Neo-Magheritsa
Margheritsa is a traditional soup made by Greeks for Orthodox Easter. It contains cleaned intestines, organs of the lamb or goat and may contain sweetbreads and even the boiled head of the animal. The meat is boiled until softened and a stock is created. Spring onions, herbs are added and the soup is finished off/thickened […]
Fried Octopus
How many ways are there to prepare octopus? There’s grilled, boiled, baked, I recently tried “sous vide” (and it was fantastic) and now there is fried. Regardless of how you’re going to eat octopus the key is to tenderize it. The old-school way in Greece was to bash it on rocks at the beach, some […]
Halkidiki Green Olives Two-Way Meze
Recently, green olive from Halkidiki were finally granted Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) status by the European Union (EU). A PDO product is given this designation/label to highlight the uniqueness of the product produced in a specific geographical region. Halkdiki is located in the northern province of Macedonia and if you look at a Greek […]
Tas Kebab
From the name “Tas Kebab”, it’s easy to state this isn’t a Greek-specific dish – a dish enjoyed in the Levant and its made it’s way to the Greek table via Asia Minor Greeks who resettled in mainland Greece over time. Traditionally Tas Kebab is made with lamb but I’ve often seen beef used in […]
Herbaceous Green Rice & Shrimp
Green and red, earth and sea, shrimp and mushrooms, rice and herbs for you and me! Spring is here and the colour I associate the most with the barely new season is green. Here in Toronto we’ve had a mild winter and Spring has been unusually warm with temperature reaching 25 Celcius last weekend. One […]
Crab Kritharotto
The crab, the symbol for my zodiac – Cancer or Karkinos in Greek. In Greek mythology Karkinos was a giant crab that assisted Hydra the nine-headed serpent in its battle with Iraklis (Heracles) at Lerna. The hero crushed it under his foot but as a reward it was placed amongst the stars as constellation Cancer […]
Stuffed Flank Steak With Paprika Potatoes
Today you have a whole meal in one post…your lucky day! Let’s start with the main, flank steak which is located at the bottom of the animal or belly. Unlike pork belly this cut is lean, lots of muscle tissue and ideally marinated and cooked to rare to medium rare. For my readers from Greece, […]
Octopus With Olives & Potatoes
As an ingredient, Greeks “own octopus”, as Greek-food Guru Diane Kochilas said earlier this week. No one owns any particular ingredient but we proudly cook it (with skill) and there are countless octopus dishes in Greek cuisine from salads to stews, grilled to giouvetsi. You’ll find octopus in practically every corner of regional Greek cooking […]
Mushroom Giouvetsi
My love of mushrooms goes back to as early as I can remember eating on my own. I remember my mom sauteeing mushrooms with butter and finishing them with a squeeze of lemon juice and finishing them with some dried Greek oregano. Back then (70’s) one could only find white button mushrooms but today the […]
Grilled Trout With Yellow Beans, Red Wine Vinegar & Grape Shoots
This meal came ‘full circle’ if you will. I remember a summer vacation to Greece – it was 1983 and we had just spent the weekend during Panagias (Aug. 15th) in the Panagia Soumela and Naoussa area of central Macedonia. After feasting on roast-roasted rotisserie goat there was no room for food on that day […]