The Greek Food

A Blog about Greek Food and Greece

  • Oven baked potatoes and feta cheese

    Oven baked potatoes and feta cheese

    Oven baked potatoes and feta cheese
    Oven baked potatoes and feta cheese

    Ok, ill be fast and furious.

    Its Sunday, you wake up at around 13:00-14:00, you have a headache because last night you drink too much…again…and you just want to eat something.  But you don’t have your mother there to help you? So…what do you do?  Yeah yeah I know you call pizza hat or dominos or whatever… no!

    You cook the following easy recipe making use of everything you have in your fridge!

    Here is a recipe out of nothing. Let’s suppose you have the following basic things in your kitchen. The basic ingredient is the oven potatoes and lemon. From there on we just add..

    So..

    INGREDIENTS FOR OVEN POTATOES WITH LEMMON

    3-4 big potatoes medium sliced

    1 small red onion

    1 small green pepper

    2 spoons of English mustard

    Olive oil

    2 lemmons

    Salt, Pepper, Oregano

    1 spoon of butter

     

    INGREDIENTS FOR OVEN BAKED FETA CHEESE

    One big slice of Feta cheese

    2-3 slices of tomato

    1 chili pepper

    2 slices of green pepper

    Oregano

    Olive Oil

    Aluminium foil

     

    So how we do it?

    -slice the potatoes and put them in a big baking pan.

    Add on top of them salt pepper and a lot of oregano

    Put 2 spoons of English mustard and spill them around the potatoes as much as you can.

    If you want you can do the same with a little butter.  It will great better sauce

    Use your hands to stir them all together and move the sauce all around.

    Put it in a pre-heated oven . Let them cook for 35mins with a baked foil on top of it so they wont get burn.

    After 35 min remove the foil and let them cook for 35 more minutes. Test them with a fork to see that they are soft

    For the Oven Feta Cheese

    Put the big slice of feta in the middle of the aluminium foil

    Add the sliced chili pepper on top

    Then the tomato, and then the sliced pepper

    Add oregano and olive oil.

    Close the aluminium foil from the top but without pressing it on the ingredients on the top.

    Put it on the oven for 15 minutes. Removed it and served it hot. The feta cheese should be slightly melting.

    Serve it together with a greek salad.

     

     

     

  • Mussels with tomato sauce

    Mussels with tomato sauce

    You know before I started cooking I always thought that some recipes are so unbelievable difficult to make. I always thought that my mother was a hero for cooking so many different dishes that looked to my eyes so complicated.

    Well, don’t get me wrong , I still consider my mother a hero for managing to upbringing me despite all the things I did to her me and my brother. Nevertheless, when you start cooking you realize that some of those complicated dishes aren’t so complicated as you thought.

    Let’s take for example mussels with rice and red sauce.  Most of us when we think about mussels, then the first think that comes to our mind is a really expensive dish that we can only eat in really posh restaurants. Weeeeeeell…not really…

    First I have to say that mussels are something common in taverns on the islands of Greece and you can find some really nice variations of the dish.  My mother used to make some recipes with mussels just before the orthodox Easter where typical most of the orthodox fast for around 7 to 40 days (depending on how much you really believe…)

    So just days ago when I saw a pack of mussels in Sainsbury super markets near my house in London, I decided to try them.

    What did I do? I checked online, saw some recipes …and of course I called my all-knowing mother for the last tips.

    In this case I have to say that always when I call my mother for advices I always here the screams of my father on the background depending on whether he agrees or not about what my mother is saying.

    “no don’t do the mussels with red sauce…do them just with lemon” …or….”tell him that he can cook them with pasta also not rice…” anyway…

    Here we go

    MUSSELS WITH TOMATO SAUCE AND RICE

    [ingredients]

    [method]

    Its ready! Serve with rice or spaghetti.

    If you find out that you bought too many mussels and they don’t fit in the pot …don’t worry. Put a little bit of lemon on each one and eat them as they are. Its one of the best things you can taste.

     

  • Bean Soup with Sausage

    Bean Soup with Sausage

    You know when a recipe is good for students? When it combines, meat, vegetables and you spend the less possible time. Ok i lied, the ideal recipe is when it contains only meat but anyway… Well the following recipe almost has these characteristics which make it if not ideal, but really good for students or generally people that leave alone.We have spoken before for Fasolada, the typical Greek bean soup that every Greek knows. Well, come on I wont say the same again about how to do it, you check the recipe over there.When I was little my mother always used to add sausages in the recipe as it is more attractive for kids. Also it’s a different way to cook the beans. Basically mixing this recipe with Spetsofai.

    Now, why this one is ideal for students or general people that want to spend minimum time on the kitchen…

    Well lets suppose that you have prepared the beans from yesterday and you start bowling them. The only thing that you have to do is to have the ingredients ready and cut. Just add them when the time comes. As the beans are bowling, you can go in the students halls and have a beer….eeeeeem….i mean go to your room and study for tomorrow’s exam. Leave the beans to boil for an hour and when you are back you are ready to eat.

    To be honest when I was a student most of the times I was doing toast’s and ordering pizza’s but…it was a good effort J

    Well…either way  I thought it brought a pretty good result in the end…

     BEAN SOUP WITH SAUSAGES

    INGREDIENTS

    • 1/2 pound white beans moderate
    • 1 large onion or 2 small
    • 3 tablespoons olive oil
    • 1 tbsp tomato paste
    • 2 sprigs rosemary
    • 6-8 dust. garlic
    • 2-3 bay leaves
    • 1/2 celery
    • 3 carrots cut into rings
    • salt
    • 1 pork rustic sausage cut into slices
    • 1 cube of herbs

    METHOD

    • Soak for 8-12 hours, the beans in cold salted water (2 pinches of salt).
    • Strain, put cold water and boil the beans for 5 minutes.
    • Strain again and throw water
    • In a saute pan over medium-high heat put tomato paste for a few minutes. Remove, wipe with a paper pan and keep the paste in a bowl. In the same pan in 1 tbsp olive oil saute the onion and garlic to get nice color and keep themselves on the side.
    • Then in a little olive oil saute sausage, celery and carrot until the sausage is getting good color and the vegetables soften slightly.
    • Then in a pot with 2 liters of water, put the beans with the cube, herbs tomato paste, garlic, onion, carrots, celery and cook for about 1 hour over low heat without stirring,  keeping the pot half covered
    • Check to add a little water as it is good to keep it boiling in order not to interrupt the cooking of our food.
    • Season with salt towards the end of cooking and then add the sausages and a little raw olive oil to serve

     

     

  • Beef with cabbage and …a little bit of Boddington’s

    Beef with cabbage and …a little bit of Boddington’s

    Making a recipe with vegetables can always be difficult as most of us don’t know what the best way to mix them with food is and which vegetable fits better somewhere.

    Every time when I go to Germany for example I always see different recipes with cabbage and meat that fit really nicely and were something I had in mind to do. As always in this kind of situations contancting my mother is a safe bet.  Since me and my brother bought her a laptop for a present she always speaks to us through skype.

    That is good as there is more communication but you have to understand that she isn’t one of the fastest persons in writing. So, writing the following recipe…well..it took her sometime. ..

    But it was worth it.  Initially the recipe was with chopped pork but since I didn’t had and to be honest was really bored to go and get…I did it with what I had…casserole beef 🙂 it worked out equally nice.

     CABBAGE WITH BEEF AND BODDINGTON’S BEER

    [ingredients]

    [method]

    Use a different pot, add a little bit of water and olive oil and add the cabbage. You don’t have to add too much water as the cabbage will “let water” out by itself while it is boiling. When the leaves are softened remove the water from the pot with the cabbage and add your boiled cabbage to the pot with the meat. Stir it a little bit and its ready!

     

  • Last food blog for ’11

    Last food blog for ’11

    isli
    isli sent from my mother…all the way from Greece

    To be honest its always difficult to say appropriate words to write for Christmas blogging. Its not my ideal style of article to write but it’s the most appropriate in this kind of time.

    This is going to be my 8th Christmas since I moved in to the UK but I won’t be having them in London as a lot of the previous ones. With my brother we will taste some of the local foods in Costa Rica and hopefully we will come back in one piece so I can write you about my stories.

    Since I made this blog I had the chance to make some really good recipes that I am proud of and some of them that ….well lets say it more politely…my brother didn’t approved when he was tasting them. 🙂

    Its all a learning process I guess and I have been enjoying it until now. To be honest as far food is concerned I never had Christmas really highly as food is concerned. I mean some of them enjoy the turkey and food during New Years Eve but that was never a great tradition in Greece. To be honest  I don’t think cooking a turkey in Christmas eve is a Greek tradition at all.

    Personally I remember my mother always cooked something special during new years eve rather than Christmas but generally things you could use for dips. Ok ok…there are some nice Christmas traditional things that Greeks always do.

    For example there are those nice sweets which you can see in the picture and called Isli which were sent all the way from Greece and my mother. Yes, she used my cousin that was coming to London…as an excuse to send us more food. Greek Mothers…ussually she sends them by post… (its not a joke 🙂 )

    If i was a little bit better as achef…maybe i could try to do them by myself. Well, maybe next year 🙂

    Despite all that I think I need to close this post not with the usual and typical wishes. Yes I do hope everyone is happy and healthy in the following year but as this is a food blog…I do hope everyone cooks a little bit more. Everyone tries to cook a little bit more and tries to cut down the junk food a little bit more also. I can certainly tell you that I am one of those people that does eat junk food from time to time…but a food that you have cooked is a 1000% times better than anything else..

    I am not a chef, even if I claim to be, but if the foods look tasty to you on the pictures…well there is no reason why you can’t cook them also.

    That’s all! Have a happy new year and all the best for 2012!

    Best wishes

    The chef …well kind of a chef..