The Greek Food

Tag: fish

  • Hake in the oven with mustard and ginger

    Hake in the oven with mustard and ginger

    One of the most underrated fish that I have ever tried is hake. One of the finest sources of essential fatty acids, protein, minerals and fat-soluble vitamins like vitamin A, E and D. In this recipe you learn how to cook hake in the oven with mustard and ginger sauce.

    Hake is a benthic (demersal) fish that prefers to live close to ocean bed in deep waters at a depth of 70-300 mts. They are voracious predators and feed on small fish, crustaceans, and fish eggs. During the night they return to surface waters.

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  • Oven baked cod in a mustard sauce

    Oven baked cod in a mustard sauce

    There are always recipes that can be labelled as “traditional” and there are others that can be labelled as more “modern”. Those that can be named as traditional are ones  which ussualy come from generation to generation and they were introduced to me my from my mother and my relatives.

    Some others though come up naturally when you try to mix up things when it’s Sunday on your home and have some time to be creative. So how can you be creative in cooking?Well, fish is one place to start with.

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  • Stuffed squid with tomato rice and feta

    Stuffed squid with tomato rice and feta

    You know sometimes they say that women when they are pregnant they want to eat the most obscure things on the most obscure times. Well, I don’t know if that is true or not but I have to say I felt the same couple of weeks ago.

    For quite some time I wanted to cook stuffed squid and eat it the same way as I was eating it in Greece when I was leaving there. One Saturday, I simply went to the local market in Angel and did it.

    I have to say it was quite difficult preparation for a first timer like me but the result was worth it. They are some different ways to do it and for this case I chose to grill the squid while you can do the same recipe but boiling it. I am guessing in that situation it will be with more thick sauce.

    Now that I am thinking about it the whole process reminds me the Stuffed peppers and tomatoes (gemista) recipe… hmm

    STUFFED SQUID WITH RICE AND TOMATO

    INGREDIENTS

    • 1 kilo of Squids
    • 3 spoons of Olive Oil
    • 200-250gr of Feta Cheese
    • 1 can of tomato juice
    • 1 tea spoon of capers
    • 1 clove of garlic
    • 500gr of rice
    • 1 red onion finely chopped
    • a small bunch of parsley
    • Salt and Pepper

    In a big deep pan, add a bit of olive oil and throw in the garlic and onions. In medium heat stir them really well and then add the rice and tomato juice. Stir properly and add water until the rice is done.  Lower the heat and throw in the parsley, capers but also the trimmed feta cheese.  Remove from the heat so the feta cheese does not melt.

    Make sure you have cleaned the squid properly removing the inside bone. Take a small spoon and add the rice on the belly of the squid making sure you dont over do it. Close the squid with a toothpick and place them on a deep baking pan.  When you finish with all the squids add the remaining of the stuffing on the pan and close the pan with a baking foil from the top.

    Bake them for 20 mins in 180-200 degrees and then remove the aluminium foil and baking them for 15 more minutes.

    Enjoy!

     

  • 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

     

  • Salmon with Balsamic

    Salmon with Balsamic

    As I have said my cooking was based on the idea to do things that are nice to taste but also really quick to cook and without a lot of trouble.  On this thought is based and the following recipe that I think I learned from somewhere else online. Ok, its not really Greek recipe ..but its something that I do all the time..

    Always, when I was looking the salmon fillets in the super market I was wondering about any possible ways that you could cook them. Oven, looked as the best option at the time and indeed it was. After some quick discussion with my mother ( 30-40 minutes on the phone …) and some online research I did went for the following…

    INGREDIENTS

    2 Salmon fillets

    1 red onion chopped

    A bunch of fresh dill chopped

    3-4 Spoons of Balsamic Vinegar

    METHOD

    Dead Simple, slice the onions, add them on top together with the salt and pepper. Add olive oil and the balsamic vinegar. Put it on the oven for 40 mins in high heat. Serve it with some extra dill on top.

    If you have green or red peppers .. (or both) you can add some slices on top.