While I was writing my book and researching info on Mediterranean cooking, I learned that the foraging of wild greens went beyond Greece – folks in Italy, southern France and in the Balkans like their bitter greens…and so should you! Here in Canada, we don’t have the wealth of wild greens available to us in [...]
This is one of the tastiest pasta dishes you will ever have. Really. How can it not be good when the sauce contains onions, garlic, lots of shrimp, mushrooms, red peppers, Ouzo , butter, cream cheese and the surprise ingredient? Vanilla extract! This pasta dish is a riff on shrimp butter that I’ve used for [...]
Last weekend brought the end to the meat-eating phase of Apokries (Greek Carnival) and now Greeks are in the homestretch – the last week of Apokries. It’s Tyrini or Cheesefare Week with many Greeks forgoing meat and only eating dishes with cheese…lots of cheese! Pasta’s popularity goes beyond the happy bellies of Italian diners and [...]
Last summer was a hot one and avoid the cities and stay near the beaches where most of my friends and family are, anyways. Once the temperatures get cooler, the evenings longer – that’s when it’s time to head into the city and explore without sweating off half your body weight. September is a wonderful [...]
Ontario has always had high quality lamb and it’s a good thing. Greeks eat lamb for Sunday dinners, week days on occasion and of course, for Easter. Not everyone likes lamb but year by year more people are discovering this delicious meat that is versatile (oven or grill), not gamey at all and above all, [...]
One of new additions to the landscape of Toronto’s food scene is the addition of Momofuku here in Toronto. Momofuku began in New York and it is headed by chef David Chang. Reviews of the Toronto location (which is 3 floors of varying Momofuku concepts) have been really good so far, from both foodies and [...]
This recipe is as much about texture as it about taste. What I love about this recipe is that I’m using Greek yogurt to put the creamy in this coleslaw and there’s a minimal amount of mayonnaise and…no cream! Flavour-wise, I am relying on the flavours of cabbage and carrot, both finely grated – the [...]
This recipe features alot of ancient Greek ingredients: chick peas…this was the starch of the day before potatoes and rice. Then we have shrimp – fish and seafood were prominent in the ancient Greek diet and they still are a big part of the diet in today’s Greece. Oxymeli, a Greek compound word meaning “acid-honey” [...]
Greeks know their way around lamb and we unabashedly cook it well and I mean well done. Do not confuse well done with dry, hard to chew meat. You are not going to experience this here. I treat a leg of lamb much like a lamb shank, brown the meat then place in a roasting [...]
Greeks have been preserving the Summer’s bounty for ages – anything from sun-drying tomatoes, pickling, curing olives to even meats. In Florina (where my parents come from), you can see red shepherds peppers air-drying outside of homes in the late summer warm and breezy air. These dried peppers can then be re-hydrated in hot water [...]
