A Blog about Greek Food and Greece

Salmon fillets with mustard sauce

Having a bad night where everything goes wrong is not good for you. You are waiting Friday night to finish work and go out and enjoy yourself, go to the festival you booked tickets months ago and party hard, just to find that it is cancelled due to overcrowding.

Yeah, its not good. The only thing that is left for you is going back home and think about a night that could have gone so well but it didn’t. What to do next day? Well, option number 1 is to sit there and do nothing or you can choose option 2 and get over it with cooking something really nice that it will make you forget it.

I choose number two.

Simple things always work better!

Ok to be honest you have many more options on what to do the following day in such a situation, but i had to start the article in some way.. 🙂

After some extensive research i managed to find the following way to cook a salmon fillet i had on the fridge…and forget the unfortunate cancellation of the previous day.

Simple stuff always help.

Take your thick, salmon fillet and add salt and pepper from both sides. Put it in a nice baking tray add a bit of water and olive oil and place it on a tray, place it on the oven and start cooking it on high heat . In the same time in glass, add mustard, olive oil, salt and pepper. While your salmon is beeing cooked pour the sauce on top and change sides.

After 30-40 minutes it should be ready. Take the glass with your sauce, add some dill and stir it well. Pour it again on top and serve with salad if you want.

July 25, 2012
Potato salad with mustard
Years ago I remember when I was working in a beer restaurant in Athens where we served all kind of food –but mainly german- where I was obsessed with the potato salad of the chef. It was so filling and tasty that I could eat just that for days.

Sometimes I try different kind of salads that can be accompanied with my food and even if the typical greek salad is my favourite, it is good to mix it sometimes. Don’t know the history behind it but I don’t think the Greeks have the copyrights of the potato salad even if it is widely used also.

So I decided to make my own first attempt in a potato salad and i have to say I was quite proud of it.

POTATOSALAD WITH MUSTARD

INGREDIENTS
- 5-6 potatoes
- 1 onion
- ½ bunch of parsley
- ½ cup of oil
- A small teaspoon of English mustard
- Salt and pepper
METHOD

Boil the potatoes peel them and cut them into cubes.

Put them in a big deep plate and add the onion the bunch of parsley ½ cup of oil , salt and pepper Stir them for a while with a spoon and then add the English mustard.

Continue to stir until all the ingredient go around. Be careful not to over do it and make mash potatoes instead. Ideally you should be able to see the potatoes and not be melted.

Serve them with any kind of meat or as a starter maybe(? ) . The spicy flavour of the mustard is unique together with the potatoes.
July 19, 2012
Courgette Boreki

A couple of months ago I bought a nice cooking book while I was waiting to take the flight home to London from Athens Eleftherios Venizelos airport. Courgette Boreki looked like a nice book with traditional recipes and easy way to cook them.

However, when you are talking about cooking something traditional means that you need to have also the necessary ingredients. Every time I was reading one of the recipes I was always thinking something like “yeah right mate, let me see you trying to find myzithra cheese in Central London.”

Unfortunately that’s the way it is, no matter how much you try you will never be able to find the necessary ingredients every time so you will have to improvise. To be honest that’s almost what I do all the time but it brings results, well most of the times…

The following recipe is my own version of a Cretan dish called boreki without phyllo pastry. As i said ideally for this recipe you need to have Mizithra cheese but we cant have everything, so we improvise.

Courgettes Boreki with some Beer …

COURGETTE “BOREKI”

2-3 potatoes
1-2 courgettes
300-400gr of Mizithra Cheese or Ricotta
A bit of mint
olive oil
salt and pepper
a few slices of tomato (optional)

METHOD

Its pretty easy to be honest.

So you peel half of the potatoes, cut them in really thin slices and place them on the bottom of a deep oven baked pan.

Do the same with the courgettes and place them on top of the potatoes. Then take the cheese and spread it evenly over the courgettes.

Sprinkle with the mint.

Repeat by placing the remaining courgettes on top and potatoes and sprinkle with olive oil and salt.

Wrap it up with a baking foil on top and cook it in the oven for about 1 hour and a half. 20-30 minutes before its done remove the baking foil so the courgettes and potatoes become a bit brownish like a pie.

If for some reason you think its quite dry you might add some water or slices of tomatoes on top .

Enjoy!

July 12, 2012
Bouyourdi greek meze
Talking about the greek cuisine you will always hear different main dishes that are well known around the world. Many people have tried Mousaka, or the Greek bean soup –Fasolada or the Stuffed Tomatoes known as Gemista.

Nevertheless I always remember my father saying that more than a nice dish he prefers to have a lot “mezedes” in front of him where he can choose a small portion from different plates rather than one big one. That’s the meaning also of “mezes” a selection of small dishes served as breakfast, lunch or even dinner, with or without drinks but to ideally with Ouzo!

Well, that’s the purpose of the following dish also. Ideally is served together with other small plates as a meze, but I guess you can also have it as a side dish or starter. Either way it doesn’t matter, I think the combination of tomato, feta cheese and hot peppers is ideal.

Its name is Bouyourdi which basically is a Turkish word (buyruk) and means order or command. Which made me realise from where the phrase “Did the bouyourdi from the Tax Office came to you?” that we are saying in Greece originally came from…

That is your Bouyourdi for today!

Ingredients
- 300gr feta cheese
- 3-4 slices of tomato
- Oregano
- 1 small green pepper cut in small pieces
- 1 small chilli pepper sliced
- A small cup of Olive Oil
Bouyourdi is ready and hot. Feta is melting..

Method

Place the feta in a small round dish that you can put to the oven Spread the chilli peppers on top Then continue by spreading the tomatoes, as many as needed in order to cover the Feta.

Add the green pepper and pour the olive oil to go everywhere. Sprinkle with oregano.

Cook it in a moderate oven for around 15 minutes more or less. You will need to check that the feta cheese starts to melt or the peppers become a little bit brownish.

Enjoy together with a cold glass of Ouzo 🙂

Tip: So if you want to experience what a typical meal with various “Mezedes” could be in Greece, try to do the following. Rather than cooking one big dish, cook bouyourdi, then have Tzatziki , together with some shrimps Saganaki? , some bread, ofcourse Greek Salad , and maybe Pickles if you have. Put all the dishes in the middle and start eating a bit from everything together with Ouzo. Proper Greece!
July 4, 2012
How to make Avgolemono
From time to time you will see in various greek recipes to talk about a sauce that is being casually called avgolemono (egg-lemon) which we add in several recipes. As simple as it seems in its creation you need to have done it quite a few times in order to manage and master it. Well, at least for me it took me some time.

I have to say however the combination of avgolemono with some of the greek recipes takes the taste a level higher like for example the magiritisa soup recipe or giouvarlakia.

So I decided to make the following post in order to try and explain it a little bit better but also use this article as a point of reference in future.

In general you will see many variations in the way that is made depending on the chef I guess and how many people are eating. Typically if you are cooking for 4+ people then you will need to increase the number of eggs.

Anyway off with the recipe.

Ingredients for Egg lemon sauce (avgolemono)
- 2 Eggs
- 1/2 glass of lemon
- 1 teaspoon of olive oil
How to cook egg lemon sauce (avgolemono)
1. Crack eggs in a bowl and whisk until frothy
2. Continue beating and add lemon juice
3. Take 2 ladles worth of hot broth from whatever dish you’re cooking and slowly pour into egg froth, mixing. This is important. Don’t forget this or the eggs will curdle.
4. Add back into your main dish and stir!
5. You’ve now added Avgolemono to your meal 🙂
Ideally when you are adding the avgolemono to your food, then it’s the last step you are making in creating your food, at least in all the recipes that I know of. After that you should remove the food from the heat and let it cool down keeping in the same time that foamy sauce on top of the food.
June 27, 2012