Greek theme continued

After last week's imaginary trip to Corfu, I decided to continue our travels at least in food and came up yet again with something related to Greek cuisine. I've had this recipe bookmarked in Falling Cloudberries from the moment I opened the book. Anything from Cyprus must be good as it is associated with the happiest week of my whole life, my honeymoon, which was spent there.

Tava is very easy to prepare and the result is a fantastic one-pot dish, full of flavour, excellent!

Ingredients:
1kg lamb, chopped
1.2kg potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks
2 red onions, cut in chunks
4 tbsp chopped parsley
3 tsp cumin seeds
4-5 tomatoes, sliced
125 ml olive oil

Can you find a dish easier to prepare?? You just throw everything in a baking dish, mix it, add 125ml water and cook it in preheated oven at 180C for 2 hours, covered with foil. After uncovering, cook it at 200C until it is nice golden. Easy-peasy. Serve with a simple salad - mine was so simple Jamie Oliver would have screamed LOL. A kind of lettuce slaw with joghurt, which was perfect in the heat we have been having in the past week.

And you know what? A colleague of mine entered my office this morning, holding a box of dessert, saying: "I just came back from Cyprus." Oh, really? Me, too :))

In the mood for Greek

There must be something in what Tessa says at the start of the Greek chapter of Falling Cloudberries: "Greece is magnetic, they say. Once you have stepped on Greek ground it's hard to shake yourself free. Myth has it that it's because your feet become stuck in the rich honey coating this country." I'm not sure it was the honey in my case but I can totally relate to this sentiment even though "technically" I have never stepped on Greek mainland, only on the ground of Corfu (and Cyprus). Interestingly, the Greek culture was the last on my holiday wish list. I've been to many parts of Europe before I reluctantly decided to "invade" this area. I was a fool to wait so long! I was enchanted the moment I saw the Greek hills from the plane. There truly is something in the air, besides the glorious smell of oregano, wild flowers, oranges and olive trees. A smell you will never be able to forget once you get a hint of. The smell of history, the presence of the Greek gods and the amazing peacefulness that lingers on the island (even despite extremely busy tourist-invaded areas).

I was not at all willing to cook anything last weekend, after the abundance of food at my friend's wedding on Saturday, but then I started leafing through Falling Cloudberries and felt an urge to use up the Greek feta and Greek olive oil I fetched at the supermarket the other day, the freshly picked cucumbers and the sweet tomatoes. I had some chicken breast thawing in the fridge, so it was evident I'd make gyros, pitta bread, tzatziki and a tomato salad.

Obviously, the gyros is just a quick version of that yummy dish, thin stripes of chicken breast marinated in olive oil and a spice mix, then fried in a pan. Not too authentic, I'm sure, but a perfect quick dinner.

For the pitta breads I used Tessa's recipe in FC, from the Cypriot chapter.
For 10-12 pittas you need

10g fresh yeast (instant works just fine, just use the conversion suggested by manufacturer)
2 tbsp olive oil
a pinch of sugar
500g strong bread flour (I added about 100g wholemeal in the name of healthy eating ;))
1 tsp salt

There's nothing new under the sun concerning the assembling of the dough. The messy part comes after the dough has risen for about 1 or 1 1/2 hours. Then, you need to punch it back and divide it into 10-12 portions, need 1/2 hour rest under a towel before proceeding with rolling the individual portions and baking them in preheated oven (220 C) on preheated baking trays. Although Tessa advises not to cook two batches at the same time, I used the fan function of my oven and cooked two trays, swapping them half-time. Worked fine for me.


Until the pittas were rising, I prepared the side dishes. For the tzatziki I grated a cucumber coarsely, then salted it and let it sit in a colander to get rid of the juices. When it was done, I pressed it down with a wooden spoon to make sure all the juices were gone. Then I mixed it with yoghurt and some sour cream (to get the right consistency because there's no Greek yoghurt available here to my greatest sorrow), and garlic oil.

For the tomato salad I just sliced some ripe tomatoes, crumbled in some feta, drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with some oregano I brought from Corfu.


The dish was excellent, the tzatziki tasted just like the one I had and had been craving from Corfu, and the pittas were really delicious.
We played some Greek music during dinner and when we closed our eyes, we could almost hear the sea moaning in the distance. A perfect dinner, what more can you ask for??

Lamb and potatoes

Sounds boring, huh? But if I tell you it's a rack of lamb with breadcrumbs, parsley and lemon á la Bill Granger (Open Kitchen) and the best potato dish I can imagine, it sounds different, doesn't it? :)

So, the lamb, true to Bill, is very easy to prepare. You need
slices of sourdough bread
parsley
1 garlic clove
zest of 1 lemon (I substituted lemon juice for this)
olive oil
salt & pepper

Toast the bread in the oven, then crumble it (easiest to do in the processor), add chopped parsley, sliced or grated garlic, lemon zest (or juice) and some olive oil to bind.
Then salt&pepper the rack of lamb and fry it for a few minutes in a pan, on some olive oil, then rub in 1-2 tsp Dijon mustard, and press on the breadcrumb mixture. Place it in a pre-heated 180C oven and cook for about 30-40 minutes for a pink meat.
Since I don't like pink meat, I cooked for almost an hour and the thicker part was still not completely done, which is a shame because there's nothing worse I can imagine than bloody (sorry, no cursing here LOL) meat.Otherwise, the combination of breadcrumbs, parsley, garlic and lemon is just great, and I will give it another try with a longer cooking time on another occasion.


As for the potatoes, I honestly believe this is the best that can happen to the first young potatoes of the season. This is always the first dish my mum prepares with them once they appear in the market and this is something the whole family looks forward to every year, me especially! So much so, that on Saturday, when we usually go round to my parents' house for dinner, my mum was sorry to inform me that she couldn't get any to make this dish with the Wiener Schnitzels she made. So I was even happier that I had found some young potatoes and huge bunches of parsley in the market that morning :)

My mum's parsley potatoes

1 kg young potatoes
olive oil and butter, 1-2 tbsp of each
a huge bunch of parsley, chopped
salt

Melt the olive oil and butter in a big pan, then add the chopped parsley and cook for 1-2 minutes.
Add the peeled and chopped potatoes, add so much water that it doesn't cover the potatoes completely, bring to the boil, add some salt and let it simmer until the potatoes absorb all the juices and become tender. (It is important not to add too much water or they will go too mushy).
The result is soft, fragrant, jade-coloured potatoes which are a perfect accompaniment to any breadcrumbed meat and should be followed by something sour (pickled gherkins) or something sweet and tart, like Bill's cucumber relish (Open Kitchen). Though I don't even mind eating them as they are, snuggled on the sofa. My idea of comfort food...


Cucumber relish

Heat 1/2 cup sugar with 1/2 rice or white wine vinegar in a pan. Until it cools, quarter a short (Lebanese) cucumber and slice it thinly. Slice 2 shallots and a deseeded red chilli thinly, too. Put all these in a nice dish and pour over the sweet vinegar. I like to add 1/3 cup of water too, to make it less tart and this time I left out the chilli. Mmmmmmm.....

The birthday girl's menu

Oh well, so I turned 27. Not a tragedy - after all LOL
So, on my birthday I certainly need some spoiling, right? And that I got from this menu.
Birthday celebrations are tricky in my family. Our flat is too small to invite over family (even such a small one, as mine), so the celebration takes place at my parents' house. That's where I take the cake which I usually bake for myself - I don't mind ;). But hubby and I have our own celebration together for which I intended to make something I never made before: lamb! I'm not sure why I'm so hooked on lamb, I haven't tasted so many versions before because it's not too available here. It is kind of exotic for me - maybe that's why?
My dearest was attentive enough to get me a whole lamb - in pieces, of course - not too long ago, which had sat in the freezer waiting for me to find out which of the numerous lamb recipes I have I was going to try first. The choice is great - think of Nigella, Bill, Tessa and many more! - and I'm not too good at making decisions LOL But the evening before the dinner the great decision was made: Tessa's leg of lamb with lemon and oregano from Falling Cloudberries.
The recipe - if it can be called a recipe at all - is simplicity itself. Get a leg of lamb, rub in the juice of 2 lemons (since hubby's not too keen on lemon and meat and I'm a chicken, too, when it comes to citrus fruits with meat, I only used 1 lemon), salt and pepper, sprinkle with oregano generously(I used the one I brought from Corfu - after all this is a Greek dish), add dots of butter and some olive oil, and it can go in a hot oven, with some water. After browning both sides, you add some diced potato, cover the whole dish with foil and turn down the heat to moderate and forget about it for a good 2 and a half hours or so, except that you need to turn it over once or twice in the meantime. Remove the foil for the last half an hour and you get a melt-in-the-mouth meat with a crispy outside, mmmm! I found that I should have used 2 lemons as the recipe suggested and even more oregano. However, I must say that both the lemon and the oregano flavour were absorbed amazingly in the potato, which was the best I have ever tasted, I'm sure!
A dish highly recommended for all!

While I was hesitating so much over the main meal, the cake didn't require plenty to think about. I'd been looking forward to making Mannix's Diablo once again ever since I first tasted it, about one year ago - I'm still ashamed of waiting that long to have this cake again! To be honest, though, I came up with a tamed Diablo after all. The reason is very simple: my red food colouring was past its best before date and I couldn't be bothered to make a trip to Tesco's, the only place where it's available, on an early Sunday morning.
Somehow this birthday seemed to be about simplicity, for this cake doesn't require much effort either (not more than a cupcake) - however, the effort to stop eating it is not something most people can easily make! It is moist, chewy, extremely chocolatey, combined with the sweetness of the cream cheese frosting (note: I used cca 100g less icing sugar than the recipe suggested, so you'd better be careful if you don't like too sweet either) and the freshness (and appetizing sight) of the luscious red raspberries... It went down a treat, so much so, that my hubby, who mostly says "perhaps later" when it comes to dessert after a meal - which in his dictionary means "I don't want any at all" - asked for a second slice! Oh well, do I need to waste another word on how gorgeous this cake is? Perhaps two more: Mannix rules!!

The tamed beast in close-up:

And a not too well-composed flower and cake piece :) Tulips are my other weakness, you know...

So before giving you the link to this pure indulgence, let me give you a word of warning: I know many people who are victims of Mannix's delirious creations, so if you're not one of them yet, I beg you to click at your own risk only. And remember: I told you...
Diablo