuck at home cooking a meal. It's not the preparation time, which, for Greek food, is usually a brief but busy period cleaning and chopping; it's the waiting time for the pot to boil, and the meal to cook through. You can't leave the house, and there is always work to be done. That's why I usually cook in the evenings. This kind of cooking routine is well suited to cooking on the stove top rather than the oven; some oven-baked meals may dry out, but this is not a problem with saucepan-based food - they just get better the next day. Pastitsio is an exception - that too just gets better as it ages.

I made this chili just recently on a Friday night, to have the first day of the weekend free to go shopping. Here's an easy chili recipe for a cold day's meal. When I served it up the next day, the flavours of the chili had blended well and it was an unforgettable meal.

You need:
a piece of beef about the size of a big palm, partially frozen
an onion
2-3 cloves of garlic
a few tablespoons of olive oil
1 small glass of wine
1 teaspoon of chili pepper (I only had the powdered form)
1 teaspoon of cayenne pepper (ditto as for chili pepper)
1 teaspoon of oregano
1 teaspoon of cumin
1-2 tomatoes, pureed (I used my home-made tomato sauce)
salt (and black pepper, if you wish)
2-3 cups of shredded cabbage
1 can of red kidney beans

When beef is partially frozen, it cuts more easily into thin slices or small cubes. I cubed the meat into dice-sized portions. Saute the chopped onion and garlic in the oil, then add the meat bits and let them brown well. When the meat is done, add the wine and mix well. Let the liquids come to boiling point, then add the tomatoes and spices, including the salt. Place a lid on the pot and let the meat simmer away at the lowest heat point until it is almost done - we like the meat to be very tender in this stew, which means I cook it for at least 80-90 minutes.

Check the pot occasionally to see if the liquid needs to be topped up until the meat is done to the preferred texture (I added up to a wineglass to get the right consistency). Just before the meat is cooked, add the cabbage and drained red beans. Let the stew cook till the meat is done, and the meal is ready.

I've made a similar chili meal using minced meat instead of meat cubes. Funnily enough, I made it at the same time as I am cooking it now - the seasons play a big role in our daily meals. Serve the hot chili served on top of a plate of plain rice, with chilled yoghurt or guacomole dip to cool things down. Make sure you have some cold beer available too!

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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 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.

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.

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.

Above: the local super. Below: 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...

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Greek comfort food (Γεύμα παρηγoριάς)

Just look at our weather today:

There were signs warning of the ominous weather yesterday, despite the sunshine; that was just a ploy to keep the tourist activity alive. People were still walking around in their summer clothes, and we even managed to go to the beach. But the rain couldn't stay away for too long and by all means, it's more than welcome. We've had more than the average rainfall for this time of year.

Of course, I love it. It's cooling, refreshing, cleansing, invigorating, like a battery recharger, unlike the summer's stifling heat, which saps the energy out of you, leaving you with a feeling of suffocation, as if the heat is drowning you. It's still humid, but at least we've cooled down by a few degrees. And we don't need to water the garden any more; the rain does a great job. Maybe it slows down the growth rate, but the coffers are full anyway; there's little more room in the deep freeze. The perfect weather to stay at home. The best weather to cook a hearty meal and still have the stamina to eat it in the midday sun, which was well hidden today amongst the puffy rainclouds.



I found a rather large piece of beef at the butcher's the other day. If you like your meat, then you may have experienced this feeling some time in your own life: its colour (dark red) seemed to be screaming out to me: "I'm fresh, I'm tender, EAT ME!" There were very few marblings in this cut, which means very little fat; a very lean cut of beef, all meat. Greek beef tends to be rather tough to cook and eat, which is why we don't often buy or cook it in our own home (except for minced beef). It was my lucky day. This recipe - beef in tomato sauce with peas and carrots: μοσχάρι κοκκινιστό με αρακά και καρότα - is very popular right around the country, especially in this weather.

You need:
lean beef, approximately 800-1000g, cut in small chunks
1/2 cup oil
4 large onions, cut in medium slices
2 large cloves of garlic (optional), chopped finely
1/2 glass of red wine
4 large tomatoes, pureed (I used my own preserved summer tomato sauce)
1 teaspoon of tomato paste
salt and pepper
500g frozen peas (something we might try growing this winter)
2 large carrots, cut into chunks or sliced into rounds

Heat the oil in a large saucepan. Add the onions and garlic, and coat till they are well oiled. Cook for a few minutes (do not burn), then add the beef chunks. Let them cook till there is no red colour on the meat, turning them over to make sure all sides are coated and cooked in the oil, over a moderate heat. Add the wine, and let the meat cook for another five minutes to soak up the flavour. Then add the tomatoes and seasonings. Turn the heat to very low, place a lid on the pot, and don't open it for at least an hour; if this is Greek beef, it will need at least two hours to cook thoroughly (which is why we often buy French beef from the Carrefour supermarket, or locally raised beef from a nearby village; they are fed and slaughtered differently, creating tastier beef).

After the first hour has passed, take the lid of the pot (everything should be looking creamy and saucy), add the peas and carrots, place the lid on the pot and let the vegetables cook away, until the beef is also tender, according to your taste spectrum. I cooked this beef for two hours; we like it to fall away from the knife. This recipe is an adaptation of stifado; beef can also be cooked in that way, the main difference being the addition of spices and whole onions. Instead of the carrots and peas, a local alternative to vegetables is a handful of green olives, in which case, this red sauce is called kapama (καπαμά).

The traditional way to serve this meal is with fried potatoes and a green salad. A healthier alternative is to present it on a bed of plain steamed rice.

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Stir-fry beef with vegetables (Κινέζικο μοσχάρι με λαχανικά)

It's been quite cold in Hania (we're not used to anything under 10 degrees Celsius here), and since the children aren't at school, I can't be bothered leaving the house to go to shopping for supplies. I have been content to use up ingredients in our fridge, freezer and pantry. Today, I don't know what my food will taste like, because I have never made it before, and I am not using a recipe. I did look at some recipes for stir-fry beef over the web, but I don't believe they would work for Greek beef. You will probably agree with me.

Take Delia's recipe: "... 1 tablespoon of oil, let it sizzle [in the pan], then add the meat and toss it and stir-fry it in the hot oil for about 2 minutes. Then remove the meat to a plate." Two minutes cooking time for the beef? Greek beef is never tender enough to be cooked so little; try eating beef cooked for two minutes, even if it is cut into thin strips. It's be like eating a rubber band that eventually snaps back into your face when pulled.

I liked the sound of the sizzling beef recipe on the bbc some shaoxing wine, char sui sauce, peanut oil, caster sugar, mushroom soy sauce, sesame oil, fresh ginger, kecap manis, and Sichuan pepper; we have no Asian food supply stores in Hania, and the variety of Asian ingredients available here is limited to the BLUE DRAGON range (an utterly tasteless substitute for the genuine product, I'm sorry to say). I had bought some sesame oil a while ago just to try it out, but unfortunately it doesn't agree with our palate, so it is lurking somewhere in the back of my pantry. We can get fresh ginger (thanks to the increased demand for the product, due mainly to the influx of Asian immigrants into Greece), but I'd have to drag myself out of the house to buy some. Shopping with children in the supermarket over the Christmas holidays means I will end up buying more Christmas decorations and cheap toys and junk food than I ever thought I needed.

You need:
half a kilo of beef, sliced into short thin strips
half a wineglass of soy sauce
a few tablespoons of sesame oil
a wineglass of white wine
2 medium onion, minced
6 cloves of garlic, minced
Marinate the beef in the oil, soy sauce and wine overnight.

The next day, saute the onion and garlic in a little olive oil till soft and translucent. Then add the beef with a little of the marinade (discard the rest). Mix the ingredients well, and stir them around until they are all well coated with the olive oil. Then add:

• 2 large carrots, sliced into thin rounds
• 2 medium onions, sliced thinly
• 2 large green peppers, sliced into short thin strips
• a can of sliced mushrooms, drained
  
• freshly ground pepper and salt

Stir everything to mix all the ingredients in well. Let the beef cook until it is done; Greek beef needs at least half an hour when cut in slivers. The other vegetables will have become quite soft by this stage, so plan to add them after 20 minutes cooking time if you prefer a crunchy stir-fry. When you add the vegetables, you could also add:

• any other small-cut vegetables that you like
• chili (in any form), or any other spice that you prefer

Before serving the meal, I added 10 drops of tabasco sauce. I prefer it to chili powder and dried chilis. It gives it a more authentic foreign taste. If there will be eaters who are not in favour of very spicy or hot food, you can place this sauce on the table and each diner can add it to his individual plate. This dish doesn't need a salad to go with it because it contains a lot of vegetables. Serve it over a plate of hot noodles, steamed rice or pilafi rice (save the boiled chicken meat to make chicken pie) - and don't forget the white wine.

©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.

MORE MEAT RECIPES:
Avgolemono stew
Sunday roast
Chicken
Rabbit/Hare
Mince
Curried pork chops
Tsigariasto
Souvlaki
Yiouvetsi
Pork

Psarosoupa (Ψαρόσουπα - fish soup)

We still have NOT turned the heating on in Hania, but we DID have our first thunderstorm for the season this week - a fantastic display of roars and flashes reminded us that winter is finally here. It's not very cold yet, but even so, the sun still shines enough to turn a cold dawn into a humid morning. This cold weather is a good reason to make fish soup, an easy but somewhat demanding meal, containing such a variety of ingredients that it will suit everyone's tastes. It's not a meal that can be frozen, but it provides two completely different kinds of dishes, which compensates for the extra effort required to make this meal.

I use frozen fish to make this meal, although fresh fish can be used - but it's too expensive in Hania. A family of four could need 25 euro worth of fresh fish to make a decent fish soup - no thanks, not for my purse. Choose a fish species that has lots of thick meat on it. I like the taste and texture of red mullet. I also used another large plump fish which we call fangri in Greece. The more variety, the more delicious the soup will taste. You also need a variety of winter vegetables. The traditional Greek ones for this soup are carrot, onion, celery, courgettes and potatoes. I hate using courgettes in the winter, as they can only be grown in a greenhouse (these are my husband's choice); my 'foreign' additions include broccoli and brussel sprouts, but I would also add any other firm green vegetable that is in season. By the way, the ingredients and the method for making this soup are exactly the same as for meat soup, except that you use chunks of beef instead of fish (of course, ha, ha, ha).

I like to use five pieces of fish for this meal, and any amount of vegetables that I have available. The boiled veges make a wonderful hot or cold salad, with the traditional Greek olive oil-lemon-and-salt dressing. When preparing the vegetables and fish, clean them and leave everything whole. In a large pot, place the vegetables that need the most cooking to become tender, eg carrots. At the top of the pot, place the vegetables that need the least cooking, eg celery. Let the pot boil away until the veges are done. Then carefully lift them out and place them on a large dish, each kind heaped on its own. It will look beautiful. Now place the fish, slightly thawed with as few scales as possible in the pot and let them cook till done (when the flesh is tender); it doesn't need a long time. Lift the fish out of the pot when done and remove the skin, bones and innards, and place it on top of the veges or on the side in its own mound. It doesn't matter if it breaks up. Put the fish and vege platter aside. At this point, you can choose to serve the platter on its own, or make the soup and serve that on its own or accompanied by the fish and veges. We usually eat the platter contents in one meal, and I make the soup for the evening meal, to warm us up on a cold winter's night.

Now take the wonderfully aromatic stock you have just created with the fish and vegetables, and strain it through a colander into another pot; at this point, you are probably wondering how many items of crockery and kitchen utensils you will have lightly scented with the smell of the sea. Don't worry, you're almost there... Take a small piece of fish, half a potato, half a carrot, a bit of onion, a few leaves of brussel srpouts and a bit of courgette (which I wouldn't use myself) and blend them to a soft pulp with two large fresh tomatoes. If they don't blend well, add some stock to help in the liquidisation. Pour the pulp into the stock, and heat it up. When it is warm, add just enough rice to turn the stock into a soup (and not a pilau rice dish). Season the soup with salt and pepper, and add some olive oil so that the soup is not watery. The soup must be served immediately. Serve it in soup plates, and set a small plate for each diner to allow them to help themselves to the warmed-up platter of fish and vegetables. There should be lemon halves, salt and a bottle of olive oil on the table to allow each person to dress the fish and veges to their liking. If you serve it on its own, it can also be accompanied by a variety of cheeses. Don't forget the crunchy sourdough bread and a good glass of white wine!

©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.

MORE FISH RECIPES:
Bakaliaros (cod)
Hake
Bakaliaros - bakaliaraki
Octopus stew
Shrimp in lemon
Squid stew
Squid fried
Taramasalata
Mussels sauce

MORE SOUPS:
Chicken stock
Poached fish soup
Fennel soup
Avgolemono
Leek and potato potage
Lentil soup
Bean soup
Black-eyed bean soup
French onion soup
Pumpkin soup

Yiouvetsi (Γιουβέτσι - roast meat with rice pasta)

Here's a popular Sunday roast dish, an alternative to meat and potatoes. This meal contains pasta (usually in the form of rice), and the meat it is usually served with is the head of a sheep or goat. Sounds a little like offal, doesn't it? This is a delicacy in Crete, even more so since there is only one head, so it's usually reserved for the head of the family. The logic behind the recipe is that in the past when there were no fridges, and not much meat available in poor rural areas, all parts of an animal were eaten in some way, hence the birth of this dish. The idea of pasta in the oven is a recent addition in Cretan cooking; rice and potatoes are more traditional. You may be wondering who is going to eat this in my house; I have also included some other cuts of meat in the tin, so there will be plenty of takers. This meal is at its most delicious when you use free-range chicken meat.

To make this meal, you need to prepare the sheep's head. Put it in vinegar and water to soak for a couple of hours. Then boil it in salted water for about half an hour. Now you can place it in a roasting tin with other cuts of meat, and cook it in the same way as for Sunday roast. When the meat is practically done, add 250 grams of rice pasta along with 3-4 cups of water. The pasta doesn't need a lot of cooking time. Scoop up a serving of pasta onto a plate with a piece of meat on the side. Don't forget the salad!

©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.

MORE MEAT RECIPES:
Avgolemono stew
Sunday roast
Chicken
Rabbit/Hare
Mince
Curried pork chops
Tsigariasto
Stir-fry beef
Souvlaki
Pan-cooked pork chops

Bamies (Μπάμιες με ψητό στο φούρνο - lady's fingers, okra)

Okra are an old-fashioned summer vegetable with an acquired taste that not many people are interested in eating these days, unless they have tasted them before and know how delicious they are when cooked properly. The preparation of these vegetables takes a long time, their texture is a little slimy, and their taste leaves much to be desired if they are not treated appropriately before being cooked. They are considered a specialty vegetable in African, Indian and Carribean cuisine. In Greece, they are eaten as a stew in a tomato sauce, or put into the roasting pan or a casserole with potatoes and meat. My mother used to buy tinned okra in New Zealand from an Italian grocer's on Pirie St. We would always have that revolting gooey seedy slime in a chicken casserole. It just made no sense to eat it in New Zealand when there was a plethora of other fresh vegetables available for roasting with meat, which my parents seemed hesistant to try themselves: kumara, pumpkin, baby squash. I had never seen fresh okra until I came to Greece, and only then could I appreciate why some people call it the king of summer vegetables. It has a unique chewy taste; when added to a roast, it tastes like jerky.

Okra need to be sun-dried before they are used, otherwise they will excrete an off-putting slimy juice. They also have a further preparation ritual: once the okra have been dried, you need to cut off the stalky top without slicing it off (be careful - their hairy texture can cause a slight rash), then they need to be "shaved" right around the cap where the stalk was cut off, but the cap must not be sliced off, otherwise they will become slimy once again. As if that's not enough, they also need to be soaked for about an hour in some wine or vinegar to remove the slime and bitterness. Here's what touregypt says about preparing okra: "Okra must be cooked so that its slimy texture is eliminated. The Greeks have the best technique - applause, applause! - for achieving this. Trim the conical tops with a sharp knife, then soak the okra in red wine vinegar for 30 minutes, allowing 1/2 cup wine per pound. Drain, rinse and dry the okra."

A friend of ours grows okra in his garden. When we visited him, he let us pick our own (we itched for hours afterwards). We're having them today in the traditional Sunday roast. There are no set amounts of ingredients in a roast: it always depends on the number of people eating. I used the famous Greek 'tapsi' - a large roasting pan used for making roasts and pies.

You need to:
Wash the pieces of lamb well to get rid of bone shards.
Peel and cut some potatoes in large quarter-moon chunks.
Puree some fresh tomatos in the blender (you can skin and de-seed them if you have time, but I never bother; without the seeds and skin, the sauce is thinner)
Arrange the meat and potatoes in the roasting dish, season with salt and pepper, pour over some olive oil and the the tomatos. Let them cook for half an hour before adding the prepared okra, as well as half a cup of water. Cook in medium heat until the meat and potatoes are tender. Okra don't need much cooking time, so make sure you don't add them at the beginning of the cooking time, otherwise they may burn. I cover the roasting dish with aluminium foil so that the food doesn't brown too quickly, and take it off half an hour before the end of the cooking time, raising the heat to give the roast a BBQ look.

For an alternative to the same dish, try this post.

©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.