My New Book is Out!
Full of fun, easy, zesty and healthy recipes, my new and very summery book is out at last! You can click here to order it. I am sure you will love this sample recipe. It is a hearty salad that can also be a main dish. It became our standard picnic fare. We always make it the night before our lunch on the beach with friends. Grilled sadines or lamb chops on our portable BBQ is the main dish, but everybody –friend and participants at Kea Artisanal rave about the bulgur salad.
Photo by ANASTASIOS MENTIS.
The recipe is based on Bazargan, a Syrian-Jewish salad that Claudia Roden included in A Book of Middle Eastern Food. I first tasted it many years ago, during a food conference, and I was immediately fascinated by this earthy, fragrant, and crunchy sweet-and-sour mixture.
Spring’s Glorious Feast
Easter is to Greeks what Thanksgiving is to Americans: a glorious family feast with dishes that make the most of the young season’s early produce. Unlike Thanksgiving though, Easter (April 19 this year) is a four-day celebration, the religious reconstitution of ancient pagan rituals that celebrate the return of the spring: the feeling of the sun’s warmth, the renewal of the earth, the blossoming of plants after the dark and cold winter. Like all big Orthodox festivities, a forty-day period of Lent precedes Easter. READ MORE (The Atlantic)
Almonds Green and Brown
Throughout the Middle East, the green almonds of early spring are nibbled raw, added to salads, or cooked together with lamb in a lemony sauce. In Greece they are preserved in heavy syrup, as yet another spoon-sweet, like karydaki (green unripe walnut), or melitzanaki (tiny eggplants, the most exotic of our spoon-sweets).
Green almonds are also pickled. Unusually delicious and crunchy, they are served as an appetizer, together with various kinds of olives, pickled cauliflower, peppers and carrots. Their sour taste complements perfectly the sweet and strong anise-flavored ouzo or raki. READ MORE (The Atlantic)
Pork Delicacies from the Venetian past
The Jamón Iberico of the Cyclades is called loza in Kea, and louza in Mykonos, Syros, Tinos, and other islands. The word clearly originates from the Italian lonza (cured pork loin).
The Cycladic islands were under Venetian rule for some time —some islands from the 13th to the 15th centuries, and others until the 17th century or even later.
Despite their colonial history, some islands were never occupied by the Ottomans, as the rest of Greece. By the late 15th century Kea was dominated by pirates, almost deserted by its inhabitants.It was later repopulated by people who fled from other islands – my maternal grandfather’s family probably came from Patmos, as my mother’s maiden name, Patiniotis, indicates… READ MORE (The Atlantic)
Slaughtering the Pig
In the dead of winter, when seaside taverns are closed and the cold wind beats mercilessly against the deserted beaches, islanders slaughter their pigs. Pig-slaughtering is still an important annual festival for the locals on Kea, as on all the Cycladic islands.
In the necessarily frugal old-days, it was an essential undertaking; today it is more of an occasion to gather, eat, and drink homemade wine and raki, the local moonshine… READ MORE (The Atlantic)
Making the most of Meat
“Meat every Sunday and ground meat on Thursdays”—this was the rule around which my mother, and most Greek women, planned meals when I was growing up.
The rule wasn’t invented for the health-conscious, and certainly wasn’t for those who wished to lose weight—rather, up until the 1960s, hardworking Greek men could barely afford food for their families.
Blessing the waters
Epiphany (January 6), or Day of the Light –ton Photon in Greek— is an important religious and cultural celebration that marks the end of the holiday season. Up until the 4th century A.D. Epiphany was considered the first day of the year, observed as a three-day commemoration of Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan River.
OLIVE OIL: the Stuff of our Lives
There is a Greek word that characterizes the slow, uninteresting, overweight and spineless young men, particularly the brainless, spoiled sons of wealthy families: voutyropaida—butter-boys. Butter-boys are the antithesis of the slender, fast, clever and street-smart young men who typify Greek youth.
Christmas in Greece
Historically, Christmas was never a major celebration in Greece. Easter is our biggest feast, and besides parading form house to house on Christmas and New Year’s Eve to sing kalanda – the Greek version of carols — collecting money or sweets, there was little else traditionally observed.
Melomakarona - Honey-Infused, Olive Oil, Orange and Spice Cookies
Plain, as my mother liked them, or stuffed with nuts, as some people on the islands do, these Christmas cookies are my favorite sweet.
If you manage to resist eating them fast, they will get even better with time…
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