You can enjoy kolokotes as snack, complemented with yogurt, labne, or fresh cheese; drizzled with honey, date or any fruit molasses they become a lovely dessert. 

Marilena Ioannides’ recipe is by far the best I have tried –and I did try lots over the years. She bakes the pies on camera –speaking Greek with no subtitles, unfortunately; but consulting my recipe below you can easily follow and understand how to make these simple, exquisite pies.

To collect the old, traditional dishes she included in her book Cyprus Food Treasures, Marilena traveled all over the island, even to the remotest villages, and managed to find some incredible dishes! Often they are the missing link between age-old foods we read about in old manuscripts and the more recent variations we still encounter in parts of Greece or in other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean.

NOTE in the video as she prepares the pies leisurely, in real time, she weighs all ingredients –even the olive oil and water– as she adds them, one by one in the bowl of the mixer, zeroing her electronic scale just before adding a new item. This is a wonderful trick that helps cooks use a minimum of  bowls and other measuring utensils. 

My recipe is adapted from Marilena Ioannides’ Kolokotes. I have increased the amount of raisins and doubled the pepper; also substituted fennel seeds for the fresh wild fennel she suggests.

Makes 6 large pies

For the DOUGH:

1 pound bread flour or a combination of pasta flour and all purpose flour

1 teaspoon sea salt

70 grams olive oil

250 grams very hot or boiling water —the secret to make smooth, elastic dough

For the FILLING:

2 pounds butternut squash, peeled and seeded

1 1/2 teaspoon sea salt

100 grams bulgur (medium not fine)

150 grams raisins

30 grams olive oil

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 -1 teaspoon freshly ground pepper (I like it peppery)

1 teaspoon coarsely ground fennel seeds

Make the dough tossing the flour, salt, and olive oil in the bowl of a standing mixer. With the motor running pour in the hot water on the side, and work to obtain a soft, slightly sticky dough. Wrap in oiled plastic wrap and set aside. You can make the dough the previous day, refrigerate, wrapped, and bring to room temperature before proceeding further.

For the filling cut the squash in very thin slices, then in small cubes, matchsticks, or any kind of tiny bits. Add salt, olive oil and the raisins, then work with your hands to somewhat soften the squash.

Stir in the bulgur, cinnamon, pepper, and fennel seeds, and toss well to mix. 

Divide the dough into 6 pieces. (Marilena makes 7 pies but I find it difficult to divide the dough into an even number; I only use the scale for the filling).   

Preheat the oven to 150C  (about 300F) in convection mode. 

Roll each piece into roughly a 25 cm round, and place one sixth of the filling in the center, weighing all the filling  dividing the number into 6, then portioning and weighing 1/6th for each pie. Stir the filling each time before you take a portion as the moisture tends to go to the bottom.

Fold the round of dough to cover the filling; seal and crimp the edge, making sure the pie is completely closed so that the squash, bulgur etc. bake and steam inside the crust. Place the pies carefully on baking trays lined with parchment paper, and bake in the middle of the oven for 45 min to 1 h –until lightly colored on top and bottom.

If you bake both pans at the same time, change positions after 30 minutes, turning also the pans back to front.

Let the kolokotes cool on a rack or on thick kitchen towels before cutting to eat.

The flavor is infinitely better after they are completely cold, and I find that it is even better the next day! 

Keep on the counter for 2-3 days, if you manage to resist devouring them. You can also freeze and slowly reheat any leftover pies. 

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Adapted from my book The Foods of the Greek Islands.

The cornerstone of Greek sweets are the preserves made with the fruits of every season.

Each home has several different jars of fruit in the pantry, and guests are offered a teaspoon with a glass of water as a welcome to the house.

I know that fresh sour cherries are not the easiest fruit for most people to get, and their season is so short, so I suggest you make the preserves with perokerasa (Rainier cherries) instead.

Unfortunately, the true color of the Rainier cherries preserves is a quite unattractive murky yellow, so you are better off adding a few drops of red food coloring.  Instead, I prefer to boil a red beet with the cherries, a trick I learned from Tunisian cooks.

Makes 3 cups

2          pounds firm cherries, such as Rainier or Royal Ann (not pie cherries or Bing cherries), pitted (see NOTE Sour Cherry preserves)     

2          cups sugar      

1          small red beet, peeled and quartered (optional)       

1/4       cup freshly squeezed lemon juice      

2–3      teaspoons pure vanilla extract

In a large bowl, combine the cherries and sugar and toss well. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight, or for up to 2 days.

Transfer the cherry mixture to a large saucepan and bring to a boil, stirring occasionally until the sugar dissolves.

Boil for 3 minutes, then remove from the heat.

Let cool completely. With a slotted spoon, transfer the cherries to a colander set over a large bowl. Bring the syrup to a boil and boil for 2 minutes. Add the beet (if using), the lemon juice and the syrup from the bowl. Boil the syrup until it reaches 235°F to 240°F on a candy thermometer.

Return the cherries to the pan and boil for 2 minutes more. Remove from the heat, add the vanilla extract and let cool completely. Discard the beet and pour the cherries into clean jars, filling almost to he top, then close he lids. As they cool, they will pop and seal so they will keep for up to a year, at least in a cool place.

If they do not seal, store in the refrigerator for up to 3 months.

NOTE: Vissino, Sour Cherry Preserves

As sour cherries are quite tart, you may need to double the amount of sugar. It all depends on your personal taste. The Greek tradition is to add 1 kilo sugar for each kilo of pitted cherries, but this is far too much for my taste.

No aromatic or coloring is needed here, of course.

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Her recipe, the very first I encountered of roasted cabbage wedges –many have been published since– inspired me to try my version.

I omitted the anchovies and parmesan, but added both soy and fish sauce, as well as a large pinch of my favorite hot Florina smoked pepper, along with plenty of rosemary, which I think complements beautifully this Asian-Mediterranean roasted cabbage.  Costas and I loved it, and we make it quite regularly these days.

It accompanies beautifully any kind of meat or chicken, but we also eat it with the wonderful olive-oil-fried eggs from our neighbor’s hens, and feta cheese.

Serves 3- 4 

1 medium head green cabbage (1 ½ kilo, about 3 pounds)

½ cup fruity olive oil, plus more to drizzle at the end

¼  cup soy sauce

2  tablespoons fish sauce

3-4 garlic cloves, finely grated, or passed through a garlic press

2 teaspoons piperokama or any good smoked, hot pepper

¼ cup rosemary leaves, and more sprigs to serve

Freshly ground black pepper, as needed

½ cup whole wheat breadcrumbs, or chopped walnuts or other nuts, such as almonds or hazelnuts

Heat oven to 450 F (230 C).

Cut the cabbage in quarters lengthwise through the core, then cut out the cores and stem. Slice the quarters lengthwise into about 1½-inch-thick (3,5 cm) wedges.

Place the wedges on a rimmed sheet pan, lined with parchment paper, flat sides down. It’s OK if the pan seems a bit crowded; the wedges will shrink as they roast but try not to overlap much, if possible. Lightly drizzle them with oil.

In a small bowl, combine the soy and fish sauces, the garlic, the smoked pepper and the rosemary leaves. Add about ½ cup olive oil and stir to mix. Massage this mixture into each cabbage wedge, making sure it goes in-between the leaves.

Roast until cabbage is lightly browned in spots, about 20 minutes. Spritz with water, nd contilue roasting another 10 minutes, until the cabbage is tender and caramelized. Sprinkle with the breadcrumbs and roast another 10 minutes, then remove from the oven, drizzle with a bit more olive oil, sprinkle with some black pepper and serve immediately or let cool and serve at room temperature.

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From mid-December and up until after the New Year we usually keep on the festive table nuts and dried fruit, plus melomakarona and kourabiedes.  

Wikipedia refers also to the Sephardic Jewish tradition to serve various nuts, candied and dried fruits during Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year.  Catalans and Armenians share similar traditions.

When I first read a description of this traditional festive bread I was surprised by the amount of olive oil it contains. I looked up many French recipes and they all agreed that for each pound of flour there should be one full cup of olive oil added. There were few minor differences in the aromatics among the recipes, with some suggesting just a few aniseeds, and others a lot more –I chose to follow the latter.Some also had orange blossom water along with orange or lemon zest, which I preferred to leave out. Some recent version substituted butter for the olive oil (!) and also had egg in the dough. The recipe Saveur published in 2007 has no aromatics at all, and significantly more sugar; the headnote describes it as ‘a cross between a brioche and a focaccia.’ There is also a crunchy version of the Pompe a l’ Huile, which is baked in a low oven until completely dry.

Part of the traditional Christmas table in Provence this delicious olive oil bread is supposed to be torn into pieces with the hands and never cut with a knife. Pompe a l’ Huile is served along with twelve more desserts on Christmas Eve on the festive tables all around the Mediterranean coast of France. The thirteen sweetmeats include various dried fruits –figs, different kinds of grapes, plums etc.—candied pears and apples, as well as oranges and other citrus fruits, cookies, and nougat.

It is an old Mediterranean tradition to have different kinds of sweets on display during the end of the year holidays, supposedly to placate kalikantzaroi, the  malevolent goblins. In Greece we also keep on the table nuts and dried fruit, plus melomakarona and kourabiedes from mid-December and up until after the New Year. 

RECIPE: Pompe a l ‘Huile: Festive Bread from Provence

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I originally wrote and posted this seven years ago, as I was going through my first-grade school book published right after the Second World War. In it there was a description of fassoláda (bean soup), which was often referred to as ‘the Greek national dish’ in the old days. Surprisingly, the version in my book had no tomato! I was shocked, as fassoláda is always made with tomatoes as far as I can remember, but probably in those days canned tomatoes as well as tomato paste were not yet a common ingredient in all households. See also how the kitchen and stove looked in most parts of the country the 1950ies…

My revised recipe below is flavored with the wonderful Piperokama, the dried, smoked, hot peppers of Florina that our friend Naoumidis prepares.  I am told that it will be soon available in the US, as are his other deeply flavored roasted peppers which you can order  HERE and also HERE. 

We love to eat fassolàda with feta cheese, but also with canned sardines in olive oil or any smoked fish.

A simple bowl of olives, and/or taramosalata is the custom during the days of Lent, preceding Christmas.

Serves 4-6

2 cups dried white beans, like cannelini, soaked overnight in water and drained, or 4 cups pre-cooked beans

2/3 cup olive oil

2 small onions, halved and thinly sliced (about 2 cups)

4 large garlic cloves, sliced

2 tablespoons (70 grams) tomato paste

3 medium-small carrots, thinly sliced (about 2 cups)

One 16-ounce can diced tomatoes with their juice or 2 cups grated ripe tomatoes 

1 tablespoon turmeric

Peel from half an orange, in 2 strips or 2-3 pieces preserved lemon, thinly sliced

1 teaspoon sea salt, plus more to taste

2 teaspoons Piperokama, or Maraş (Aleppo) pepper, or crushed red pepper flakes, to taste

2 cups coarsely chopped celery, preferably ‘wild’ (see note)

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

Extra-virgin olive oil to drizzle

Fleur de sel, preferably from Kythera, to sprinkle

1 lemon, quartered, to serve (optional)

Place the beans in a large pot and cover with plenty of water, about 3-4 inches. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat to a simmer and cook 5 minutes. Drain, discarding the cooking water. If you use pre-cooked beans omit this step.

In the pot warm the olive oil, add the sliced onion and sauté for 3 minutes, stirring often. Add the garlic, sauté one minute more then add the tomato paste and stir a few seconds. Add the peas, if you use them, along with the carrots and the precooked beans. Toss a few times and add the tomatoes, turmeric, orange peel, salt, Maraş pepper, celery, and 2 cups water.

Bring to a boil, lower the heat and simmer for 30 to 40 minutes, adding water as needed, until the beans are very tender, almost mushy. Add the mustard, taste and adjust the seasoning. Simmer for 5 minutes more, until the beans are just covered with broth.

Remove from the heat and serve, drizzling with extra-virgin olive oil.

Pass the lemon quarters so people can add a fresh, bright squeeze at the table, and also pass Piperokama or Maraş pepper, as well as good Fleur de sel, we use the one from Antheas, so diners can sprinkle more over the beans.

NOTE:

If you use common celery add an extra 1/2 cup coarsely chopped flat leaf parsley with the mustard toward the end of cooking.
The leaf or‘wild’ celery commonly used in Europe is strongly aromatic and looks like oversized flat leaf parsley. You can easily grow it in your garden or in pots. It is very different from American celery, which has long crunchy stalks, and wild celery is never eaten raw.
You can get leaf or ‘wild’ celery in Asian markets under the name kun choi or kin tsai. When you find it, buy it in quantity, wash it, coarsely chop it and keep it in zip-log bags in the freezer to use as needed. Unlike common celery, it does not keep long in the refrigerator.

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Iceberg is a very recent addition to the Greek salad greens, and as it is very crunchy and almost tasteless, it pairs beautifully with our quite pungent arugula.

Serves 3-4

1 small or half a large head iceberg lettuce, coarsely shredded

1 bunch arugula, discard only the hard tips of stems, wash and spin-dry or press into a tea towel, then coarsely chop

A handful of fresh mint leaves, torn into pieces

2-3 small, slightly hot pickled red peppers

DRESSING

1 tablespoons cider vinegar

2 teaspoons pickling brine from peppers (optional)

1 tablespoon pomegranate molasses

2 tablespoons finely chopped scallions –white plus most green

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

2 teaspoons maple syrup, or 1 teaspoon honey

1/4 teaspoon fine salt or more if you have not used the brine

4 tablespoons fruity olive oil

Freshly ground black pepper

In a large mixing bowl add the iceberg and arugula and toss with your fingers to mix.

Make the dressing: In a jar with lid add the vinegar, brine if using, pomegranate molasses, scallion, mustard. Syrup or honey, salt, and a few grindings of pepper. Close the jar and shake well to mix all ingredients. Taste and correct the flavor with more salt, pepper or molasses.

Drizzle most of the dressing over the salad and toss briefly, then transfer to a serving platter and top with the mint leaves and peppers, drizzling with the rest of the dressing just before serving.  

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Unlike the boldly flavored cacik, the Turkish yogurt-cucumber-garlic soup, common throughout the Mediterranean –an ancestor of tzatziki– this older, fragrant Persian soup has no garlic.

I use almonds or pistachios instead of the walnuts the original recipe calls for, and I add preserved lemon, which enhances the soup with its salty-tangy flavor. I suggest you double the recipe and enjoy it the next morning for breakfast.

Serves 6

1/4 cup (25 g) dried rose petals, crushed

1/3 cup (40 g) almonds, or pistachios

About 1/8 of a  preserved lemon piece, briefly rinsed

2 cups (500 g) Greek-style yogurt

1 1/2 cups (360 ml) ice water

1/2 cup (80 g) golden raisins, finely chopped

1 1/2 cups peeled, seeded, finely diced cucumber (one small or 2/3 of a large cucumber)

1/4 cup (10 g) finely chopped fresh mint

1/4 cup (10 g) finely chopped fresh dill

1/4 cup (25 g) finely chopped chives or scallions, white and most of the green parts

Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

Sumac

2-3 tablespoons coarsely chopped pistachios (optional)

Garlic Blossoms (optional)

In a small bowl, soak the rose petals in slightly warm water until softened and cold, about 20 minutes. Drain and pat dry with paper towels.

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Spread the almonds or pistachios on a baking sheet and toast for 8 minutes, or until fragrant and lightly colored. Let cool and chop finely in a food processor together with the preserved lemon.

In a large bowl, whisk the yogurt with the ice water. Add the raisins, cucumber, mint, dill, chives, rose petals, and almonds. Season with salt and pepper.

Cover and transfer to the refrigerator for at least 1 hour.

Taste the soup and adjust the seasoning, then serve in glasses or in shallow bowls, sprinkling generously with sumac, pistachios, and garlic blossoms, if you like.

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Potatoes, carrots and a couple of onions are boiled first, in a pot with 1-2 teaspoons salt, until tender and easily pierced with a fork. 

We discard nothing in our part of the world, and we have learned that for example the root-ends of spinach are delicious when fresh, especially from ours, or the local gardens, so we carefully wash them, and boil them for a few minutes longer than we boil the large fleshy spinach leaves. Baby spinach is not what you need for this delicious salad. 

We boil zucchini  by themselves, usually, in a separate pot, with their hard stems still attached. We discard them when done, because if we cut them before boiling, the water seeps into the zucchini flesh, making the tender zucchini  unacceptably soggy.  

Boiled zucchini are often made into a salad/side dish by themselves, all through the season, as gardens all over Greece are overflowed by this beloved early summer vegetable.  And of course zucchini feature in lots of meze and main course dishes, of which my favorite is Zucchini Fritters, as well as the fabulous Crustless Zucchini Pie.  

Finally the boiled vegetable salad, after being drizzled with fruity olive oil and some lemon juice, is complemented with tangy Tahini Yogurt Sauce, the same that flavors the Roasted Squash and Bread Salad.

I serve the boiled vegetables with some chopped, pickled hot peppers, and plenty of fresh mint leaves. 

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Up until recently our book editors had stricken out of our recipes the mere mention of boiling any vegetables or greens, replacing it by ‘blanching’ or ‘steaming…’

“Today we are starting with a very controversial statement — I boil my vegetables,” writes José in his always exciting Newsletter Longer Tables with José Andrés. “You may not believe me, but it’s true! I would not lie about something important like this,” he continues. “I was shocked when I came to America and saw many restaurants and people, and even cookbooks, roasting the whole carrots and roasting whole beets and roasting all their tubers, including potatoes. I will not lie to you that more than once I told my friends: Are you crazy? Roasting carrots?” he writes.

Last week, after the end of the fascinating Symposium in Oxford I had the privilege to be invited for lunch by the symposium’s president, the unsurpassed food writer and researcher Claudia Roden –a friend since the early ‘90s.

It was a hot, humid day in London, and along with the brilliant Alicia Rios we sat at Claudia’s inspiring kitchen and enjoyed a lovely salad of boiled beets, asparagus, carrots, and zucchini, topped with fresh pea shoots, and accompanied by thick yogurt, before the main course of a fragrant bulgur pilaf with chickpeas, tomatoes, and eggplants that she has described in her fabulous book MED.

Of course, we aptly commented on the fact that boiled vegetables have now become the IN thing! Up until very recently our book editors had stricken out of our recipes any mention of boiled vegetable or green, replacing it by ‘blanched’ or ‘steamed.’  

“Boiling is something I saw my mother doing often when I was growing up,” writes José. “Green beans and potatoes will go into a pot. Some salt will be added, and love, yes, too. […] She would add olive oil, some pimentón, the beautiful deep red paprika from Spain that is lightly smoked, and some salt and a drizzle of sherry vinegar,” and he proceeds posting the recipe.

My mother taught me to do exactly that as well, the basic difference being that instead of vinegar, along the fruity olive oil, we drizzled the boiled vegetables with fresh lemon juice –see Lemon is a Greek perversion— and of course we had no pimentón…

We discard nothing in our part of the world, and we have learned that for example the root-ends of spinach are delicious when fresh, especially from our or some local garden, so we carefully wash them, and boil them for a few minutes longer than we boil the large fleshy spinach leaves. Baby spinach is not what you need for this delicious salad. 

RECIPE/Description: My Boiled Mixed Vegetables

Tahini Yogurt Sauce, the same that flavors the Roasted Squash and Bread Salad.

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Now we have three thriving plants, and lots of roses to make Rose Petal Jam and the light rose-scented Yogurt Mousse flavored with it. Later when our guests come, we will offer them my refreshing Pomegranate and Rose Petal Granita everyone loves. 

I also dry the fragrant petals –spread on clean towels all over the house– to use later in my herbal teas and in home-made Eastern Mediterranean spice mixes.

The kitchen is filled with the haunting, sensual aroma and although I try, I cannot remember for what reason during my childhood I so hated rose petal jam. I had probably associated it with endless and boring visits to monasteries on family excursions throughout Greece. Nuns traditionally prepare and offer visitors a spoonful of rodozahari (rose petal jam), which I always declined to taste.

Not until I visited Morocco in the early ‘90s did I finally lay the ghost of my youth-trauma hatred of rose petal jam and rose water. Moroccan sweets, but also the savory dishes scented with rose petals, were a revelation to me, and even made me wish I had tasted rodozhari on some of those monastery visits.

I learned that Armenian monks on the Venetian island of San Lazzaro degli Armeni prepare a wonderful rose petal jam, as Emiko Davis writes. His recipe is somewhat different from mine; rose petal jam, at least the one I have seen and tasted, are not that vividly pink as in his pictures, unless one uses artificial coloring. My jam, form pale pink fragrant roses is light amber, while the darker pink petals make a deeper colored jam.

For many years now we have tried to cultivate the old-fashioned heirloom fragrant roses in our garden on Kea – Rosa Damascena and related antique rose varietals – but our dry climate and poor soil has made it very difficult to produce enough rose petals to make the jam. This year is the first time I managed to gather quite a few fragrant rose petals to make a small batch of jam.

But even if you have just a few roses you can complement them with good quality organic dried rose petals, together with good rosewater, as I have done for many years, in order to make a cup of hauntingly aromatic jam to serve with fresh cheese, with ice cream, or with yogurt, and especially with the light Yogurt Mousse that our guests love.

Rose Petal Jam

Pomegranate and Rose Petal Granita  

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