Horta (Χόρτα σταμναγκάθι και μαρουλίδες)

The word 'horta' is the plural form of 'horto', meaning 'grass' - not to be confused with the kind of grass that grows on a lawn, which is called 'grasidi'. The Greeks use the word 'horta' interchangeably for the unwanted grasses and weeds that grow in fields, as well as for the various edible leafy greens that grow seasonally throughout the year. These usually grow wild, and are picked fresh for eating within the same week. In the summer, various kinds of horta grow uncultivated in our garden, and we never run out of them until the end of the season. We are growing some stamnagathi (spiny chicory) in our garden in front of the artichoke borders, and are hoping that it seeds to produce more plants next year. We also grow spinach and carrots, parsley and radish, with an unavoidable intercrop of stinging nettles. Although it grows wild, spiny chicory is in short supply and only grows in unspoilt, slighly remote areas of the province. The greens that are sold in shops are the cultivated varieties of the same wild species. They are not as tasty as those found in the wild, but beggars can't be choosers. Whether they are cultivated or found in the wild, spare a thought for the pickers; it's hard work bent over a field in the middle of winter. No wonder they are so expensive; I bought 2 kilos of horta last Thursday, at E7.30 a kilo - more expensive than meat, you might be wondering. Imagine how poor Ivy, who lives in Athens, feels when she pays E12 a kilo for her stamnagathi (spiny chicory)! Low income earners can hardly afford them. I prefer to buy them once every fortnight. As fresh greens, they can be eaten raw like a salad; once cooked, they can be kept in the fridge for a week, and they are eaten as a main meal or a warm salad. They are a very important part of our daily diet, given that we eat vegetables or salad with every main meal.

My absolute favorites are stamnagathi (spiny chicory; Cichorium spinosum), a low-lying shrub that grows amongst thorns in the hilly areas of Hania (foreground), often referred to spiny chicory in English. I also love maroulides, a kind of indigenous dandelion plant (background). My introduction to horta was in New Zealand when my immigrant Greek mother would take me and my sister to Pirie St Park, a few minutes walk away from where we lived in Mt Victoria, Wellington. We'd play on the swings, while she foraged among the low scrub and snapped the stems off bushes of amaranth, or dug up rooted grasses such as dandelion with a knife, which she gathered into a plastic supermarket carrier bag. Imagine how that would look in the days of political correctness: a 40-year-old woman brandishing a knife in a swing park! I had never tasted horta before I was 12; I found it too embarassing to even consider it. What would I tell my friends at Clyde Quay School when they asked me what we usually ate for tea (as the evening meal is called in NZ) at my house? "Grass? That's what sheep eat! Baa-baa! You have weeds for tea? Hey, everyone, Maria eats marijuana!"

My mother's old horta haunts in Wellington, NZ

This is just what some boys from Wellington College, a boy's high school close to our house, once jeered out to us (and then broke out into raucous laughter) when my mother (lady on the left in the photo) took me to their school grounds to collect some horta. It was after school hours on a fine day, probably a Monday, when my parents didn't open the fish shop (until the "kinezo", as my parents called him, opened up a takeaways shop 300 metres away from our own shop, cutting our profits and forcing us to become more competitive). I pretended that I was deaf, dumb, mute, some kind of alien, and I didn't understand what they were saying to us. Now that I think back on that day, we must have looked really queer holding a plastic bag full of roadside greens that had been removed from the carefully tended grounds of one of the most revered boys' schools in Wellington. My mother always used a blunt silver knife to prise the horta out of the ground if they were very well-rooted, another good reason for someone to stare at you wildly. The sad thing about this incident is that the boys weren't pale-faced Pakehas - I still hold an image of that day: they two of them were in school uniform, sitting on a high fence above some flower beds. They were wearing regulation grey shorts, so that their brown legs were highly visible. Maybe they were still in the school grounds for sports practice. They were Maori, and they had no idea that what these two grasscutters were doing was actually what some of their ancestors had been doing for many years before the white man came and 'taught' them to eat different food.

My mother probably got a tip-off from her sister about where to collect the greens; one of my aunt's neighbours seemed to know all the best places for collecting horta, but wouldn't tell anyone else, obviously to keep all the good places known to himself only. "I saw Pantelis coming out of his car with a bagful of horta - wonder where he picked them from..." But horta were everywhere: by the hill at the end of Elisabeth St, near the bowling greens at Pirie St, surrounding the Byrd Memorial at the Mt Victoria Lookout, the whole of Wellington was so green that everyone who owned a quarter-acre bungalow could pick enough horta straight from their own patch of garden. My aunt still manages to do this; rain has a definite advantage, something that is lacking in Crete.

Worse tidings awaited me when a teacher from the school explained to us that a particular plant called black nightshade was highly poisonous and we shouldn't touch it at all. "Oh, that," I said, "my mother picks and cooks it and we eat it." What did I say that for? The ahead-of-her-time, politically-correct, progressive-thinking teacher gave me a funny look, and said, "Oh, does she?" Wasn't that nice of her? When I went home that evening, I told my mother about what the teacher told us. "Only the berries are poisonous and we don't eat those," she told me, "and you always eat stifno together with vlita." The amount of stifno you eat with vlita should be in a smaller proportion to that of vlita, about 1:4 stifno:vlita.


Talking about grass-eaters in my youth was a definite no-no; the same applied to other 'foreign' foods, like snails (found those in the garden, too) and black olives (from the Italian grocer's close to the park). It was simply something you didn't talk about as a young child growing up in the NZ of the seventies. How different life is now, when any oddity concerning your cultural heritage is an aspect to be flaunted, with no shame attached. And if you can get a journalist to write an article about it, you'll get your fifteen minutes worth of fame.

At the time, I was too young and ignorant to understand the importance of leafy greens: the role they played in the good health of the rural poor, how they help to fight against diabetes and heart disease, their low calorie and high nutritious value. Unfortunately, the original eaters of these greens in NZ were also swayed away from their native diet with the arrival of the European, and they, too, forgot the important role of puha (as horta are known by the New Zealand Maori) in their daily diet. It does beg the question why my Greek immigrant parents went to such lengths to find the food they were used to eating in the poor Greek villages that they were brought up in, while the native-born of a country, where it rained half the week and there was never a shortage of foliage, had been tricked into forsaking their native diet, and had had it instilled in them to buy their food from shops. I am not advocating a method for reducing poverty levels by getting the poor to forage for their own food in public parks; if this was ever implemented, anyway, they would probably be charged a tax , something like a congestion charge, to compensate for injuries caused to living organisms. On my last visit to NZ, however, I noticed that puha (the Maori word for amaranth) was being sold as an upmarket salad vegetable, in small bunches, tied together like a posy. My mother's sister who still lives in Mt Victoria picks the same stuff from the comfort of her own home, right from her tiny patch of a garden, where pasrley, mint, dandelion and amaranth grow nearly all year round without being sown.

The main problem with freshly picked wild greens is that you don't know who (or what) was treading (or doing whatever else) on them before you picked them. So it's very, very important to wash and clean them well, whether they've been picked in the wild or bought from a store. Plug the sink and wash them in there, beating them about, draining the sink and filling it up again, until the water is not muddy and has a certain clarity you normally associate with water. You will use a lot of it in doing this job. This is not being wasteful; it should make you think about the less affluent, whose water supply is impure or non-existent. Count your blessings here. Once you've washed the horta well, remove the rotten leaves; they stick out a mile away by their brown colour, as opposed to the natural green of the horta. Trim the stems if they are too tough to eat, or contain woody parts. Dandelion roots will actually become very soft when boiled, and they are the most delicious part of the plant. Give the horta a final wash in the sink.

At this point, you have to decide if you are going to eat them raw or cooked. Because they are a winter crop, we prefer to have them served hot. I believe that they could be used in the same way as spinach and vlita for kalitsounia and spanakopita, although I've never tried it (spinach being plentiful at this time of year). If you've decided to cook them, get your largest pot out of the cupboard and fill it with water which you've set to boil. Once the water starts bubbling, add enough washed horta to fill the pot to the top, and wait for them to shrink in size as they wilt in the heat of the water. Then add more horta, and turn them over using a ladle, or large slotted spoon to avoid burning yourself with the scalding water which may spill over the pot, so that the wilted greens are on top of the fresher ones. This is why we never add horta to a pot of cold water; it's also a waste of energy.

Once the pot is full, and it starts to boil, let the horta cook for about five minutes, and then drain away the water, and refill the pot with fresh water. Let the greens boil away again. I do this at least twice to remove all the impurities from the horta which weren't removed when I was cleaning them before cooking. It also removes the bitter taste of the greens, especially if they are cultivated and not grown in the wild. The water will have taken on a green colour, becoming lighter and more golden with every change of water. I left the horta boiling uncovered for an hour in their last change of water. This is a matter of taste. My family prefers them soft rather than crucnhy. In restaurants, they are served crunchier than in private homes. This is not just to skimp on cooking time and fuel consumption; in their less cooked form, they are bulkier, meaning that you can serve less of them on a plate. Coincidentally, restaurant owners also freeze parboiled (well-drained) individual servings of horta, and heat them up in boiling water when they are ordered by customers. I wouldn't do this myself, as horta are widely available in Crete throughout the year. I remember doing this once nearly 10 years ago when we had been allowed into a friend's field and told to dig up as many greens as we wanted to take away with us. We razed the field.

The final product is served with the traditional Greek dressing: olive oil, salt and lemon juice. If they are not being served as a salad, they can be the main course, served with boiled potatoes, boiled eggs, gruyere or feta, and of course, thick slices of sourdough bread to mop up the liquid. We're having it today with some leftover soutzoukakia from yesterday's meal.

This post is dedicated to my late mother, Zambia.

©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 WILD GREENS RECIPES:
Kalitsounia fried
Kalitsounia in the oven
Marathopites
Spiral pie
Hortopita (spanakopita)
Horta in summer
Sorrel
Swiss chard (silverbeet)
Eggs with mustard greens
Mountain tea
Octopus stew
Wild asparagus

MORE SALADS:
Cabbage salad
Lettuce salad
Salad advice
Greek village salad
Cretan salad
Summer horta
Beetroot salad

See also:
A day in the field
The rape of the countryside
A summer garden
A winter garden
An autumn garden
Table olives

Soutzoukakia (Σουτζουκάκια Σμυρνέικα)

One of my husband's all-time favorite meals is a spicy homemade meatball shaped into a sausage and cooked in a spicy red sauce. My mother-in-law would make it often for her favorite child (she has no other). Soutzoukakia have their origins in Smyrna, a predomninantly Greek-inhabited city in Asia Minor, now called Izmir and part of modern-day Turkey. They have now become a staple part of the Greek menu, but they are still considered a taste sensation, because of their infamous historical link with the old city whose food art has been immortalised as the "cuisine of the City" (meaning the former Constantinople). I decided to make them today because they are a 'fussy' dish - these rissoles need frying, then they need stewing, and finally they need fried potatoes as an accompaniment - and I now have the time to make them as I am still on holiday break from school.

Therefore, I have had enough time to do some research on them, and compare cooking techniques from various sources. I have many recipe books which I usually browse through for ingredients rather than cooking instructions, but invariably, I turn to the web for all my recipes these days. Why do I do this? Because it's convenient, and maybe because it shows how truly contemporary I am. Maybe I should be more interested in my past, and before presenting the recipe for Smyrna sausages, I should go into a detailed account of the plight of the Smyrnaen people (as some fellow food bloggers have done) who fled their burning city in 1922, ending up in various parts of the world, and shaping the history of modern Greece; my mother-in-law obtained her recipe from one of those immigrants. I'd rather not make Smyrna a discussion point on my blog, but NOT because I want to forget the past. As a linguist, I cannot do that; I know that the word for 'soutzoukakia' is derived from the Turkish 'soutzouk'; the Greeks and Turks are connected with each other in a way that is too close for comfort.

What I'd rather do instead is to discuss the modern Greek psyche in terms of our latest political scandal: why did a good-looking, highly-educated 35-year-old female employee in the Ministry of Culture, who came from a poor background, was first in class in her high school years, earned a university scholarship and spoke four languages, have an affair with the Undersecretary to the Minister, her boss (currently in the intensive care ward after a suicide attempt), end up in jail after being accused of blackmailing him with a video recording of their illicit affair, thereby forcing him into resigning from his post (bestowed to him by the Prime Minister himself, a personal friend of the poor man), and is now cawaiting trial under the charge of being an accessory to his suicide, all for the sake of securing a permanent high-flying post in the said Ministry? This shows the values upheld dearly by modern Greeks: the class struggle (I may be poor, but I can improve myself), educational achievement (I want a university degree because I want a good job), the desire for a permanent appointment in a government position (I want a financially secure job, with full health and pension benefits, from which I can never be fired). Somewhere down the line, though, the mysterious young lady went to unacceptable lengths to secure the great Greek dream; it drove her to the point that she ruined her reputation and destroyed all her chances of achieving success in modern Greek terms, a modern Christine Keeler. What drove this woman to have sex with a dirty old man 20 years her senior? What was she expecting to procure from such a relationship? while the government is embroiled in this scandal, at the same time, it poses questions concerning the Greek personality. A minority (only, I believe) do not share these same ideals for themselves or their children. Does that make those of us who deviate from this line as exceptions to the rule? Are we less Greek than those who adhere to these priniciples? Now that could be a good lesson in modern Greek history - the story of a typical Greek who could be the key to bringing down the government.

From the Spicy Saucy Steamy political Scandal, let's get back to the Spicy Saucy Steamy Smyrnean Sausages. I chose Evelyn's recipe for soutzoukakia because of the richly spiced sauce she describes, using fresh, as opposed to tinned, tomato; this recipe uses more herbs and spices than the other recipes I looked at. The skinless sausages are made with wine, garlic, onion, parsley, cheese, oregano, cumin, salt and pepper, while the sauce contains vinegar, garlic, bay leaf, sugar, cinnamon and cloves. Not for the faint-hearted! I doubled the recipe, because, as this is a fiddly dish, it is worth making it with fresh ingredients, and then freezing half of it for a meal another day. But I didn't follow her cooking technique to the letter. I can't imagine frying 20 rissoles in 2 tablespoons of oil, let alone straining the same said amount after use and using it to make a sauce!


For the meatballs, you need:
2 slices thick dense bread (crusts removed)
1/2 cup dry wine
Soak the bread in the wine for about 5 minutes, or until thoroughly softened. Then, squeeze out excess wine. In a large bowl, add:
1 lb ground lean meat (beef or veal)
1/2 cup finely chopped onions
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 egg
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
2 tablespoons grated spicy cheese like the Greek kefalograviera (parmesan makes an excellent substitute)
1/2 teaspoon oregano
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
salt and pepper

Combine the ingredients until thoroughly blended. Cover and chill for 1 to 2 hours. Dampen your hands, pinch off small portions of meat mixture and shape into approximately oval rolls (looks more like a short fat sausage than a meatball or meat pattie). At this stage, you can freeze them for later use. If you are going to cook them, dredge them in flour and fry them in a little olive oil until they are well browned and cooked all over.


For the sauce, you need:
some of the oil you fried the meatballs with
2 lbs fresh tomatoes (we still have some growing in the garden - in January, you exclaim? the last of summer's crops) - add a teaspoon of tomato puree if you haven't got enough fresh tomato
2 tablespoons of dry wine
1 tablespoon vinegar
1 garlic clove, chopped
1 bay leaf
3/4 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

Strain the oil you fried the meatballs in through a fine sieve and pour some of it into a shallow frying pan. I didn't add too much oil, because the meatballs had enough in them. Add all the sauce ingredients, bring to the boil and simmer until the sauce is thick. Drop in the meatballs, stir to cover all over with the sauce, and simmer covered for 15 minutes.

When you've done all this, treat yourself to a glass of wine - you must be pooped! I'm just about to make myself a cup of coffee and help myslef to some melomakarona. I noticed that the Christmas tree is being taken down in Trafalgar Square, but here in Greece, Christmas holidays aren't over until after St John's (7th January).

Serve the soutzoukakia hot with rice, french fries, or mashed potatoes, a mixed salad and some peasant sourdough bread to mop up the juices. If you want to use the frozen soutzoukakia, you need to defrost them thoroughly before dredging them in flour, because they won't cook properly otherwise. Then you proceed with the frying and sauce as the recipe states.

©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 MINCE RECIPES:
Biftekia
Chili con carne
Dolmades
Makaronada
Moussaka
Cottage pie
Papoutsakia
Pastitsio

Pan-cooked porkchops (Χοιρινή μπριτζόλα στο τηγάνι)

This dish should be called 'easy-peasy no-frills pan-fried porkchops' because it cooks all by itself with very little help from the chef! Today, Agios Vasilis (St Basil, the Greek version of Father Christmas) brought us some gifts that we wanted to pore over, leaving us very little time to cook. My husband got a book describing the instructions given to British servicemen on what to expect in France during WWII (his main interest in history), Aristotle got a pair of binoculars, Christine got a kaleidoscope, and Mummy didn't get anything, because she had already bought many Christmas presents for herself (as well as all the family's). There were also books about the Amazon, marine life, famous buildings, what's under the ground, the artist Matisse and how certain technological achievements are produced; all of this left us very little time to cook, so here's the quick and easy recipe for porkchops, served with cabbage-and-carrot salad and (leftover) pilafi rice.

I cannot provide a cooking time with this sort of recipe. Every gas or electric element cooks differently, and most importantly, the meat you use plays a significant role: was it free-range or battery-style meat? What did the animal feed on, natural ingredients (eg fresh grass, hay) or mechanically-produced animal feed? Never go by cooking times in (especially) meat recipes; always ask yourself questions about where the meat was bought from and how it was produced. I've already experienced this kind of problem with chicken. If I cook free-range chicken to make Cretan pilafi, the meat may need at least an hour of boiling till it becomes tender. Yet, if I roast a supermarket battery hen in the oven, it needs only an hour and a half till it's crispy.

For this kind of cooking style, you need a large frying pan, even though the meat is not going to be fried at all. Fit as many porkchops as you can into it; mine took three large T-bone porkchops. Season them with salt and pepper, pour over a little olive oil and squeeze a little lemon juice over them. Then put about 10 tablespoons of water into the pan. Set the heat on very low, and let them cook on one side, with the pan uncovered. When the juices have been absorbed, turn the meat over onto the other side. They will have lost their pink colour and may even have started to brown. Season them in exactly the same way as the first side, using all the ingredients mentioned above. Let them cook in the same way as the first side.

When the juices have been absorbed once again, pour a little red or rose wine (about 10-12 tablespoons) into the pan. Let the meat absorb the wine. It will take on the colour and smell of the wine. When the juices have disappeared and the meat is browned, it is ready. Serve each porkchop on individual plates, or chop up into smaller chunks and serve as part of a buffet.

©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
Yiouvetsi

Vasilopita (Βασιλόπιτα)

Vasilopita is a New Year's tradition in Greece; it extends to many other regions of the former Asia Minor. It signifies good luck in the household, and a slice of the cake is dedicated to each member of the household, as well as to the house itself, any guests present, God and other saints. The luckiest person is the one to find a coin hidden in the pie. It is placed in the batter of the cake before it goes into the oven. The translation of 'Vasilopita' is 'St Basil's cake (or pie)'. This loose translation characterises its form: it is made using either baking powder, which gives it the taste of a cake, or yeast, which turns it into a sweet kind of bread. In Crete, we tend to call the yeast version 'Christopsomo' (meaning 'Christ's bread'), while the cakey kind is use as Vasilopita. Another tradition with vasilopita is that it is baked in a round tin, the kind we usually use for a roast, called a 'tapsi'. The same kind of tapsi was used to make ladenia.

Here's what Anna Varvais has to say about the vasilopita tradition: "The Vasilopita is a Greek New Year's Bread. It is made in honor of a beautiful act of charity by St. Basil to the poor and needy of his flock. In order to insure that the needy would have money for life's necessities, and knowing that the needy were also proud people, St. Basil had the ladies of his church bake sweet bread with coins baked into them. In this way he could give them money without demeaning them at all. It is therefore traditional to bake a coin into the Vasilopita (St. Basil's Bread). The one who receives the coin is considered to be especially blessed for the year."


My web search for a recipe yielded only a few reliable sources. I chose a recipe from an Australian television network, as I found that it had been added to the web only a month ago; there are many Greeks living in Australia, and I wouldn't be surprised if there had been a special program devoted to the subject of Christmas feasts for the recipe to have been added so recently. Another feature I liked about it is that it called for the use of 3 oranges, and as we are orange producers ourselves, I could include local ingredients. The recipe below comes straight from ABC Brisbane. My changes are stipulated in italics.

You need:
175 grams butter
1 1/2 cups caster sugar (I used plain crystallised sugar)
1 teaspoon vanilla powder (in Greece, this is sold in small vials as vanilla sugar)
4 eggs (separated)
3 3/4 cups SR Flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda (bi-carb soda)
1/2 cup brandy
Rind from 1 large orange
Juice of 3 oranges
Blanched almonds (I didn't have any in the house, so I used a tube of prepared icing)
A 1-euro coin, wrapped in aluminium foil
Baking/cake dish approx 33cm x 23cm, approx 4-5cm deep - greased and floured. (I used a tapsi, the kind used often for the Sunday roast, and a piece of baking paper - it worked beautifully!)

The method: Beat butter and sugar together until light and creamy. Add egg yolks and beat well. Add orange rind and beat well. Combine brandy, orange juice and baking soda together. Add brandy mixture to creamed butter and sugar mixture. Mix it in well. Beat egg whites until stiff. Alternately fold egg whites and flour into cake mixture. Throw the foil-wrapped coin into the mixture. Pour the batter into a prepared cake tray. Bake at 180 deg for approx 3/4 hour to 1 hour. The cake is ready when a knife inserted in the cake comes out clean. When the cake had cooled down a little, I wrote the year 2008 in white icing.

KAΛΗ ΧΡΟΝΙΑ!

Here's the same vasilopita, decorated with icing sugar, almonds and chocolate drops.The regular version of vasilopita gets a little tiring from one year to the next. For the year 2011, I decided to make portion-controlled vasilopita cupcakes - only one has the φλουρί. They need less baking time than the cake - no more than 25-30 minutes in a moderate oven; they made quite an impact in my Cretan kitchen. For 2012, because Greece has had a very bad year luck-wise, I created an everyone's-a-winner vasilopita - most people having a piece from here will be lucky. For 2013, I used marzipan to make a clock on the top of the cake, from an idea I got in a shop window in Hania.

... and there it is again, for 2014.

©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 FESTIVALS:
Christmas
Clean Monday
Ash Thursday
25 March
Red eggs for Greek Easter
Fasting and Great Lent

MORE CAKES:
Apple cake
Banana cake
Simple cake
Carrot cake muffins
Chocolate muffins
Chocolate cake
Walnut cake
Tsoureki

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

Spaghetti puttanesca (Μακαρονάδα πουτανέσκα)

Often when we go away on holiday, we come back wanting to eat something we really enjoyed while we were away. Here's a dish we ate every night in the same pizzeria during our mini-break in Paleohora during the summer. I used the one at mediterrasian, (minus the anchovies). All genuine puttanesca recipes are a variation of this one. I've been making spaghetti puttanesca so often since September that I've developed my own recipe now, and have established it in our weekly pasta slot so that it is now a firm favorite on a Saturday morning. My children even coined a new word for this pasta; they found it easier (and possibly closer to the Greek language) to say 'poutanezika' (rhymes with 'kinezika' = chinese) than 'puttanesca', much to our delight; their version sounds more like something meaning 'like a prostitute'. We cracked up no end. Unfortunately, it has lost its vegetarian aspect, partly due to my carnivorous husband; I really do put my foot down about his red meat intake. But I give up when I'm too tired, and this is the kind of meal you cook on a day when you really are too tired to cook. I have tried freezing this sauce, but it's not worth the effort; tomato based sauce thaws out more like a soup than a sauce. The texture doesn't seem to keep so well. I recommend doing this for the bachelor type. In any case, it is that simple to make, and as it doens't involve meat (unless you optionally add sausage or bacon bits), it cooks very quickly, unlike spag bog, known as makaronada in Greece; I always let teh mince cook for at least an hour on slow heat for the flavours to blend.

You need:
3 tablespoons of olive oil
1 large onion, minced
3-4 cloves of garlic, minced
1 large green pepper, finely chopped
1 spicy sausage, finely sliced OR 1 small packet of bacon, finely chopped (optional)
2 tablespoons of pickled capers
15 black pitted Kalamata olives, roughly chopped
250g fresh tomato, pulped
salt, pepper and oregano to taste
Pour the oil into a saucepan, and saute the onion, pepper (we love this in any red sauce) and garlic in it till soft. Add the chopped bacon and/or sausage (unless you want to keep it lenten, and omit both) into the pot, and cook it till the meat has lost its raw red look. Now add the capers and olives, oregano, salt and pepper. Stir this altogether until all the ingredients are well-oiled. Now add the pureed tomatoes to make a thick sauce. Sometimes tomatos tend to be too firm (and too expensive in winter) to be used as a soup or sauce base; if this is the case, I add some tomato paste liquidised in water to thicken the sauce, and you can also use tinned tomato if you don't have access to ripe red tomatos in the supermarket. Let the sauce simmer away for about 20-30 minutes, and there you are: a lovely red vegetarian (or not) sauce for some plain boiled spaghetti. I didn't add chili pepper as the original recipe stated - definitely not a child-friendly ingredient; I have also used chopped up roasted red bell pepper instead of green pepper in the past. Sprinkle some grated cheese over each serving for extra protein, and don't forget the white wine. A quick and easy lazy Saturday lunch. Puttanesca is one of the few dishes which call for cooked olives.

©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 PASTA RECIPES:
Bologanise
Stir-fry noodles
Stir-fry beef
Blue dragon
Octopus stew
Tuna pasta
Pastitsio
Pizza carbonara
Mussels sauce

Chicken pie (Κοτόπιτα)

Here's something to do with your leftovers: I used Yianna's chicken, but most people these days would be using leftover Christmas turkey. I decided to use the recipe for chicken pie from a website called cooking for engineers, although most of the recipes I browsed through over the net had little to differentiate them from others in any case. I chose this one because it had very clear instructions (which I suspect means that it was written by a scientifically-minded male logician who loves to dabble in food). He (surely it isn't a woman) also includes a biscuit dough recipe for the topping, which you can access via a link on his (Michael's) page; I didn't use this myself for reasons I will explain below.

I also made a few Mediterranean adjustments which made this chicken pie more suitable for our eating habits and climate. The chicken in the recipe was creamed, using chicken broth, butter and milk. I used olive oil wherever the recipe stated butter, and I did not cream the chicken, but left it a little drier than in a traditional chicken pie. I felt it would be too stodgy, since the leftover chicken I was given was a fatty free-range one, meaning it wasn't light in lipids to start with, let alone my adding to it. I also added corn to the vegetables to use up the remnants of a tin I had opened a couple of days ago. I think that the next time I make it, I will use mushrooms and/or leek, because of the affinity of their taste combined with chicken. As I had some traditional (albeit shop-bought) pastry leftover from the last batch of kalitsounia, I used that instead of the biscuit dough both as a base and a topping. I brushed it with egg on the top, and sprinkled it with sesame, they way we usually top our pie pastries in Crete, which is how it got its delicious golden crust.

This is the first time I have made chicken pie. My favorite part about it was that I used up high quality expensive leftover food that would probably have been turned into Aka's dogfood. It shows how we can use up leftovers - chicken/turkey, tinned corn, pastry - and learn to "waste not, wont not" in the horrendously globalised over-consumptive world that we are living in today. I'm not trying to save the world, I'm just making an individual conscious effort.

©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 PIE RECIPES:
Ladenia
Pizza without yeast
Pizza carbonara
Cottage pie
Spanakopita/hortopita
Kalitsounia
Leek pie
Sfakianes pites
Spiral pie

MORE CHICKEN RECIPES:
Free-range chicken
Roast chicken
Pilafi
Chicken curry
Yiouvetsi
Stir-fry noodles
Sunday roast

Losing weight (Πως να χάσουμε βάρος)

Here is the best piece of advice you can get about losing weight: it's that simple. I have copied this information from a website I was browsing quite by chance. And if you're wondering why I'm talking about weight loss, it's because I could really use some. Eat less and exercise more. It’s that simple. Trendy diets are a waste of time - your body needs carbs to function properly. Losing weight is hard work and takes time and energy, but these five tips will help you on your way:

1. EAT BREAKFAST. Numerous studies have shown that thinner people eat breakfast. Skipping meals only slows down your metabolism and this makes you overeat at your next meal.
2. DRINK WATER. Lots of it. If you feel hungry, drink a glass of water; often we mistake hunger for thirst. If you are still hungry, then eat. Drink 8 glasses of water throughout the day to keep your body functioning at its best.
3. KEEP A FOOD JOURNAL for one week. Write down every single thing that you eat. Most people underestimate how much they actually eat.
4. WEIGH YOURSELF once a day in the morning and record it on a website where you can enter your exercise for the day (say 30 minutes on the treadmill at 3mph), and it will tell you how many calories you burned. Find a website where you can also enter exactly what you ate, and it will tell you how many calories, fats, protein, and carbs you ate.
5. INCORPORATE EXERCISE into your daily life. Exercise should be fun - it should not feel like a chore. A little bit here and there adds up. Try taking the stairs instead of the elevator or escalator. In summer, go for a walk, rollerblade, or swim. In winter try skiing, a workout video, or sign up for a dance class in your area.
6. STAY AWAY FROM DIET PILLS or herbal supplements of any kind (unless prescribed by a doctor). They are not approved by the FDA, and have been shown to cause a wide range of health problems, including heart attacks and can even kill you. Don’t go for the quick fix. The only tried and true way to lose weight and keep it off is by diet and exercise.

I want Santa to get me a treadmill for Christmas. It's not as ridiculous as it sounds; the Greek version of Father Christmas is St Basil, who is celebrated on 1st January. There's plenty of time left.

©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."

Waste not, want not (Χριστουγεννιάτικη ιστορία)

My children's godparents are at the opposite extremes when it comes to Christmas gifts. My son's always has to rummage around her purse (and then her husband's wallet) to find some change to give him as a Christmas present, while my daughter's buys her a complete winter outfit including hat, coat and scarf, an expensive (noisy) toy, as well as another (noisy) toy for her brother. Their choice of festive fare is very similar to how they choose Christmas gifts.

Rania invited us over for Christmas lunch, so that neither of our families would have to pass Christmas day on their own; in other words, Christmas Day did not have to be just another Sunday. We turned it into a pot luck dinner; our share was going to be the pork steaks, a potato salad, and traditional Greek pizza, ladenia. She had made a lamb stew with seasonal greens, lettuce salad, and spinach and cheese pie. I thought it was perfectly adequate for a meal for 9 people, 4 of whom were children under 12. She had also warned me earlier that she would pass on some leftovers to me so that neither of us had to cook the next day. When the table was set for the Christmas meal, I was horrified to see a tub of mass-produced tzatziki, another tub of mass-produced Russian salad, a roast chicken with potatoes which had been left over from her previous day's dinner, and pastitsio left over from the previous day's lunch. She even cooked two huge pans of chips just as we were ready to eat. Two full, meaty, stodgy, expensive-to-buy and time-consuming-to-make meals to be eaten on Christmas Eve, which is considered a fasting day in the Greek Orthodox Church. Yet more meat would be cooked on Christmas Day, in her full knowledge. As a slightly built, petite-framed, weight-conscious 45-year-old full-time nurse and mother of two obese children, I often wonder why she bothers to cook so much food (and waste so much money and energy on making it); her children didn't bother to even look at the leftovers. They are obviously so used to eating freshly cooked fatty meaty food, that they just stabbed a pork chop each and made a grab for the chips, quickly downing their food and making a mess of their plates before rushing away from the table to play with their made-in-PRC toxically painted plastic (noisy) toys, the same kind their mother had bought for my own children, making my presents of books and DVDs seem like a cheap alternative. Her husband recently underwent hip-replacement surgery and needs to mind his weight so that he doesn't need to be operated on again. To top it all off, she brought out home-made melomakarona, as well as shop-bought tsoureki. So much food, and not enough people to eat it. Of course, her leftovers lay untouched on the buffet table, and much to my chagrin, my potato salad was overlooked, having been placed in a hard-to-get-to spot on the table, while everyone helped themself to the chemically-treated tzatziki. I know why my pizza wasn't popular; it had no salami, pepperoni, ham, bacon, sauasge and any other cholesterol-packed luncheon meat that's usually placed on a pizza base. It was, to put it simply, too healthy. Another energy-wasting point was the heating: Rania likes to have the heat turned up really high, while she walks around in light fashionable clothing. I had taken off everything I could take off, and still I was feeling scorched like a roasting turkey.

And that was lunch. When it was time to leave, we put on our coats, picked up a huge JUMBO bag of toys, as well as 2 large carrier bags of hand-me-downs of her son's and daughter's clothes (isn't that handy for me? - Rania loves shopping, and buys new clothes for her XL constantly growing children twice a year - you don't wear clothes for more than 1 season in her house, the same way you don't eat the same meal 2 days in a row), some melomakarona, a 2-litre ice-cream box of stewed lamb, another 2-litre ice-cream box of roast chicken (I'm determined to make a chicken pie tomorrow with this), half of my potato salad (she said she'd try some tomorrow), half of my ladenia (she said her kids might eat some tomorrow), 4 squares of pastitsio and 10 squares of spinach pie. Images of starving black children came into my mind. There's definitely something wrong in terms of the global distributuon of wealth. But I must admit, we had a good time, I had never seen my children happier. It was probably the most enjoyable Christmas we'd celebrated as a family.

Kiriaki hates having to organise parties at her house, except for her own friends, who she doesn't like to share (like her food). Once her husband got the promotion he wanted in his job, she put an end to all the high-society functions she used to organise at her house, on the pretext that she is far too busy with work and making sure that her children do not lose their first-in-class positions. She is also a lousy cook, having never needed to cook for her family; her mother-in-law did that for her, right up until she died a couple of years ago. She even handled all the festive meals, which concealed Kiriaki's inadequate culinary skills in front of her VIP friends once again: the dean of the university, her husband's business partners and her own teacher colleagues. But she had to show them something she cooked herself: macaroni cheese, mounds of it, which she would amply ladle onto everyone's plates and tell them how much her children love her cooking. Now that the mourning period was over, she knew she would have to start opening her house once again to guests on Christmas Day, because her husband celebrated his nameday then; being the godfather of our son and a good hunting companion of my husband's since their youth, we were obliged to visit them in the evening of this day, even if it was for the sake of appearances. After a formal (albeit haughty) exchange of greetings (the two KOUMBARES share a mutual zero-tolerance of each other), we were gestured to sit at the bare table positioned at the junction of a draft created by two open windows, which we were informed had been left ajar to ensure that their guests' cigarette smoke would not taint the walls of their house or the food. As a high school teacher well-versed on the ill effects of non-organic food, Kiriaki, a hopeless cook, could not afford to bring out cheap, mass-produced, chemically-treated convenience food for her guests, given her constant lecturing to anyone who didn't block their ears to it, against the effects of low-quality nutrition, despite the fact that we have often seen her on the road in Hania buying souvlaki late at night, and she had an endless supply of ready-made pizzas in her deep freezer, which she'd microwave if we ever dared to visit her during the holidays. With a flustered look on her face, she explained that she had to rush back to the boiling pots and pans in her (disorganised) kitchen, which was easily visible from the dining room as the whole house was open-plan. There was only one pot on the stove, being attended to by her good teacher-colleague and neighbour friend, Carolina, who, we were informed, was also helping her to roast a flank of beef, rolled and stuffed with red peppers, curd cheese and tomatoes; in other words, Carolina was cooking it herself. Some of the guests asked where she had bought the meat from. She informed us that she had specifically instructed a trusted butcher who sold organically reared meat (on an island where greenhouses abound, and the wind scatters non-organic seeds far and wide, for crying out loud, give me a break) to make it up for her exactly as she wanted.

She then served up a stifado - hare stew. We all knew that the cook who used to make the hare stew on Christmas Day had passed away, so there was much speculation over who had given her the recipe. She gave us a detailed account about how a hare is properly stewed (with the full support of her husband), according to an old recipe of her mother's, who has been widowed for over 15 years and lives on a remote island on her own (God knows how long ago she cooked one). She had spent the whole day preparing the hare and the whole night cooking it. As my husband put it, the poor wretch of a hare underwent a series of trials and tribulations, having been the victim of physical abuse, to the point that it lay tired, strung out and overcooked in a soupy bowl of tomato and olive oil, so that it choked you as you ate it, before coming to rest in your intestine where it wouldn't budge until the next day before it was digested, leaving you feeling sore and bloated as if a rock were lying just above your bladder. Carolina brought out some kalitsounia; they were absolutely delicious. I knew they were home-made from the thickness of the pastry, but they could not possibly have been made in that particular home, where there was a lack of benchtop space and the table we were sitting at was usually covered in books which never seemed to have moved since the last time we had paid our KOUMBAROI a visit. I heard her telling a guest (the headmaster of a primary school) in a lowered tone of voice so that no one else would hear, apart from me, because I happened to be sitting across from him, that her husband had grown the spinach in the village, and she had paid someone to turn it into the local Cretan pastry kalitsounia, which she stored in the deep freezer. The whole evening seemed to tire out the hosts, who kept winging that they didn't actually want to organise a party at their place, but some friends had called to tell them that they would be visiting them, and they were expecting to sample some hunter's game. Obviously, the hare was not intended for us, but they need not have feared that it would disappear too quickly; when their friends eventually arrived, the serving platter was full of bony stringy chunks of meat covered in sauce. The french fries were probably the best part of the whole meal; the potatoes had been freshly dug up from their own field, and came out crusty and golden with a fluffy centre. At the end of the evening, Kiriaki asked me, like a good hostess, if my children had had enough to eat. I tried to tempt her godson into eating kalitsounia instead of the stodgy shop-bought cream buns she had dumped in front of him (which, coincidentally, we had bought as a last-minute gift - what else can you get on Christmas Day, but more importantly, why get anything for these tight-arses anyway?), but Kiriaki interrupted me, saying we shouldn't pressure him into eating anything he didn't want to eat. Not to worry; as I said the kalitsounia were delicious. I let him eat the cream buns while I ate the kalitsounia, Kiriaki watching on the whole time.

The whole day's events made me believe that no matter what the government tries to drum into our heads about global warming and environmental pollution, there will always be some people who will never even consider leaving Christmas presents unwrapped, while others will forever take from others and give to their own without any form of reciprocation. Bah humbug; at least I don't have to cook for (at least) two 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.

MORE FESTIVALS:
New Year's cake
Clean Monday
Ash Thursday
25 March

Potato salad (Πατατοσαλάτα)

I love preparing a feast - if only I can be sure that there will be lots of people coming over to eat it. This year, we are blessed to be invited to a friend's house for Christmas, so instead of each respective family spending the day alone with their two children, and eating another "Sunday roast" meal, we are going halves on the costs and the cooking. I was informed too late to make Christmas crackers, something foreign to us here in Greece; I'd have had to save up at least two months' worth of used toilet rolls to do that, not to mention organising the trinkets. You can imagine what kind of trinkets I mean, something inexpensive and probably recycled.

Here is our share of the main meal of the day:
Pork steaks (to be BBQ'ed over the fireplace)
Classic potato salad
Ladenia (home-made pizza bread)

We are also going to bring melomakarona (honey walnut spice biscuits), beer and fancy serviettes. The children will all be getting books as presents - no crappy plastic made-in-PRC junk which will be broken by the end of the evening. Melomakarona are a seasonal dessert, but I never make them as my husband never has a good thing to say about my version; he's found a bakery that makes them to a standard recipe which never varies (kind of like processed cheese, if you get my gist), so we'll be eating their melomakarona right until the festive season is over (mid-January they stop selling them, as well as another Christmas treat, kourambiedes, shortbread dusted with icing sugar).

Here's a BBQ favorite, especially nice served cold in the summer, and at room temperature in the winter. Potato salad is tasty any time of the year. You may wonder how we're going to BBQ today of all days, in the middle of winter on a Mediterranean island, but on a fine and sunny day, it's really not too bad in a warm spot. In any case, our friends have a fireplace, so we can BBQ straight over the logs if the weather is bad. Although my potato salad is reminiscent of the American style, this recipe comes from an American friend's Cretan mother-in-law.



You need:
4 large potatoes, peeled and cut into thick chunky chips.
2-3 eggs
vinegar
3 tablespoons of olive oil
2/3 cup mayonnaise
1 tablespoon of mustard
1 onion, minced
2 cloves of garlic, minced
a few sprigs of finely chopped parsley
a can of tuna
a dash of cumin, salt and pepper
Boil the potatoes in salted water, along with the eggs. When the potatoes are soft (but before they start breaking up), turn off the heat and plunge the eggs into cold water; this way, they'll be easier to shell. Drain the potatoes, and sprinkle them with vinegar. When they have cooled down, dice them into a bowl and add all the other ingredients. If the tuna is tinned in oil, omit the extra olive oil. Mix everything together until well-blemded. Pack the ingredients (not too tightly, otherwise the potato will go mushy) into a serving bowl, smooth over the top of the salad and garnish it with the sliced boiled egg. You can also add the chopped egg into the salad as you are mixing it, but I preferred to garnish the salad with the egg.

I didn't add any mashed tuna in my salad today, because we are having it with BBQ meat. Some people don't like to mix their meat with their fish, my husband being one of them. The eggs can be chopped and mixed into the salad, if you prefer. If you want a lenten version ofpotato salad, you can omit the egg and tuna and add olive oil as a dressing instead of mayonnaise.

You can also add black olives to the garnish. I didn't do this today, as the olives we pick from the village to be eaten in our house are not of a sufficient quantity to pass around free-handedly. So I keep them for our use only. The spirit of Christmas may be all about giving, but the latest global trend is also in favour or preservation and sustainability.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

©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 POTATO RECIPES:
Cretan boureki
Leek and potato soup
Fennel soup
Moussaka
Frittata
Potato fritters
Psarosoupa
Taramasalata
Lemon potatoes

Ladenia (Λαδένια - Greek pizza)

I've never found an easier recipe to work with for making a pizza base (and a delicious pizza crust). Laurie Constantino was kind enough to comment on my recipe for black-eyed beans, and I found this recipe on her own food blog. All I can say is that the whole process of making ladenia was very soothing; I felt as if I was making an ancient form of pizza without the cholesterolic additions of ham and cheese. The house smelt of baking bread while the dough was rising, and, as Lauren says, the colours of ladenia remind you of Christmas, so it's seasonal fare, which easily substitutes for bread at your Christmas meal. My only addition was green pepper, because it is still found, albeit in small quantities, in our garden, and it adds to the Christmas colouring. Ladenia is baked in a traditional Greek oven dish called a 'tapsi' - the same pan we use to cook the Sunday roast. Because there is so much oil in this pizza, you can't bake it in a traditional pizza pan, which has holes in the base.

For the dough, you need:
1 cup of warm water
a packet of dried yeast (6-9 grams)
1 dash of salt
1/4 cup olive oil
3-4 cups of flour
Put the water in a large bowl and sprinkle it with the yeast. When you see some small bubbles on the surface of the water, you know that the yeast is working. Add the salt,and oil. Mix this into the water, and add about 3 cups of flour to make dough. Add enough flour to make a smooth, elastic and not very sticky dough. This takes practice; I just kept adding a fistful of flour until I felt that the dough looked and felt right. Let the dough rise a little before putting it in the baking dish.

Spread some olive oil over the bottom of a large round roasting pan. It must have high sides, otherwise the olive oil will spill over and burn your oven. Stretch the dough out with your hands, and put it in the tin. Knead it outwards to the sides of the pan until it covers the pan and turns up at the side. Don't worry if the oil oozes over the top of the dough; it'll make it more tasty. Cover the pan with a dish cloth; let it rise in a warm place until the dough has doubled in size (about 1 hour).

For the filling: Dice some tomatos, chop up some green peppers and slice a few onions. Season them with salt, pepper and oregano, and pour over some olive oil, as if making Greek salad. Mix this well in a bowl, and spread it evenly over the dough when it has risen. Bake it in a moderately hot oven, until the sides of the pizza have browned and the dough is cooked through. You can eat this bready meal hot or at room temperature, and it's perfect to eat the next day. It is also an excellent accompaniment to a plain soup, and if you live in a northern country, your friends won't forget you if you ever cook this for them in the middle of winter; it'll remind them of their Mediterranean summer holidays. Don't forget that the same dough mixture can be turned into the most delicious, stomach-warming pizza you've ever tasted!

©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 PIZZA/PIE RECIPES:
Pizza without yeast
Pizza with yeast
Pizza carbonara
Chicken pie
Cottage pie
Spanakopita/hortopita
Kalitsounia
Leek pie
Sfakianes pites
Spiral pie

Black-eyed bean soup (Μαυρομάτικα φασόλια)

Black-eyed beans and lentils are sold in packets at the supermarket. They make the easiest soupy dhal meal that is eaten in Greece as a main meal throughout the year, especially during lenten periods (ie pre-Easter, pre-Christmas and pre-Assumption of the Virgin Mary). The recipe is the same for both kinds of beans, except that lentils need only a good rinse, whereas black-eyed beans need to be boiled to get rid of toxins in the skin of the beans. Black-eyed are not only made into a tomato-based soup (like this one); they are also combined in hot meals with fresh greens, as well as cold dishes such as green salads. You can freeze this soup in individual servings similar to fasolada, but as it's so easy to make, I recommend this only forbachelor types.

You need:
250g of black-eyed beans
1/2 cup olive oil
1 large onion, minced
2-3 cloves of garlic, minced
500g fresh tomato, pulped
1 teaspoon of tomato paste
salt, pepper and oregano
Boil the beans rapidly for five minutes, then strain in a colander (this is to get rid of toxins). Pour the oil in the pot to cover the bottom, and brown the onion and garlic in it. Then add the washed beans and tomatos. In the winter, if I haven't got any fresh tomato, I use the canned variety, with a little tomato paste. They work just as well. I even added ketchup once when I made a bean soup in England, and it tasted fine! Add some salt, pepper and oregano; chili goes well with this dish. Now add enough water to cover the beans up to 3-4cm above the top. Cover the pot, and cook on a slow heat for two hours. If the beans are still crunchy and the water has evaporated, add some more water and continue to boil away until the beans are cooked.

Some people throw a fistful of rice in the pot in the last 15 minutes of cooking time, to make the meal lighter, in the same way that we do for lentils. This is fine if you intend to eat this meal on the day you serve it. Rice tends to go mushy if kept in liquid, so I don't prefer this meal with rice. If you do intend to serve it with rice, make sure you rinse off as much starch as possible form the rice by running cold water over the rice in a colander. This will help the rice to stabilise better once it is cooked. Serve the beans plain or with some roast meat or fish of your choice. Squeeze some olive juice (or vinegar - both are optional) over the soup once you have ladled it into individual soup plates. Serve hot with plenty of crusty bread and gruyere cheese.

©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 BEAN RECIPES:
Chili con carne
Lentil stew
Bean soup
String bean stew
Split yellow peas
Pulses
Gigandes

Making a dog's dinner of your food (Φαγητό για τον σκύλο)

We never buy mass-produced canned or dried food for Aka. She is fed on our own leftovers, as well as a weekly pot of boiled bones and scrap meat (available free from the butcher), and rice and macaroni boiled in the stock from the bones. In the summer, she needs less food than in the winter, because hot weather makes her lethargic. When there is an excess of aubergines in the garden, because they do not freeze as well as other summer vegetables (unless they are cooked in a meal, and then frozen), I chop them up into large chunks, put them in a saucepan, pour some old cooking oil over them (which I've cooked fish in twice, and now it's gone smelly and rancid - I store it in a jar under the sink) and cook this for the dog. I add macaroni and rice to the saucepan towards the end of the cooking and top it up with the required water.
When it's all cooked, I let it cool down and place it in a tupper container with a lid in the refrigerator. I scoop out just enough for each day, and never cook more than is needed for a week. When something is freshly cooked with fresh ingredients, it does not go off in the fridge. This cooking does not require a great effort and ensures that nothing is wasted or thrown out inadvertently.

©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 WAYS TO USE LEFTOVERS:
Banana cake
Pizza carbonara
Chicken pie
Cottage pie
Chocolate balls
Kalitsounia
Papoutsakia
Tiropitakia
Taramasalata
Stir-fry noodles
Souvlaki