Greek Easter bread - tsoureki (Τσουρέκι)

As if the koulourakia and red eggs are not enough, Greek Easter is not complete without tsoureki, the sweet bread-like cake shaped in twists and rounds with a red egg tucked into it for decoration. We make it (or buy it) because it's all part of our heritage, even though we know we cannot eat the quantity of food that we have prepared during the pre-Easter preparations. But we still make it, or at least buy it, to decorate our Easter table, to make it look more lavish. It's only once a year, as the saying goes.

Tsourekia are usually made in the Holy Week, when housewives (whether employed outside the home or not) prepare all the festive cuisine in readiness for Easter Sunday. As tsoureki is a kind of tea bun (albeit in XL size), I can make one of these now that the banana cake has run out, and there are still hungry people breakfasting in our house in the morning before they go to school or work.

Like vasilopita (New Year's cake), there are two types or tsoureki: the cake type and the bread type. I prefer the bread type, which is also called lambropsomo. The tsoureki that I like most is one that has a distinct smell that in Greece is associated only with tsoureki, and only at Easter. In Hania, masticha, mahlepi and bahari (all Greek names of the spices used; click on the links to see what they look like) are only used during festive times, to make festive breads and biscuits; it's only natural that we associate these spices with special periods of the year. I've previously used mahlepi in my New Year's cake (vasilopita), and I have also used masticha in making kourambiedes, a Christmas sweet.

The basic recipe is given by UKTV. It makes a small batch of tsoureki, although most Greek housewives will make a large batch to share around the neighbourhood, as they do with koulourakia. That's a good way to find out who makes the best tsoureki in the area. Given the over-abundance of food in our lives, and the excesses that are implemented when it comes to filling the festive table, I know that most tsoureki and koulourakia presents actually become expensive and carbon-footprint-laden chicken feed, especially in a suburban village like the one I live in. I prefer to keep my cooking among family members, who are just as critical as the neighbours! I have made some alterations to it so as to suit the taste preferences of my family, in addition to my attempt to use local products; for example, I use olive oil, while the original recipe stated butter. The spices in the original recipe were all ground; I use whole spices steeped in the liquid that is to be used in the tsoureki. In that way, I smell the spices in the bread, but I don't taste them. Who'd want to taste gritty masticha or crunchy mahlep, anyway?

To make a large loaf (or two small loaves), you need:
5 cups of strong white flour (the kind used in pastry making, rather than the kind used to make cakes; I am lucky to be able to buy organically produced flour)
3/4-1 cup of sugar (in yeasty bread dough, you don't want too much sugar; it makes the dough too 'heavy')
100g olive oil (the original recipe uses butter; I clearly remember my mother using a mixture of the two)
2 eggs
15g salt
25g dried yeast
150ml water
150ml milk
the juice of 2 oranges
grated zest of 2 oranges
1 teaspoon of whole mahlepi OR: 1 teaspoon of whole bahari (using both may not be a good combination of aroma; I used bahari, and not mahleb)
1 teaspoon of whole masticha crystals
1 small stick of cinnamon
another 3-5 cups of flour
beaten egg, preferably only the yolk, for the glaze
1-3 hard-boiled eggs, dyed red, for decoration


Pour the water and milk in a small saucepan and add the whole spices. Let them warm up without boiling. When the liquid cools, leave it overnight in the fridge for the spices to infuse. In a mixing bowl place the first 5 cups of flour, sugar, salt, yeast and orange zest, and pour in the strained milk and water, orange juice, beaten eggs and oil (and or melted butter, if using). The original recipe used sultanas - I've never seen any tsoureki with sultanas in it, unless it's the newfangled Athenian master chef variety. (Candied peel is used, as are slivered almonds, usually pasted on the outside over the egg for decorating purposes, but not sultanas.) Mix everything in together into a scented batter. When all the ingredients are incorporated (if they are all at room temperature, this will be easy), let the dough rise in a warm dark place - you can even leave it overnight at this point.


After the batter has risen, punch it down. You will notice how easily it comes away from the bowl. Add the extra flour cup by cup, kneading the dough into a smooth elastic ball. Add enough flour to make a soft dough. To make the classic plait design of tsoureki, divide the dough into 3 equal parts. Form the dough into three 'strands' and plait together to form a 3-strand plait-shaped loaf. You can also shape the dough into circles, or simply twist a long strand of dough into a plait with two strands rather than three. Greek bakers are deft at creating novel, more intricate tsoureki shapes every year; there's probably going to be a contest for the longest, biggest, Guinness book of world records tsoureki ever made!

Place the finished tsoureki on an oiled baking tin. Let it rise for no more than an hour - if you leave it longer, it might rise too much and the finished product will be 'holey' bread! Brush it with beaten egg. Place the boiled dyed eggs in its middle, pressing their bases into the dough. Bake the loaf in a moderate-hot oven for 25-30 minutes until golden brown. Many housewives still carry on an old tradition of taking their Easter (and Christmas) baking to the local baker's to be cooked, in a wood-fired oven, and insist that there is no other way to cook tsoureki. (For me, this is just another way to use up more petrol - a conventional oven does a fine job!) The tsoureki is ready when you tap it on the back and you get a hollow echo. Remove and cool on a wire rack.

You'll notice that my braid had to be twisted, due to the size of the baking tin (my bigger one was full of koulourakia - again). During the last rise, one of the braids broke away. (My second tsoureki baking day was more successful - the red eggs were dyed using yellow onion skins.) Perfect tsoureki is not in the appearance; it's in the taste. It's the inside that counts, not the outside! The eggs are not dyed - I refuse to put unnatural substances into the food my family eats. In any case, when the children come home from school, they can have a go at decorating the eggs themselves. And if you do find that you can't eat the amount you've made, this bread freezes very well individually sliced; when you want to eat or serve some, let it defrost, and it's ready to eat. Alternatively, it goes really well as toasted bread.

I used the same recipe to make tsoureki in 2009, using Peter G's idea of mixing the hot cross bun shape with the traditional Greek Easter bread, and the result revived my nostalgic feelings for Wellington, where I was born.

©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 EASTER TRADITIONS:
Koulourakia
Cretan meat pie
Red eggs
Seafood
Lent pies
Bakaliaros for Palm Sunday
Clean Monday

I am not a cook... (Δεν είμαι μάγειρας...)

Sometimes I'm just bowled over at what my food blogging friends manage to churn out in their quests for culinary excellence: olive pasties, potato cabbage pie, parmesan basil chicken, almond-crusted shrimp... who would have thought of such concoctions, who would've dreamt of such combinations? Only a master chef, I would believe...

I'm more of the food-blogging-is-a-hard-thing-to-do type. If I post a new blog, it's bound to have a funny food story attached to it, rather than the most amazing, original wow-she-can-cook kind of recipe. As a mother of two young children cooking for six people on a daily basis, I often have to have a meal ready on the table for hungry busy people. I may be in the kitchen all day, but only because I have to be, rather than want to be, and after all that effort I put into cooking, I end up eating my meal standing up while I'm cooking and tasting it (except when I have lunchtime English lessons - I can't eat at all then until I return home in the evening). I don't take part in foodblog events, because I don't have enough time to create new recipes, and I daren't make even slight variations to my regular recipes for fear of confusing or putting off my regular eaters, who are going to have to eat that meal. We cook to eat here, not to dazzle!

The meals I cook tend to reflect the kind of food that everyone expects to eat, even if it's not their favorite meal, or they'd rather have something else. I cook the same kinds of food on a weekly basis: one week, we'll have fakes, the next week fasolada, the following black-eyed bean soup, while the next it's fakes again. There's a staple pita on a weekly basis, as well as a pizza. I'm more of a 'this is what I cooked, and this is what you're gonna eat' type of mama. And if there are any 'but-I-don't-like-it' dissenters, there's only bread dipped in oil as an alternative, something which many people survived on during the second world war, according to my mother-in-law. The minute you start offering alternative meals, they won't eat the ones you originally cooked. (very bad way to raise children, if you ask me.) I really can't wait till the children are old enough to prepare their own meals. And I would love to have a meal prepared for me some time.

That's why I was bowled over when Maggie awarded me an E for Excellent award when she saw my spiral leek pie - which wasn't my recipe in the first place (it was Laurie's)!

Thank you everyone for appreciating my efforts!

Bougatsa Iordanis (Η μπουγάτσα του Ιορδάνη)

Bougatsa Iordanis is the iconic symbol of local Hania cuisine when it comes to food. If you're a Hanioti (or Haniotissa, if you're a woman) living away from the island, when you arrive in Hania on the ferry in the early hours of the day (it docks in Souda Harbour at 6am), your first stop will probably be Iordanis bougatsadiko. The shop is full of travellers and locals every day from 6am up until 2pm when it closes. It has become a cult symbol - a visit to Hania is incomplete without a visit to Iordanis' bougatsadiko, kind of like eating at Bairaktaris in Athens, or Wong Kei in London.

The centrally located shops - Iordanis has a number outlets in Hania - sell bougatsa (μπουγάτσα - mpougatsa), and nothing else (apart from coffee, soft drinks and water). Bougatsa is a kind of pie made with crusty filo pastry and filled with creamy white cheese filling, cut up into small pieces, with sugar (and optionally, cinnamon) sprinkled all over it. It's said that the recipe is a secret - bougatsa Iordanis is NOT the same as the bougatsa custard sold in other parts of Greece. Another eccentric bit of trivia is that, although bougatsa Iordanis is presented on the plate (or wrapped up for a takeaway) as a serving, it's actually sold by the kilo; your serving is exactly 210g of bougatsa pie.

The pies are made in the outlet with the ovens - an old-looking non-descript building behind the town hall. On first looks, nothing special seems to be happening in this place. A few people in white aprons are pouring creamy white filling onto filo pastry, wrapping it up, plonking it onto oven trays, and shovelling trays of bougatsa in and out of the ovens, while a few young men strap the trays behind their motorbikes and deliver them to the other outlets. The atmosphere is monotonous, dull, old-fashioned: faded pictures on the wall, straw woven chairs, rickety tables. Only locals sit here; they come for the pie, not the decor! You can be guaranteed a serving of bougatsa here; you will actually see it coming out fresh from the oven. If you go to another outlet, you'll have to be patient until it arrives on the scooter if they've run out - and people do wait for it to come. The place to be is the fashionable mid-town store, the one all people visit, from politicians to celebrities, from foreign tourists wearing Birkenstocks to mums carting young children around and stopping for a healthy, fresh morning snack; bougatsa is served within the half-hour it is cooked.

Anyone who has been into Iordanis bougatsadiko will surely always remember the old woman at the counter. She serves up every single order of bougatsa. She is a frightful sight. Despite her perfect coiffure, her taste in clothes has not changed since the 1960s. Her fingers, wrists, ears and neck rattle with thick'n'chunky gold jewellery full of gold coins, while her extra-long, painted fingernails curl up at the ends. She never smiles or says 'Thank you' when the customer pays for their order. She is never away from the shop, and always sits looking high and mighty behind the till. As she metes out the bougatsa, she checks its weight on one of those old fashioned scales with hanging weights. If the piece is 10g overweight, she nips off a corner of pie with a pizza knife. If it's 10g underweight, she adds the 10g bit she cut off from a previous serving. On first impression, the customer will interpret this as an act of stinginess; however, you can feel rest assured that you will not be ripped off here. And if the lighting is too dim for you, just think how much energy (who said money?) the shop owners are saving for the environment... Just pretend you're at Wong Kei's in London, the rudest Chinese restaurant in the world, according to some reviews. It's never been out of business, either.

Lars has captured the mood of the "Queen" very well. He was obviously writing many years ago, as he mentions drachmas (phased out since 2002), but the essence of the atmosphere is all there:

We are heading for "Iordanis" to have bougatsa, which I believe is a speciality of Crete... Four ladies are running the place, no sorry one Queen and three ladies. The Queen handles the money and decides almost everything; her head is high and her eyes can be very black if something is not to her taste...

"Dio me sachari, parakalo; two with sugar, please". The lady behind the desk takes out a newly arrived piece (bougatsa is delivered almost every 30th minute by a boy on a motorbike) and cuts it into 3 cm square pieces and checks if the weight is ok. She adds a small piece and then adds some sugar on top and puts it on a plate. We are served two plates, two glasses of water and the bill is put under the ashtray. It is a very good and very tasty start of a new day...

The bill should say Drs 1.200 but say 1.600?? The Queen is of course very sorry for the mistake. We don't blame her because it is still early in the morning. Behind her back though the other ladies are smiling. "Den pirazi, geia sas, it doesn't matter, bye"

The "other ladies" are in fact always trying to make up for the Queen's shortcomings!

I can't tell you exactly how Iordanis makes his bougatsa: I only found one web photograph closest in its resemblance, but to make a similar bougatsa to Iordanis, you need:
500g mizithra (ricotta-type soft curd cheese, a local speciality of Crete)
75g fine semolina
1 egg (optional - not adding it will keep the bougatsa a white colour, which is the colour of Iordanis bougatsa)
grated zest of a lemon (let's make it more tangy at home; Iordanis serves his plain)
1/4 cup of sugar (this is optional - you're going to sprinkle sugar all over it anyway!)
1 cup of milk
500g of thin filo pastry
100g melted butter or olive oil (oil is healthier)
extra granular (NOT icing) sugar and cinnamon, to sprinkle over the hot pie

This bougatsa will serve 10 people; be prepared to halve the recipe if you're not going to eat it all in one night, because bougatsa is best served immediately on being cooked (although it does re-heat nicely in the microwave the next morning for breakfast). Iordanis serves his within the half hour after it is made. Mix all the filling ingredients together to blend them well together, forming a thick creamy mixture. To make 'envelope parcels' of bougatsa (the traditional shape), spread evenly, in a thin layer, some filling onto the middle of a sheet of pastry. Wrap up the single sheet of pastry into a rectangular parcel. Then roll it up again in another sheet of pastry. Place it onto a greased tray, and brush oil or butter all over it. Make as many parcels as the filling allows. I was left with four sheets of pastry from the 500g packet, but I could easily have used those up too, had I made thinner parcels with less filling. Cook the parcels in a moderate oven, till the pastry takes on a golden crusty colour (about 20 minutes).

When it is cooked, slide the bougatsa off the baking tin with a metal scraper, so as not to break the hot parcel. Cut it into small pieces and sprinkle sugar (and cinnamon) all over it - watch out for crusty bits of filo filling up your work top! Another way to cook it is in a spiral form - it cuts up more tidily, and it is easier to handle. The proof of a good recipe comes straight from the eaters' mouths: "NOW you've made real bougatsa Mum!" This dessert is usually eaten just hot enough so as not to burn your tongue! And it's served with a simple glass of water or a coffee.

©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 PUDDINGS:
Apple pie
Brownies
Chocolate cake
Chocolate pancakes
Walnut cake
Tiropitakia
Halva
Fruit crumble
Sfakianes pites

CRETAN PRODUCE:
Soft mizithra cheese
Xinohondro (hondro)
Stamnagathi
Avronies (wild asparagus)
Dakos rusk salad
Orange juice
Lagos stifado
Sorrel
Silverbeet
Black mustard greens
Malotira
Olives tsakistes - pastes
Olive oil
Eating locally

Koulourakia - traditional Greek Easter cookies (Κουλουράκια για το Πάσχα)

I've been using a Greek koulouraki recipe that always seem to make successful koulourakia (κουλουράκια), the Greek butter cookies often made in preparation for Easter. I found it in a book I bought when I first came to Greece, nearly two decades ago, the Greek Calendar Cookbook by Anne Yiannoulis (Lycabettus Press). The recipe makes a small batch of cookies; hence they are eaten too quickly! I've found that making cookies in small batches ensures greater success in taste and texture; the dough never seems to mix properly when I make it in larger doses. The recipe is the simplest cookie recipe I have ever come across; I have copied it pretty much as stated in the book. The fun part about it is creating the most intricate biscuit shapes - a great activity for children.

You need:
250g butter
3/4 cup sugar
2 egg yolks (free-range eggs give that extra yellow colour)
grated zest of an orange
1/4 cup orange juice (you can use milk here, as the recipe states, but as we have our own oranges in our own fields, we use them, and the smell of orange-flavoured cookies will scent your kitchen beautifully)
1 vial of vanilla essence
1 tablespoon cognac (brandy)
4 cups 'strong' flour (the kind used to make pie pastry, as opposed to 'soft' flour, used in cakes)
1 teaspoon baking powder
extra egg yolk for glazing the cookies
Cream the butter and sugar, add the yolks, rind, vanilla and brandy and beat well. Add the flour and then the liquid, mixing with floured hands to form a stiff dough. Break off small pieces and roll them out into the traditional biscuit shapes that Greek housewives and bakers have been crafting over the years. Place them on a lightly greased baking tin. Brush them with beaten yolk mixed with a tablespoon of water. Bake in a moderate oven for about twenty minutes.

The biscuits are cooked when they take on a rich golden colour. I lift them off the baking tin with a metal scraper; sometimes the egg runs onto the tin, and this is what causes them to stick. Try to let them cool a little before scraping off, as these biscuits harden as they cool. This mixture makes about 50 cookies - just enough for a family of four to eat them in one day...

Sesame is often used as a garnish on Greek pies and biscuits, but never on Easter cookies (κουλουράκια Πασχαλινά); cookies with sesame seeds are often eaten during Lent or in plain less sweet biscuits. And if you're wondering what to do with the egg whites, I'd do what all New Zealanders would do with them - make a pavlova!

As I said, these biscuits never fail to please: here they are in 2009 in my Cretan kitchen:

©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
New Year's cake
Clean Monday
25 March (Independence Day)
Ash Thursday

MORE EASTER TRADITIONS:
Cretan meat pie
Red eggs
Tsoureki
Seafood
Lent pies
Bakaliaros for Palm Sunday
Clean Monday
Fasting

Beetroot salad and egg dye for Greek Easter (Μπατζάρια βραστά και φυσική βαφή για τα Πασχαλινά αυγά)

There is no Greek Easter without the hard-boiled red eggs that all Greek housewives will be dyeing on Megali Pempti (Holy Thursday) just before Easter. The supermarkets are full of non-toxic dyes in sachets, in all ranges of colours, although the traditional colour is red, symbolising Christ's blood. It's said that some women who were going to the market to sell their eggs passed by Jesus on the cross and the blood from his pierced hands and feet fell on the eggs, which became stained red. Whatever the symbolism involved, all Greek houses will see red eggs at Easter, whether they are ready-bought dyed, or home-made; we all can't wait to select one from the basket and crack it (tzougkrisma) onto someone else's to see whose egg will dominate throughout the contest.

In the plastic world we live in, the art of dyeing red eggs naturally has nearly become extinct. Here's a way to use natural substances to colour and decorate Easter eggs, and keep them edible after you've had your fun cracking them at the Easter table. We never eat them if they're dyed with unnatural 'non-toxic' chemical substances, so the eggs are pretty much wasted.

My mother used to use shop-bought clothes dye to get her eggs red, but she also created a natural design on the eggs, something not many people will remember or bother with these days, as most dye sachets come with adhesive plastic spring motifs to stick onto the eggs after boiling or dyeing them, depending on the instructions. The practice of decorating them with leaves is also continued in some Eastern European countries, as my Bulgarian students have informed me.

As this is an experimental session two weeks before Holy Thursday, I'm only dyeing four eggs today. The free-range eggs given to me by my uncles are far too precious to throw away afterwards, but because I am using beetroot juice as a natural dye, I won't need to throw them out. No matter what the sachet says about the dye being non-toxic, I still don't believe it; mine will be going into tomorrow's potato salad. Greeks boil the beetroot greens with the beetroot bulb, and eat it as a salad - greens and all - dressed with olive oil, vinegar and salt. And since I'm cooking beetroot today, it's a chance to see if what is written on the internet about beetroot being a natural red dye for eggs is true.

To prepare the motifs on the eggs:
To make these natural decorations, you need some old stockings, parsley leaves or other decorative leaves that are large enough to leave an imprint on the egg shell, and some twist ties or small elastic bands.

Place a parsley leaf on a damp egg and then carefully place it in an old nylon stocking, wrapping the egg tightly with the stocking so that the leaf will not be displaced. Twist the stocking tightly at the top, tying it with a small rubber band, piece of string or twist-tie, anything that will not damage the egg or displace the leaf.

To make the dye:
All factors must be considered when making natural dyes, so I must start off by telling you that the eggs I used were a beige colour, while the beetroot and red onion skins created a rusty brown dye. Yellow (Spanish) onions are the best for a deep red egg dye colour, so save your yellow onion skins over the lent period if you want to use them to make a natural dye. This is a variety of onions we don't commonly find in the places where I shop in Hania (although I did find them in LIDL recently and used them to dye eggs red great success); we use mainly red onions here. In any case, natural dyes and materials are all a matter of experimentation. The red onion skins with the beetroot gave a brown colour, although the dye looked red. The yellow onions skins created the classic red colour of Greek Easter eggs, while the dye itself looked orangey-brown (see top photo; the brown eggs are dyed with beetroot, while the red eggs are dyed with yellow onion skins).

Place the skins of about 15 onions into a pot with 4 cups of strained juice from boiled beetroot and 2 tablespoons of vinegar to make sure the dye 'sets' and does not create a runny effect when the egg is removed from the dye and dried. Let them boil away in the pot for half an hour. Strain the dye into another pot and discard the onion skins. There should be just enough to cover the eggs. The trick is not to add too much water, otherwise, the dye will not be very strong - the more natural ingredients you use, the stronger the colour - naturally!

To dye the eggs:
Some people boil the egg in the dye, while others boil the eggs separately and then add them to the dye. As the dye is made from natural substances, I have no qualms about dyeing the eggs in it. The only problem when boiling and/or dyeing eggs is to take care that they do not crack during any of the stages. They'll be pretty useless for 'tzougrisma'!

Begin by washing the eggs so that they are free of dirt, straw and grease (the dye won't 'take' otherwise). Place the cleaned, pre-decorated eggs in the pot with the prepared dye and begin by boiling them on a high heat - there should only be one layer of eggs in the pot. I added one undecorated egg as a colour control. When the water is boiling and the eggs are starting to rattle in the pot (that's why you should only have one layer!), lower the heat to a minimum and leave them to boil for half an hour. Turn the heat off (your eggs are cooked) and leave the eggs in the dye until they have taken the desired colour. You can check this by lifting the control egg out of the pot with a slotted spoon.

To shine dyed eggs:
Some dyes include a gloss to make the eggs shiny after they have been dyed (more chemicals, if you ask me). The traditional way to do this is by brushing them with olive oil. Pour some olive oil on a tea-towel (paper towels leave too much residue) and lightly rub it all over the egg. Lay them on a plate lined with some paper towels to absorb the excess oil while drying.

Your eggs are now finished - and they're still edible. My eggs didn't turn out like the traditional red eggs for Greek Easter, but don't they look beautiful in the old bird's nest that we found in an orange tree in our village... And the children didn't bat an eyelid on seeing the un-red eggs; they knew what to do with them!

©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
New Year's cake
Clean Monday
25 March (Independence Day)
Ash Thursday
Fasting

Leek spiral pie - strifti (Πρασόπιτα στριφτή)

When I initially started recording my recipes on my food blog, I thought nobody would notice. A few months later, what wonderful food-blogging friends I have made and delicious recipes I have read about.

Here is Laurie's prasopita (leek pie), made as a spiral pie (strifti pita). The recipe calls for thin sheets of filo (phyllo) pastry, leeks, onions, feta cheese and eggs. I substituted the local mizithra for the feta. It can be turned into a lenten pie if you omit the eggs and cheese. The recipe can be found on her page, while the spiral form of the pie was my idea. I brushed it with copious amounts of olive oil - absolute heaven!

©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 PASTRY RECIPES:
Kalitsounia fried
Kalitsounia in the oven
Marathopites
Hortopita (spanakopita)
Tiropitakia
Filo-pastry making
Sfakianes pites
Summer kalitsounia
Easter kalitsounia

MORE LEEK RECIPES:
Poached salt cod
Meat in egg-and-lemon sauce
Artichokes in lemon sauce
Leek and potato potage

Free-range chicken roast and pilafi rice (Χωριάτικο κοτόπουλο κρασσάτο με πιλάφι)

Cooking for a lot of people, all with different tastes, is a time-consuming challenge, especially when the cooking method is demanding or unusual; for example, more than one pot is required, the ingredients need special care, the cook isn't experienced. Sunday is always one of those days when cooking is a challenge; the question of what will be cooked on Sunday is always discussed on Friday evening, in time to visit the butcher on Saturday morning. There is a lot of negotiating involved in Sunday's meal: after deciding what meat (always on a Sunday, not much likely on a weekday) will be cooked - the choice is usually among chicken, goat, sheep, pork or beef - there follows a briefing of the dining preferences of the eaters with a short barrage of questions to the cook, to ensure that the desired menu is within her culinary knowledge. Alternative options are suggested if the cooking method is beyond the skills of the chef.

Today's meal shouldn't have turned out so well. On the menu is free-range fatty chicken, not the kind that goes for 2 chickens for 5 euro - the kind that cost 5 euro per kilo of chicken. It was a beautiful looking yellow bird, covered in fat, the kind that makes scrumptious wedding-style pilafi rice. Pilafi is made by using the fatty stock that the chicken was boiled in. But nobody wants to eat plain boiled chicken afterwards, even if they do like to eat plain pilafi. I had to devise a way to cook the chicken so that we could all have the cake (ie the pilafi rice) and eat it too (ie make sure the chicken gets eaten and doesn't have to be turned into chicken pie).

A suggestion was made about cooking the par-boiled chicken with a recipe we had once used as newlyweds - an oven casserole, with mushrooms in the oven topped with feta cheese; the chicken needed to be browned in the pan, then added to a thick red mushroom sauce stewing away in a pot, after which it was put in the oven to cook away, the grand finale being feta cheese crumbled over it for the last fifteen minutes of cooking time. Although it sounded complicated, it didn't sound unusually illogical, so I took it up. First mistake. "Have you still got the recipe?" Who needs recipes when the internet offers endless possibilities for recipe creation? I decided to google it instead. After checking the first 20 'chicken feta' recipes, I realised that none matched the recipe my husband remembered, which annoys me greatly; if someone can remember the recipe, why don't they cook it themselves?

In any case, this chicken had to dealt with, so I decided to pull out a coq au vin recipe which usually requires browning chicken pieces, adding vegetables, and finishing off the cooking in the oven. I printed out the recipe and decided to start it on Saturday night, to give the chicken a chance to marinate in wine, as the recipe stated. Second mistake. I usually cook when my husband is at work during the day. He came into the kitchen just as I had just finished browning the chicken pieces. "Aren't these pieces just a little too big?" he asked helpfully. I suppose he was worried they may not cook well enough for the fussy eaters in our house. He helped me to cut them into smaller bits. To my delight, the knife went through the meat like a loaf of sourdough bread. It wouldn't need too much cooking time in the oven, always a problem with free-range roast chicken.

The recipe called for pearl onions, the kind used in Greek stifado. When I don't have any, I just use ordinary onions, with a small cross-slit on their root side to make sure that they cook right through without falling apart. "Are you going to leave the onions whole? I've never eaten chicken with whole onions before," said the gourmet in a worried tone of voice. Not wanting to upset Mr Gourmet, I cut them in half, which of course, I knew was a (third) mistake, since most of them started falling apart the moment I placed them in the pot.

Chunky fresh cap mushrooms look beautiful, like a forest floor scattered with dry brown leaves, I thought, as I was browning them in a saucepan. "You didn't cut those, either?" exclaimed my husband, his face now showing anxiety. I won't say it was my fourth mistake when I cut them into smaller bits, making them look like pizza topping. I suppose they would disintegrate in the casserole. Tant pis, as the French would say.

After placing the chicken in a pot with the wine and seasonings, I suddenly realised that the mushrooms and onions, according to the recipe, were not supposed to go into the marinade together with the chicken. Had I tossed them in, I would've made my fifth mistake, which I had already made, in any case, by not reading the whole recipe before starting to cook. The whole charade reminded me of Ruth Rendell's A Judgment in Stone, in which the characters were doomed to die through all their careless (or overcareful) actions and reactions to the antics of their hired housekeeper.

The next day, there was no one to watch over me while I continued the cooking process. I threw away the recipe, placed the chicken in an oven dish with the onions and mushrooms, added some seasonings and a little olive oil (to replace the lost fat which was in the pilafi stock), and heated up the oven to get it going. The result was a beautiful wintery meal that matched the dull weather of the day. The mushrooms and onions gave the sauce a dark English-gravy look, a suitable liquid to drizzle over the pilafi. The vegetables were crunchy rather than mushy - my only regret is not adding any bell peppers. The chicken was aromatic and tender. Margaret was thrilled to be eating mushrooms in a roast, a popular vegetable in her homeland). As for that pilafi, it'll be remembered for a long time. Fat-covered chicken is the best way to make this traditional rice dish dish from Crete.

The moral of the story is: When preparing gourmet meals, cook behind closed doors. All's well that ends well. At least I wasn't doomed, like the characters in the book.

You need:
1 large free-range chicken, covered in yellow skin, with pockets of fat
30 pearl onions (or 15 large onions), peeled, with a cross shape cut on the root side
20 large mushrooms 'cap' mushrooms (pleurotus types would also work), cut in large chunks
2 large bell peppers (preferably red and yellow, to enhance the decor) cut into large chunks
1 glass of wine
1 teaspoon of tomato paste
3 cloves of garlic, sliced into large chunks
3 bay leaves
1 teaspoon of thyme
salt and pepper
a little olive oil

To make the stock:
Boil the chicken in a large pot for about 15 minutes. The fat will melt, and you will be left with a very an oily stock, and par-boiled fat-reduced chicken. With a slotted spoon, remove the chicken form the stock and place onto a frying pan. Strain the stock into another pot (by this time, the kitchen sink will not be able to hold any more dirty pots and pans!) CUP BY CUP; you need to know exactly how much stock you have. Place the pot with the stock in the refrigerator until you are ready to cook the rice.

To prepare the chicken and vegetables:
Without adding any oil, brown the chicken on both sides, to give it a slightly scorched look. You may have to do this in two stages if the chicken is very large. When the chicken is ready, remove it and place it in a pot with the tomato paste mixed in with the wine, garlic, thyme, bay leaves, salt and pepper. Cover the pot and place it in the refrigerator overnight, or at least for a few hours for the marinade to seep into the chicken.

In the same pan that was used to brown the chicken, without adding any oil, brown the onions whole. If they are large, they can be cut in half and browned on the cut side. Pearl onions fare better, as they don't break up so easily, but I found that neither the large onions broke up. When they are done, put them into the baking tin that is going to be used for next day's roast. Then do the same with the onions (and pepper, if using). These may need a little oiling; the grease in the pan will have been used up the onions. Place them with the onions when they are done, and store them in the fridge until it's time to cook the chicken.

When you are ready to cook the roast, strain the chicken and place it in the baking tin with the vegetables. Strain the marinade and pour about half of it into the baking dish. Drizzle everything with olive oil. Add a final shake of salt and pepper, and place the tin in a moderate-high oven to allow the chicken to cook and take on a golden colour. The cooking time depends on the chicken; ours needed two hours from the time the oven was turned on to bake to tender golden perfection.

To make the pilafi rice you need:
chicken stock
long-grain rice
salt
the juice of one lemon
Warm up the measured chicken stock so that the curdled fat sitting on top melts. This is the essence of pilafi: the fat is not discarded. Set it to boil, adding salt to taste. The amount of stock that you have will determine how much rice will be used: for each wine glass of rice (which is equal to one serving of cooked rice), 3 wine glasses of stock are needed to cook it in. If the stock is not enough for your eaters, add more water. If it is too much, you will not use it all. As an experienced cook, I used 3 large cups of rice, enough for 9-10 servings of pilafi. Pilafi rice heats up well the next day, although the taste is not the same as freshly cooked pilafi, so you don't really want too much left over. When the rice is done, it should NOT be bathing in a lot of liquid; the rice should be grainy, not soupy.

Wash the rice in a colander to get rid of excess starch (it make the rice sticky; good pilafi should be grainy). Pour it into the boiling stock. Now stand over the pot, and stir the rice every now and then to make sure it will not stick to the bottom of the pot, keeping the heat moderate to high. Don't over-stir, as the rice will then get mushy. From this point on, it will not take more than 15 minutes for the rice to be done. Add the lemon juice just before the rice is done. You will see the broth congealing, and it is at this point that you must decide when the rice is done to your liking. This dish needs a little practice to get the rice cooked well! If the rice tastes uncooked and it's starting to stick to the bottom of the pot, add some more water, and mix it in. If it's crunchy, it needs less cooking time; if it's grainy, it needs more cooking time. Do not let it go mushy.

Pilafi rice needs to be served immediately. This is why many Cretan hosts wait until the final guest walks through the door before they start cooking it. Now you know why they eat so late; it's all their guests' fault! Serve the rice topped with the chicken, vegetables and sauce; a green salad complements the colours of this meal. We also had it with a good beer. Everyone had a bit of everything, and the cook was complimented on her versatility. As for the feta cheese, the chicken didn't really need it.

This dish sounds a little complicated. That's why we cooked it on a Sunday; never never on a weekday. If you don't eat a lot of meat during the week, you will savour this meal, which may seem a little heavy fat-wise. Keep in mind that the chicken stock does not have to be turned into pilafi on the same day that you serve the chicken; it can be kept for another meal, or turned into soup (with the fat skimmed off). If you boiled free-range chicken just to make pilafi, a fantastic way to use up the boiled chicken that nobody wants to eat is to make a chicken pie.

©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 CHICKEN RECIPES:
Pilafi
Chicken pie
Chicken curry
Yiouvetsi
Stir-fry noodles
Sunday roast
Chicken roast

MORE MEALS THAT GO WITH PILAFI RICE:
Bolognaise sauce
Chili con carne
Stir-fry beef and vegetables

MORE RICE RECIPES:
Simple pilafi rice for children
Spanakorizo
Dolmadakia - dolmades
Yemista - ayemista

Wild asparagus from Crete - avronies (Αυρωνιές - άγρια σφαράγγια)

I know I'm going to get into trouble by telling you that in Crete, we eat Tamus communis. You'll be up in arms, claiming that all sources which mention it state that it is poisonous. That's what they said about deadly nightshade, and yet, in Crete (and Turkey, where it's also known by the same name as in Greece, stifno or stifnos), we eat it on a regular basis with our summer horta (mixed in with amaranth, which we call vlita).

It's wild asparagus time in Crete (the locals call them 'avronies'), and some of my friends who live in small rural villages eat them as often as they can get their hands on them. They're both still alive. Most people would have you believe that asparagus is not eaten in Greece. Wrong; it's been here forever, but not in the form that it has become popularly westernised. In any case, the Greek word for asparagus is σφαράγγι, 'sfaragee'. The western version - big fat spears, shipped to Greece all the way from Peru - are available in large supermarkets near tourist centres - guess who they're for - at 7-8 euro a kilo; so many carbon footprints to eat what can be found in a local field...

A few days ago, we visited the village on a snail-hunting mission (the culinary results of this forage will appear in a post in the summer). We also found some wild asparagus, albeit in small quantities. It had already been picked by other foragers before we got to our own fields. And no wonder; avronies sell for about 4 euro a bundle. It is never cultivated, therefore it must be tracked down by dedicated foragers. It needs to be blanched before being used, in order to remove any bitterness. Because the stalks of the wild asparagus are very long, they are cut into shorter pieces to accomodate the pot or pan. Only the tenderest parts of the long shoots are eaten (much like Western asparagus). It is then used in a similar way to what I have described for scrambled eggs with wild greens, but wild asparagus requires a longer cooking time, depending on how tender the stalks are. And since I didn't find many spears on my last hunting expedition, I can only make an omelette for one with them.

You need:
4 wild asparagus spears - cut them down as far as possible before they get too woody
1 onion, chopped finely
1 egg
2 tablespoons of olive oil
salt and pepper
Boil the asparagus spears for about five minutes. Smell them; they exude a fresh spring aroma which has a carthartic effect on your nose. Drain them and cut into smaller pieces. Make sure you don't keep any stalks that are too tough to eat. Put them aside.

Heat the oil in a small frying pan, saute the onion and add the asparagus. Toss everything to mix it in well. Break an egg into the pan, and stir it around to scramble it. If you prefer, you can turn it into an omelette. Let it cook on moderate heat, until the egg is cooked to your liking. The smell by now will be intoxicating.


I know we have to check our sources, so here is what NIKOS PSILLAKIS (co-author of the book "Traditional Cretan Cooking") has to say about this issue:
Γεια σας!
Θα θέλαμε να σας πούμε ότι τα κείμενα για τα βότανα στο βιβλίο μας τα έχει γράψει ειδικός βοτανολόγος και είναι απολύτως έγκυρα. Όντας, οι αβρωνιές μοιάζουν λίγο με άγριο σπαράγγι και σε μεγάλες ποσότητες θεωρούνται τοξικές. Όμως στην Κρήτη τις τρώμε. Δεν γνωρίζομε για άλλα μέρη της Ελλάδας.
Πολλούς χαιρετισμούς
Νίκος Ψιλάκης

... which all translates as:
"Hello! We would like to say that the writings on the herbs in the book have been written by our expert botanist and are completely valid. For purists, avronies seem a little like wild asparagus and in large quantities are considered toxic. But in Crete we eat them. We do not know about other places in Greece. Many greetings, Nikos Psilakis"

Another source backs him up:
Tamus cretica
The Greeks use the young suckers like Asparagus, which they much resemble.
T. cretica is a native of Greece and the Greek Archipelago.

Here's another source for wild asparagus, from Italy; the beautiful photo shows a plant resembling the wild asparagus I collected, the same one sold in the market. The article discusses how foragers hunt down the wild asparagus, so that there's very little left for the untrained eye to discern.

It's good to know that people all over the world are eating the same kinds of food, albeit in different colours, shapes and sizes. It reminds me of how we are all human beings, coming in different colours, shapes and sizes ourselves. We should all be aware of the local varieties of the commonly westernised image of particular edibles, in order to make biodiversity sustainable.

And here's a rare sight in a Greek village, which we chanced on the day we went on our forage. I'm sure you'll enjoy it: this peacock was strutting around the area of our orange grove ,where we found the asparagus!

This post is dedicated to Fiona, because I know how much she likes people to get names and facts right.

©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 EGG RECIPES:
Avgolemono
Scrambled eggs with wild mustard greens
Frittata
Potato salad

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