The Greek Food

A Blog about Greek Food and Greece

  • Traditional Greek Orzo pasta with tomato

    Traditional Greek Orzo pasta with tomato

    One Sunday, I wanted to cook something quite easy as I woke up really late. I had some orzo and my focus was to make a gioubetsi again at some point.

    Nevertheless, I just wanted to use some of it today and see what other recipes exist for orzo. So after checking a little bit on the net, I remembered one classic recipe that my mother used to do when we were younger.

    Orzo with red sauce is something really easy to cook and really delicate in taste. As I saw in a Greek site it is the Greek version of risotto…

    Honestly when I cooked, I realized how many easy to cook recipes exist out there which you can cook after work, when you are a student, when you are bored in general…but never do.

    ORZO PASTA WITH TOMATO

    Ingredients

    • 1 cup of Orzo
    • 1/2 Cup of Basil leaves
    • 1 small pack of cherry tomatoes
    • 2 table spoons of Olive Oil

    Method

    1. Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Add orzo and cook for 8 to 10 minutes. Drain and set aside.
    2. Place basil leaves and the cherry tomatoes in a food processor. Pulse 4 or 5 times until blended.
    3. In a large bowl, toss together the orzo, basil-tomato mixture, olive oil, Parmesan cheese, salt and pepper. Serve warm or chilled.

    Enjoy!

  • Spetsofai: Traditional stew with sausages and peppers from Volos

    Spetsofai: Traditional stew with sausages and peppers from Volos

    Years ago when I was still in Greece, I decided to go for some day’s holidays in a city of Greece called Volos. I took my small 125cc motorcycle and after a long tiring trip, I managed to reach my destination and my friend that was waiting for me there.

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  • Sprats with mustard and lemon

    Sprats with mustard and lemon

    You know sometimes I come back from work and I always have something on my mind that I want to eat. I dream of it from the morning and I have already decided how to do it and sometimes I even taste it on my mouth before I buy the ingredients.

    The other day I was dreaming of stuffed squids which are typical recipes in Greece. I though…ok…you will go to the Market buy a squid and make it…how difficult can it be??

    Nevertheless it seemed that it wasn’t meant to be that day to cook a squid. The guys in Sainsbury had only one squid and it was too big for me…not exactly what I had in mind.   Disappointed I was looking for anything else and then my eyes fall into some nice sprats. Hmmm….why not…

    So I took some of them and went back home. I have to admit, I looked endless times on the internet to find something suitable and this recipe belongs to this site over here. Since it is in Greek however, I will take the opportunity to translate it for all the other Chefs of this world.

    So..get your sprats ready…and here we go.

    INGREDIENTS 

    • Sprats…as many as you want from those lovely little fishes
    • 1 red onion chopped in thin pieces
    • 1 glass of white wine (since however you will drink half of it… lets keep at least ½ glass of white wine for the recipe)
    • Parsley and some leaves of mint.
    • 2 small spoons of mustard (I used English mustard)
    • The juice from 1 grated tomato
    • Olive Oil as always
    • Juice and zest of one lemon
    • 2 slices of garlic chopped
    • Salt and pepper
    • And lots of love

    METHOD

    • First we clean the sprats. If the guy on the Super Market where we bought them hasn’t done that for us…then we have to do it. It can be a blood bath…  Just pull the heads off and make a small line in the middle pulling their small cute guts out. (it was really nasty…I had to close my eyes when this was happening)
    sprats on the plate
    sprats on the plate
    • Put them in a small oven pan next to each other, really close.
    • We open the oven in 200c to pre heat
    • In another pan we put the onions and garlic to shallow fry them. Add the two spoons of mustard and the juice from the grated tomato stir them and let them cook for 4-5 minutes.
    • Add the wine and lower the heat. Wait 3-4 minutes until the alcohol vaporizes.
    • Then we remove the pan from the fire and we add the parsley and the mint which we have thinly chopped.
    • We add the olive oil and the Juice and zest of one lemon.
    • Then we pour our sauce over the sprats and we use our hands to make sure that it goes on all the sprats equally. In cooking sometimes if you don’t use your hands… you don’t get the results you need.
    • We put to the oven and cook them for 15 minutes

     

    The food is ready! You can eat it as it is or use it as a side dish. The combination of lemon, mustard, olive oil with the parsley , mint and the sprats….. I thought it was great J

     

  • Beef Rib Eye Stake with Portobello mushrooms

    Beef Rib Eye Stake with Portobello mushrooms

    I was dreaming for the following recipe since the previous day. Sunday was a stake day, I had the stakes ready and just dreaming the way that I should cook them.

    2 days ago I bought some huge Portobello mushrooms so I was sure that they would play their own part in this story. I woke up at around 1230-1300. The headache from last night’s hang over was unbelievable…but I was determined. Suddenly I heard noise on the kitchen….”Matinaaaaa” I shouted. Matina, the girl that is occupying our living room for the past weeks came in.

    -What are you doing?

    -Just cleaning the kitchen…

    -(sigh of relief..) ok, good girl, get the stakes out of the freezer, leave them on the kitchen and get out of there….ill be up in 10 minutes to cook them

    After half an hour and one Greek coffee I was still on the couch of the living room…

    Eventually I went in to the kitchen and had a rough idea about how to cook those beautiful rib eye stakes we had.

     RIB EYE STAKE WITH MUSHROOMS

    Ingredients 

    • 2 beef rib eye stakes
    • 1/2 red onion chopped
    • 1 slice of garlic chopped
    • 2 big Portobello mushrooms
    • 1 spoon of English mustard.
    • Butter
    • Salt and pepper
    • Paprika
    • Nutmeg
    • 1 can of Carlsberg Special Brew

    Method

    Step 1

    First you drink a lot of water in order to remove the alcohol from your body. Then in a deep frying pan you put some olive oil and you heat it up.

    Step 2

    You put the 2 rib eye stakes for 3-4 minutes each side. The idea is to get them a little bit brownish on both sides but not too much so they are cooked already. After they get a little bit brown on both sides you remove them and put them on the side.

    Step 3

    Then you add in the frying pan the onions and the garlic. Add one spoon of butter and one spoon of English Mustard. You stir all the ingredients from left to right so everyone can watch you and believe you are a great cook. As the sauce is being formed after 5 minutes we add again the Rib eye stakes. Add, salt, pepper, paprika and nutmeg. (to be honest lately I love paprika so much that I overdid it but… the amount depends on your taste)

    Step 4

    When you feel that your stakes are almost done, pour a little bit of beer and lower the heat to minum. I had Carlsberg at that time but my feeling any red beer will do with a stake.

    Step 5

    As you are doing this, cook the mushrooms on another frying pan changing the sides every two minutes. A little bit before you remove them, add the juice from half a lemon. If you want to make it extra greek , fry 1 slice of feta cheese and add it on top of the mushroom with a little bit of oregano.

    Enjoy 😀

    You like it?  Check also my traditional family corned beef recipe here

  • Dakos : The famous Cretan starter

    Dakos : The famous Cretan starter

    I was wondering once how many times I had started my articles in this blog with the phrase “…I was bored, so I decided to cook something…”. To be honest I didn’t looked on all of my articles but it must have been too many times.

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