The enticing aroma of this long simmering lemony meat marked the weekends as I was growing up. We ate meat twice a week then, usually keftedes (meatballs) or macaroni with meat sauce, and veal or beef with vegetables or rice on Sundays.

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I have associated the aroma of lemonato with the dark, back kitchen in our downtown apartment where we moved when I was 17. Abandoning the home I was born in, on the outskirts of the city, a house surrounded by gardens and trees, wasn’t a traumatic experience. My sister and I looked forward to the brand new apartment across from the Archeological museum.

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We could walk to Omonoia and further up to Syntagma on the busy avenues, with the lights and the glamorous shops. Later on the area became a nightmare of traffic, pollution and noise, but when we moved to the luxurious building with the imposing entrance and the large white marble staircase, the area was considered classy. For me the greatest advantage of the apartment was the back, service kitchen elevator. Far from my parents’ bedroom, it was possible to secretly escape some nights and party with my friends…

Beef and veal was very tasty but quite tough during my childhood, and continues to be here on Kea where the local free-range veal or cows’ meat is available to those who ask for it and are willing to pay more than the packaged supermarket meat.

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I remember that my mother started cooking our Sunday lunch on Saturday afternoon and the aroma of lemonato filled the kitchen and half the house. The meat simmered in plenty of lemon Juice for at least three hours, then was left on the cooling stove overnight. On Sunday it was simmered for another two-three hours or more together with chunks of potatoes that had previously been briefly fried in olive oil. The flavor of these potatoes that had absorbed the lemony and meaty sauce was sublime!

LEMONATO: Beef chanks simmered in lemon juice, with potatoes

Note that I have never cooked lemonato with American meat, which might need less time to cook, so taste after one hour and proceed accordingly.

Serves 4-6

1 kg beef shank cubed

3 tbsp olive oil

1 clove garlic, peeled and sliced

2 medium onions, coarsely sliced

2-3 tablespoons flour

1 1/2 cup fresh lemon juice

2 cups water

Salt and pepper to taste

3-4 waxy potatoes, peeled, cut in chanks, and briefly fried in olive oil.

Honey or sugar (optional)

In a heavy pot, over medium-high heat add the olive oil and briefly sauté the onions and garlic, then add the meat and sauté briefly, turning the pieces with tongs.

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Sprinkle with the flour, turn the meat chanks a few times, and sauté for a few minutes. Pour in the lemon and water, add about 1 teaspoon salt and 1/2 -1 teaspoon freshly ground pepper. Toss and lower the heat so the meat simmers. Cover with a piece of parchment paper and the pot’s cover, and let the meat cook very slowly for 2-3 hours.

Turn off the heat and let the pot cool overnight. The next morning turn on the heat and simmer for 30 minutes, then check that the meat is almost cooked and tender and add the potatoes in-between the pieces. Simmer for another hour or more and taste. If you find it too lemony add a tablespoon of honey, and more salt and pepper to taste.

Leftovers, reheated slowly the next day are even better…

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I made a spicy lentil dish that we like to eat with pasta, loosely based on the humble leftover lentil soup, a Lebanese-inspired recipe of Linguine with Spicy Lentils and Caramelized Onions, from my Mediterranean Vegetarian Feasts.

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I also wilted and fried some fresh spinach, dropping a few eggs on top, an easy dish I love to whip up often these days.

For our lunch Costas chilled my favorite, single vineyard Kir-Yianni’s Sauvignon blanc, although it was not the most appropriate wine for our simple lunch, but I just love it!

Twenty nine years ago

Early afternoon on January 29, 1997, Costas, after finishing his work at the Gennadios library, met me at the mayor’s office downtown Athens. The day before I had bought a red dress which was too long, as usual, and I had shortened it sloppily.

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Athanasia, Costas’ mother, and Frossoula, my mother had arrived earlier, and Lenio, my niece, together with our friend Gerasimos were the koumbari (best man and woman). The whole ‘ceremony’ lasted less than 30 minutes, and the only extra thing we were asked to decide about, confirm, and sign, was that ‘our future kids’ would get Costas’ surname…

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In Greece women no longer change their surnames when they get married, so the couple has to decide their offspring’s name —not that there was any chance for us to have kids…

I don’t believe that any of our friends and relations imagined that we would stay married long; with a 15year age difference many have expressed their strong doubts

The next day, I believe a Saturday, we had a few of our very best friends for a meze lunch in our Acropolis apartment. It was our incredible good chance, that chefs Rick Moonen and Jim Botsacos were in Athens. These were the last days of their trip throughout the mainland and the islands that I had planned for them, as they wanted to immerse themselves into authentic Greek cooking.

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They insisted on cooking our wedding meze lunch, taking over the large fridge and our tiny kitchen. I don’t remember what they prepared, and I have no photos, unfortunately. I think they made some delicious raw marinated branzino —which had not yet become popular— while I had prepared a large bowl of lentil salad with arugula, dressed in an Asian-inspired sauce with toasted sesame oil, something not common in Athens those days, and my cousin and other friends loved it and were asking about it…

We hope that next year, on our 30 anniversary, we will be able to have some friends around our table; but it depends on a lot of factors, the wintry Kea weather among them…

The front and back of the original edition shows a multigeneration, probably French, family with two different wine bottles being corked. Unfortunately the letters on the platters replace the Maine Course (Plat du Jour) in the cover. On the back page, though, we observe the fruit, bread and cheese as well as the sleeping well-fed cats…

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Although recently the book came out, unfortunately without the illustrations, I kept looking for the old edition, but not an extremely expensive copy. Fortunately I was recently lucky to find this one at AbeBooks UK at a very reasonable price.

I had written before that Honey From the Weed: Feasting and fasting in Tuscany, Catalonia, the Cyclades, and Puglia, Patience Gray’s final book that describes her life and cooking, is my most inspiring book. For years I was looking for Plats du Jour her first book that she co-wrote with Primrose Boyd —although it seems that she ended up re-writing all the recipes…

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The book was published in 1957, after the war and food rationing had ended, and life in the British wealthy homes has changed drastically. Cooks were no longer the norm, and housewives had to cook for their families. Gray proposes cooking and servimg not several but just one nourishing dish, accompanied by a salad, and finishing with cheese and fruit. The subtitle is ‘Foreign Food’ as most of the recipes are inspired by Gray’s travels mostly in France, Italy and Hungary.

Reading Adam Federman’s very detailed biography Fasting and Feasting: The Life of Visionary Food Writer Patience Gray, we learn a lot about her way of collecting recipes, as the foods she describes are seldom complicated. But sometimes they have interesting twists, like the fish recipe from Brittany that calls for making a sauce from the pan juices: the fish is cooked in nothing more than wine and butter by thickening with “good butter and a little flour.” What the chef omitted to tell her, and Patience only learned by watching him, was that in order to produce a perfectly amalgamated sauce, the butter is first combined with the flour and then divided into small pieces before being whisked into the pan juices. “This is a perfect example of a ‘simple’ recipe conveying no idea of procedure, or an instance of a true Breton’s reluctance to share his secrets,” Patience wrote.

Gray loved casseroles, terrines, pâtés, quiches, pickled tongues, salads, and French cheeses in perfect condition because they were “freshly imported and never refrigerated.” She had an old fridge decorated with red and black harlequin diamonds, which she hardly used and eventually disconnected. “I don’t clutter the place up with trick machinery,” she kept saying.

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I think that the book, although it doesn’t have the very detailed recipes we are used to find in modern, especially American, cookbooks, can inspire any beginner cook to create a lovely meal, not just for the family but also for guests, as Gray used to do. She loved to serve the salads on traditional large hand-pained bowls and the wine in her family’s Georgian glasses…

Frosso Patiniotis, my very lively 99-year old aunt bakes every year these quite unusual, fragrant kourambiedes –shortbread-almond cookies– a few weeks before Christmas.

She shared with me a recipe that Mrs. Dandoura, the mother of her late classmate and closest friend Chrysouli, had originally taught her many years earlier. Mrs. Dandoura’s kourambiedes-making expertise came from her mother and grandmother.

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They belonged to a wealthy shipping family from Galaxidi, a town situated 15 kilometers southwest of Delphi. Galaxidi experienced significant growth in the 18th and 19th centuries, flourishing due to its excellent natural port which facilitated maritime trade and commercial interactions with the West.

Calculating the generations that baked these festive cookies, we concluded that the recipe must be at least 200 years old. Thus kourambiedes were not, as the Greek version of Wikipedia cites “brought by prosfyges (refugees),” the Anatolian Greek population who fled after the defeat in the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922) from Smyrna (Izmir) and other parts of Turkey.

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Prosfyges did, indeed, introduce quite a few special foods to Palaioelladites —the local Greeks– but certainly kourambiedes were already part of the local festive table in many parts of the country.

The word kourabies (plural kourabiedes) derives from Qurabiya a Persian and/or Arabic word with many variations, which is used for short-bread cookies throughout the Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa. These cookies are usually scented with rose or citrus-flower water. But I had not seen versions of kourambiedes with so many spices.

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My assumption is that the cosmopolitan Galaxidi merchants were maybe inspired by the festive European/Grerman Christmas cookies. But this is my hypothesis, as I consider baking Pfeffernüsse and Lebkuchen these days…

Wedding Treats

Paula Wolfert in her wonderful 1988 book ‘Paula Wolfert’s World of Food‘ has a version of kourabiedes she calls ‘Greek Butter-Almond Cookies’ and over the years she kept telling me how amazing they were. As she wrote in the headnote of her recipe she served them at her wedding, as some Greek families do.

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In Cyprus similar large butter cookies stuffed with nuts and candied fruit are traditionally offered during weddings.

But they are called loukoumi and not kourambie(!) one more example of the confusion between the names of many dishes throughout the Eastern Mediterranean.

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Galaxidi Kourambiedes

From Frosso Patiniotis’ recipe.

Makes about 30 large or 40 small cookies.

1 1/3 cup butter, or a combination sheep’s milk and regular butter, oftened

1/4 cup confectioner’s sugar, plus about 2 cups to coat the baked cookies

1 egg yolk

2 tablespoons mastic-flavored liqueur, ouzo, Pernod, or any anise-flavored liqueur

1 cup un-skinned almonds, toasted in the oven for about 20 minutes and coarsely chopped

2 1/2 -3 cups unbleached cake or all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground pepper (optional)

1 1/4 teaspoon baking powder

About 1/4 of a nutmeg, freshly ground

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

About 1/4 cup citrus-blossom water to sprinkle the cookies

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In a food processor or electric mixer, beat the butter for about 6 minutes until very light and fluffy. Gradually add the sugar and the the egg yolk, and continue beating, then add the liqueur or ouzo and process for 2-3 minutes more.

Sift the flour with the baking powder, and the spices.

Fit the processor with a dough hook and gradually add the flour. Process the mixture for just a couple of minutes, until a soft dough forms. Add the almonds and process until the dough is smooth again, about 1 minutes more.

Preheat the oven to 350º F (180º C).

Shape tablespoons of dough into round, oval, or crescent-shaped cookies, and place on a cookie sheet, leaving about 1 inch between the cookies so that they won’t stick together as they expand.

Alternatively flatten the dough on the work surface making about 1/3 inch thick squares, and with small cookie cutters cut rounds, squares or crescents. Collect and flatten the leftover dough, then cut into shapes again.

Bake for about 25 minutes, until pale golden. Cool for 5 minutes then sprinkle with the flower water.

Spread 2 cups confectioners’ sugar on a large serving plate. Very carefully, because they break easily, roll each cookie in the sugar, and place on a rack to cool.

Proceed with all the cookies, adding more sugar to the plate as necessary

Cycladic Island Kourambiedes

The old island recipes called for lard, as butter was not a common ingredient on the Cyclades, while the special fat from the belly of the slaughtered pork was used for these, and other festive winter sweets .

In most recipes from the mainland and the north, kourambiedes are still made with the strongly-flavored sheep’s milk butter, while there are also also some Lenten versions made with olive oil.

Today most homes and bakeries prepare the cookies exclusively with regular cow’s butter, or a combination of butter, often with some sheep’s milk butter.

I do love this old, Cycladic version which you could try if you can get good lard.

I like to shape very small cookies as it is very difficult to eat just one…

Makes about 30 large or 40 small cookies.

1/2 cup lard or butter, softened

1/2 cup light, mellow olive oil (not fruity)

1/3 cup confectioners’ sugar, plus about 2 cups to sprinkle on the cookies

1 egg yolk

Zest of 1 large lemon

3 tablespoons ouzo, Pernod, or any other anise-flavored liqueur

3 cups unbleached cake or all-purpose flour

1 ½ teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon ground white pepper (optional)

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup coarsely ground toasted almonds (not skinned)

In a food processor or electric mixer, beat the lard or butter and olive oil with 1/3 cup confectioners’ sugar for about 6 minutes. Add the egg yolk, lemon zest, and ouzo and process for 2-3 minutes more. Sift the flour with the baking powder and the pepper, if using. Fit the processor with a dough hook and gradually add the flour. Process the mixture for 2-3 minutes, until a soft dough forms. Add the almonds and process until the dough is smooth again, about 1-2 minutes more.

Preheat the oven to 350º F (180º C).

Shape tablespoons of dough into round, oval, or crescent-shaped cookies, and place on a cookie sheet, leaving about 1 inch between the cookies so that they won’t stick together as they expand.

Alternatively flatten the dough on the work surface making a square about 1/4 inch thick, and with small cookie cutters cut rounds, squares or crescents. Collect and flatten the leftover dough, then cut into shapes.

Bake for about 25 minutes, until pale golden, depending on their size. Cool for 10 minutes.

Spread 1 cup confectioners’ sugar on a large serving plate. Very carefully, because the cookies break easily, roll each one in the sugar, and place on a rack to cool. Proceed with all the cookies, adding more sugar to the plate as necessary.

Finally, sift additional sugar on top of the cookies and let rest for 3 to 4 hours or overnight. Carefully pack the cookies in boxes, spreading a piece of waxed paper between each layer.

Toasted Almond Cookies will keep in an airtight jar for 2 months or longer.

Between a few cool and hopefully rainy December days on the island we usually have some wonderfully sunny, pleasant mornings when everything seems crisp and clean. We often have a glass of wine outside in the veranda before getting inside for lunch.

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Real winter in our part of the world usually begins after the New Year and later in February. There is no guarantee, of course, but in most cases Christmas happens to be pleasant and sunny as some of my photos of years past attest.

The basic idea for the first, quite substantial appetizer cake comes from Les Cahiers de Delphine, the always interesting weekly newsletter which used to be free but is now for subscribers only.

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Contrary to most cakes, both sweet and savory, this needs only one bowl where flour, eggs, cheese, nuts etc. are simply stirred together before the mixture is poured into the pan.

Of course, I made quite a few changes, using local green olives instead of the black from Provence, and scallions, instead of the chives that are not available here. As I always do, I substituted olive oil for the butter, and grated aged graviera cheese for the parmesan.

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I also increased the amount of pine nuts and sunflower seeds and added rosemary which we have plentiful in the garden and gives a lovely aroma to the cake. I baked it in a pan with a hole in the center, but you can of course use a loaf pan, or a simple round 8-inch pan. This appetizer cake is best slightly warm, or just cooled.

Savory Cake with Olives, Cheese, and Pine Nuts

At least 8-10 generous pieces

2 cups (250 grams) all-purpose flour

1 ½ teaspoon baking powder

½ cup olive oil

5 eggs, lightly beaten to mix

1/3 cup white wine

150 grams grated parmesan, or aged graviera or aged cheddar

About 1 cup (180 grams) pitted, sliced green olives –you can use black, if you like

5 scallions, white plus most of the green, finely chopped

1 small red pickled pepper chopped (optional)

About 1 tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary leaves, or more, to taste

1/3 cup (about 50 grams) toasted pine nuts and more to top the cake

½ cup sunflower seeds

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Line the pan you intend to use with parchment paper. And preheat the oven to 375 F (200 C).

In a bowl toss the flour with the baking powder. Add the olive oil, the eggs and the wine and stir with a wooden spoon or spatula, just to incorporate.

Add the cheese, the olives, the scallions, and the pepper, if using, along with the rosemary. Keep some pine nuts to top the cake and add the rest to the mix, along with the sunflower seeds. Stir a few times to mix all the ingredients together, and transfer to the prepared pan.

Even the top with a spatula, sprinkle with the reserved pine nuts, and bake for about 35 minutes or more, testing with a knife to see if it is done, as you do with sweet cakes.

Let cool on a rack for 15 minutes, before carefully unmolding and cutting to serve. This very easy appetizer cake is best slightly warm, or just cooled. But you can wrap the leftover in plastic film refrigerate, then warm a bit in a low oven covered with parchment paper.

A Fragrant Quick Bread/Cake

“This is a wonderful and easy everyday treat “from France, where savory loaf cakes are often served with drinks before dinner,” writes Greenspan introducing the recipe she published in New York Times Cooking. She starts with soft goat’s cheese that I cannot get here, so I decided to try the recipe with feta, and it worked fine.

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I have only medium-small eggs from our neighbors’ hens so I increased the milk to 2\3 cup, and used the goat’s milk we drink with our coffee. Also, I forgot to get parsley from the garden, so I omitted it –will probably add it next time.

Rosemary and thyme, as well as the tangerine zest give it great aroma and complement beautifully the sweetness of the figs. “If you’d like, use olives or dried tomatoes instead of figs, basil instead of parsley, lemon instead of orange,” Greenspan suggests;

She also notes that one can “experiment with other cheeses,” and this is exactly what I did. “The loaf is pleasantly crumbly, and best enjoyed cut into thick slices,” she concludes.

Feta, Fig, and Herb Savory Cake

Adapted from Dorie Greenspan

Serves 8

4 moist, plump dried figs (such as Kalamata), cut into 1/4-inch bits

⅓ cup/20 grams finely chopped fresh parsley (optional –forgot to add it and didn’t miss it)

1 ½ teaspoons finely chopped fresh rosemary

½ teaspoon finely chopped fresh thyme

1 ¾ cups/225 grams all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

½ -1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

3 medium eggs, at room temperature

2/3 cup/80 milliliters whole milk, lukewarm (I used goat’s milk)

⅓ cup/80 milliliters olive oil

1 tablespoon honey

4 ounces/115 grams feta cheese cut in small dice

Zest of 1 clementine or 1/2 tangerine, or small orange

Place a rack in the center of the oven and heat the to 350 F (180 C). Line with parchment paper an 8- to 9-inch loaf pan.

In a small bowl, toss together the figs, parsley, if using, rosemary and thyme; keep at hand.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt and pepper. Working in a medium bowl, whisk the eggs until blended, then whisk in the milk, oil and honey.

Pour the wet ingredients over the flour mixture, and, using a sturdy spatula, stir until the dough is almost blended. You’ll still see streaks of flour, and that’s fine. Scatter the fig mixture over the dough, along with the feta cheese. Grate the zest of the clementine or tangerine over the cheese. Using as few strokes as possible, stir everything together. Once again, it might not be perfect, and, once again, that’s fine.

Scrape the dough into the pan, and use the spatula to poke the dough into the corners and to even the bumpy top. Bake for 34 to 38 minutes or until the top is golden, the cake has started to pull away from the sides of the pan, and, most important, a tester inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean.

Unmold the cake onto a rack, turn it right side up and let it cool. You can serve the cake when it’s slightly warm (it’s not so easy to cut then, but it’s delicious) or when it is at room temperature. Cut into thick slices. Wrapped well, the cake keeps well for 3-4 days, if you can stop eating it…

Variations on this heartwarming, soup are infinite. The creamy red lentils regain their attractive color, which is lost when they are cooked alone, when simmered with carrots, a good amount of tomato paste and plenty of Maraş pepper.

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My twist is to add some oyster sauce, which complements the tomato paste and deepens its flavors, much like the ancients added garum, which “enjoyed its greatest popularity in the Western Mediterranean and the Roman world, and it was in earlier use by the Greeks. The taste of garum is thought to be comparable to today’s fish sauces,” as Wikipedia states. (scroll down for the recipe).

A good amount of dense tomato paste is ubiquitous in the majority of vegetable and meat dishes in Greece and all around the Eastern Mediterranean. But long before tomatoes were brought to us from the Americas and became popular, people here still used some kind of fish sauce for which I found a recipe in a 1950ies Greek fish cooking book.

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Dried tiny fish which are sold as condiments in Morocco and Tunisia, as well as mashed anchovies, still occasionally provide umami flavor in the cooking of Provence and Southwest France. I first encountered it in Paula Wolfert’s utterly delicious Roast Shoulder of Lamb with Anchovies from her incomparable Cooking of South West France, originally written in 1983 and revised in 2005. The shoulder of lamb is stuffed with mashed anchovies and garlic and left to marinate overnight before it is roasted. The result is a hauntingly delicious meat that is hardly fishy at all! Southern Italians also use anchovies as flavoring in pasta, risotto, and vegetable dishes.

Inspired by ancient garum, the inhabitants of Cetara in Campagnia, a lovely fishing village known for its abundance of excellent anchovies, have devised a new, lighter sauce, inspired from the ancient garum. It is called Collatura di Alici, and unlike the ancient dense garum that was made from all kinds of fermented fish entrails, mostly mackerel, this new delicate amber sauce, is made from anchovies fermented traditionally in chestnut barrels. But it is not easily available here.

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On the other hand the traditional Asian fish sauces are, I believe, a very good substitute for the ancient garum. Southeast Asia (Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia), mainly use fermented fish sauces, readily available everywhere these days, while in Northeast Asia (China, Korea, Japan), the ancient fish sauces were mostly replaced by fermented beans.

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I know that many people have an aversion to anchovies but good Asian oyster or fish sauce is an excellent condiment for all kinds of bean and vegetable dishes, the well-kept secret of chefs who want to add umami flavor without any fishy hints. I urge you to try it in this delicious, complex red lentil soup and find out for yourselves (scroll down for the recipe).

I am fascinated by the writings of Arundhati Roy! I started with The God of Small Things, not a very easy read in the beginning, “what sustains us through this dread-filled dance between the calamitous past and the bleak present is the exuberant, almost acrobatic nature of the writing itself,” wrote Alice Truax in the NYT review in 1997, when apparently the book was published in the US, probably after winning the Booker price.

Then I read her last, autobiographical Mother Mary Comes to Me where she describes her life and the extremely difficult relations with her larger than life mother, a woman who built an incredible school in Kottayam, Kerala, and strived to give Indian women power. But she was extremely cruel to her daughter. Arundhati Roy is an activist, engaged in many social and political struggles and reading the fascinating events of her life we learn a lot about the desperate political and social life of India.

Red Lentil, Faro, and Chickpea soup

Serves 6 to 8

1/4 cup (60 ml) olive oil, plus 1/3 cup (80 ml) extra-virgin olive oil

1 cup (160 g) chopped onions

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup (220 g) red lentils rinsed in a colander under running water

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Its history began in the 18th century with the exiled Polish King Stanislas Leszczyński in Lorraine, France. He found his cake, probably a brioche or kugelhof, too dry and asked his pastry chef, Nicolas Stohrer, to moisten it with alcohol. So the idea of adding alcohol was the king’s according to this version of the story.

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This would have never happened in Greece or in other Eastern Mediterranean countries, where almost all our sweet leavened or unleavened breads/desserts, glyka tapsiou (baking pan sweets) as we call them, are traditionally doused in syrup. The modern dry cakes came to us much later from Europe and the US.

In any event the king’s pastry chef, Nicolas Stohrer, soaked the cake in sweet wine, and later he refined the dessert when he opened his bakery in Paris in 1730, swapping the wine for rum to create the sumptuous, modern “baba au rhum”. It happens to be my favorite when it is well made —unfortunately, seldom so these days.

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On a trip to Sicily I found in the multiple tourist shops small and larger jars with babas in an aromatic limoncello syrup. This gave me the idea to replace rum with my trade-mark lemon-bergamot liqueur that all our guests love.

Bergamots give Earl Gray Tea its aroma. “Genetic research into the ancestral origins of extant citrus cultivars found bergamot orange to be a probable hybrid of lemon (itself a hybrid between bitter orange and citron) and bitter orange, according to Wikipedia. ‘The word bergamot is derived from the Italian word bergamotto, derived either from the Italian town of Bergamo or Ottoman Turkish beg armudu (بك آرمودی, ‘prince’s pear’)”

It is not the easiest dessert to make, as it involves a few steps and it is better to start a day in advance (scroll down for the recipes of both the liqueur and the babas.)

Babas in Lemon-Bergamot syrup

I’m adapting a version of baba au rum that my friend David Tanis featured in a captivating menu he published in the NYT Cooking section four years ago. I have replaced the butter with olive oil as I usually do. Tanis advises that the dough is meant to be soft and sticky for a light, delicate outcome, suggesting minimal flour or chilling the dough to make it easier to work with.

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He also mentions that you can bake all 12 babas and only soak those you plan to serve, and that unsoaked, baked babas can be frozen for up to two months, then prepared a day ahead and stored at room temperature in an airtight container. His rum syrup is fragrant with cinnamon, cloves, cardamom and vanilla, and he notes that any leftover syrup keeps indefinitely in the fridge.

For 12 small babas

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Undoubtedly the most interesting is tripletta where oblong pieces of a simple yeasted dough with some olive oil, are shallow fried, in olive oil of course, while pulled from both sides with forks. Read more and get the recipe.

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It is the traditional way of shaping them in Gytheion where they are called travektes (pulled). In that beautiful seaside little town, at the feet of the majestic Taygetus mountain,

sometime around the last century a local chef thought of using travektes to create a different kind of souvlaki, with just some local cheese, and pan-fried pieces the delicious local pork. He named it tripletta, it is delicious, and and as far as I know it is not found anywhere else in Greece…

READ the whole post an recipe HERE

Seems to me that every bakery and fast-food place in the big and small towns of southern Peloponnese has its variation of fried bread; mostly savory, but occasionally sprinkled with sugar.

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Undoubtedly the most interesting is tripletta where oblong pieces of a simple yeasted dough with some olive oil, are shallow fried, in olive oil of course, while pulled from both sides with forks. It is the traditional way of shaping them in Gytheion where they are called travektes (pulled). In that beautiful seaside little town, at the feet of the majestic Parnassus mountain, sometime around the last century a locas chef thought of using travektes to create a different kind of souvlaki, with just some local cheese, and pan-fried pieces the delicious local pork. He named it tripletta, it is delicious, and and as far as I know it is not found anywhere else in Greece.

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No wonder, because both frying the bread, and the meat have to be done simultaneously the last minute, as the client eagerly awaits; and this is not an easy job…

The most common way of serving travektes is simply fried and either sprinkled with sugar, most common these days unfortunately, or just plain as Costas and I enjoyed them during our breakfast in Las Hotel in Gytheion.

At the Old water Mill in Kyparissia, further north, which only demonstrates the way grains were grinded in past, due to the lack of water, the mill is now a lovely coffee shop with a charming lemon garden.

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The fried bread is shaped as a round pita and accompanies coffee or herbal teas drizzled with honey, or paired with the local hard cheese —my choice.

Bakeries in Kalamata, Sparta, and all around southern Peloponnese, especially in the legendary Mani peninsula, where the saying goes that there is more olive oi than water, fried breads can have many shapes.

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Often were the basic food in the past as the hard stony ground and the fierce sea winds don’t encourage the cultivation of vegetables or grains.

Nowadays ring-shaped lalangia or lalangites as they are called in various parts of the Peloponnese are sold at all the bakeries of course

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and people offer them as meze by themselves or with spicy cheese and spreads. One can also find them with added aromatics like cinnamon and cloves —not my favorites.

Traviktes from Mani

(based on Argyro’s recipe)

For 10 pieces

¼ teaspoon instant dry yeast

1/4 teaspoon sea salt

1 teaspoon sugar

1 tablespoon olive oil

250-300 gr water

Olive oil for frying

In a bowl stir the dry yeast and sugar in lukewarm water and add the olive oil.

In another large bowl toss the flour and the salt. Mix with a large spoon to the a somewhat shaggy dough. Flour your hands, turn the dough onto the working surface and knead until it no longer sticks to the hands.

If need be, add a couple of tablespoons more flour, or if it is not very soft, add a couple of tablespoons water. Work with the hands to get a soft shiny dough.

Transfer to an oiled bowl, cover with oiled kitchen film and let rest for an hour until doubled.

With oiled hands divide the dough into 10 pieces ( about 40 grams each) and shape into oblong flat travektes.

Warm enough olive oil in medium skillet, enough to cover the traviktes, and fry two at a time for about 2 minutes, pressing lightly with a fork so that they don’t inflate, also piercing in one or two places. as they tur golden on the under side tur and fry to golden the other side.

Remove with a slotted spoon on double kitchen paper and continue frying the rest.

Serve sprinkled with good spicy cheese, like kefalotyri or Pecorino (my choice) or with sugar or honey.

The terrible fires of this summer ravaged the northern part of Chios island. Fortunately they didn’t spread to the south where the precious product of this island paradize grows —see an older post.

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Chios’ mastic –the crystallized sap of the wild pistachio shrub (Pistachia lentiscus) which grows only on the southern part of this island— essential for our festive breads, was for most of the world a new and somewhat esoteric flavoring (scroll down for an unusual, delicious vegan tsoureki).

For centuries it was only exported to the Arab countries and the Middle East. Mastic was the ancient chewing gum, hence the verb ‘masticate.’

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Collecting , cleaning and sorting the dried sap —the mastic tears— was a tedious work done mostly by women.

To this day mastic is still chewed in Greece to clean and sweeten the breath while the ground crystals traditionally add their elusive licorice-pine-like aroma to many traditional breads and cookies.

As kids we used to love mastic ypovrichio (submarine): a teaspoon of mastic-scented soft sugar candy served plunged in iced water, hence its name.

For years we were being bombarded by new ‘creative’ edible uses of the aromatic, like a mastic-scented olive oil which is now, fortunately, almost forgotten.

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On the other hand, shampoos, face and hair masks, and other cosmetics with mastic were quite successful all over the world as they followed ancient suggestions about the crystal’s healing and healthful properties that apparently have been tested by some modern scientists, as Frank Bruni wrote in the New York Times six years ago.

Early this week scientists, doctors, chefs, and environmentalists from all over the world will be gathering in Kalamata, in southern Peloponnese, to celebrate and promote to the world our traditional everyday and festive meals as a model for healthy eating that also helps keep our planet healthy. READ MORE HERE

A vegan tsoureki

I have baked many Lenten tsourekia (plural from tsoureki), which, if you take out the eggs and butter, is essentially a kind of challah with different spices –we come to these later. But my challah-like tsoureki has not the great flavor and cake-like crumb that @BrianLevy has created.

A professional baker, author of “Good & Sweet,” a marvelous book of Naturally Sweetened cakes, breads, and other treats, Levy posted the original recipe last year; but only now I decided to try it.

Mastic crystals, ground, traditionally add their elusive licorice-pine-like aroma to many traditional breads and cookies.

I could never have imagined using creamed cashews instead of eggs. “Cashews lend themselves to being easily pureed into a fat-and protein-rich cream with a sweet, subtly nutty flavor. They even share a hint of eggs’ sulfury flavor as well as their emulsifying power,” wrote Levy in another recipe he had created.

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For this one he wrote: “I’ll just say that oats, olive oil, and cashews do some amazing work here, and this recipe [vegan tsoureki] is worth trying no matter what you think of dairy and eggs.” And I couldn’t agree more!

Last fall I used the kitchen of a large resort hotel in southern Peloponnese to prepare the dishes that were photographed for the EAT-Lancet project (see above) As I was rolling grape leaves on my corner, one of the hotel’s prep cooks filled a saucepan with water, added a fair amount of cashews and placed them in the back of the stove to simmer for more than an hour.

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When I asked her, she told me that they would be mashed to become the base of a vegan tzatziki. As I rely on the plethora of our traditional Lenten dishes and hardly ever try to transform into vegan dishes that are not, I had never heard or imagined that raw cashews were used to make vegan cream… Tasting this vegan tzatziki later, I found it quite good!

Enticing aroma and strong flour

The fragrant flavor of tsoureki, both the festive egg-butter one, as well as this Lenten version, relies on the sweet aroma of mastic and mahlep. Mastic is the crystalized sap of a wild pistachio shrub/tree that grows on the island of Chios.

Mahlep is the seed kernel of Prunus mahaleb (Mahaleb or St Lucie cherry). I particularly like its sweet aroma and I often use it, combined with ground coriander and anise seeds in my regular breads.

While mahlep can be ground in a spice grinder, mastic needs to be carefully crushed in a mortar, together with sugar. It tends to melt and stick to the blades of the spice grinder destroying it, so never grind mastic in the grinder.

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This time of year, especially, on the shelves of Greek supermarkets we find bags of ‘tsoureki flour’ which is the strongest we can get. Stronger even than the one labelled ‘pizza flour, or 00.’ ‘Tsoureki flour’ has 26% protein, while ‘Pizza flour’ has 21%.

Lenten (Vegan) TSOUREKI

Adapted from Brian Levy.

In the original recipe the cashews and oats are mashed with cold water in a high-speed blender to get the smooth mixture. But because my blender is not the best, I used warm water to make sure no nut bits remain. I decided to skip heating the cream in a pan before adding the olive oil, since it was already quite warm. I omitted vanilla, increasing the amount of orange zest, and used more fresh orange juice.

I shaped a large braided tsoureki, which I gifted to a friend before photographing it(!) and simply twisted the log of the smaller one.

I hope Brian will not mind my shortcuts and changes…

Makes 2 braided loaves

CASHEW-OAT CREAM MIXTURE:

1 cup (115 grams) raw cashews
1 cup (100 g) rolled oats

1 1/4 cups (300 g) warm water (about 40C/100F)
3/4 tsp fine sea salt

1/3 cup (70 g) extra virgin olive oil

THE DOUGH:

1 tsp mastic (before grinding)
½ cup (100 g) sugar
The cashew-oat cream (from step 1)
4 tsp (13 g rams --2 packets) active dry yeast
Zest of 2 medium oranges
1/3 cup freshly-squeezed orange juice
5 cups (600 grams) strong bread flour
2 tsp (4 g) mahlep (mahlab)

TO FINISH: 2 Tbsp (30 g) unsweetened almond or soy milk
A handful of sliced almonds (about 30 g)

MAKE the cashew-oat cream: Blitz the cashews, oats, water, and salt in a high-power blender for a couple of minutes, until it becomes a perfectly smooth cream. Transfer to a bowl and whisk in the olive oil.

Grind the mastic: With a mortar and pestle, grind the mastic to a fine powder with 1 Tbsp of the sugar. Set aside.

Mix the dough: In a stand mixer bowl whisk together the remaining sugar, the cashew-oat cream, the yeast, zest, orange juice. (If you don’t have a stand mixer, see the Note at the bottom of the recipe.)

Heap the flour on top of the yeasted liquid, followed by the ground mastic and mahlepi. With the dough hook, mix the dough on the lowest speed just until it comes together as a mass and no scraps remain on the wall of the bowl, about 2 minutes. Stop the mixer, cover the bowl with a kitchen towel, and let rest for ten minutes. (This rest, or autolyse, stage gives the flour time to hydrate and the gluten in it time to develop.)

Knead: Remove the kitchen towel, start a 15-minute timer, and turn the mixer on to its lowest speed. The dough will be slightly stiffer than a typical brioche dough, but if it is too stiff, add a little bit of water, 1 tablespoon at a time. Pause to scrape down the sides of the bowl and to push the dough down as necessary. Once the timer goes off, stop the mixer and check the condition of the dough. If it isn’t silky-smooth, continue to knead for up to another five minutes.

First rise: Remove the dough hook and shape the dough into a smooth ball between your hands. Lightly coat the dough with olive oil. Cover the bowl (with a silicone bowl cover, a damp kitchen towel, or a large plate) and let rest in a warm spot until the dough has doubled in volume and is soft, 1 to 2 hours. At this point, you can move on to the next steps, or you can put the dough in an airtight container and refrigerate it for up to a day or two before proceeding.

Shape loaves: If you refrigerated the dough, let it come to room temperature –about 2 hours. Line a baking sheet with parchment. Lightly flour a countertop (or a large cutting board, if you don’t want to cut directly on your countertop). Use a bench scraper to divide the dough into two equal pieces, then divide each of those pieces into three (for a total of six equal pieces). Gather one dough piece into a tight ball; stretch it from the top, push in towards the center. Then stretch from the right and push in towards the center. Repeat with the bottom and left. Turn the dough ball over so it is seam-side down. Use the heel of your hand and your fingertips to squish the ball, flattening and stretching it into a thick pancake. Flip the pancake over, then, starting at the top, roll it down towards you forming a fat little log. Pinch the two ends to seal. Set the log aside on the lined parchment, seam-side down, and repeat with the remaining pieces of dough. Let the chubby logs rest, uncovered, for 15 minutes; this makes rolling them out much easier.

Using no extra flour, or the bare minimum to keep the dough from sticking to your work surface, use your fingers and upper palms to roll each rested log into a longer, thinner log, slightly tapered at the ends, about 12 inches long. Place three logs near and parallel to each other, press the three far ends together to fuse them, and braid the strands together gently; avoid pulling/tension/stretching, instead gently laying the strands atop one another. When you get to the end of the braid, press the ends together to fuse them. Tuck both ends of the braid underneath for a neat, round look. Gently transfer the braided loaf to your lined pan, placing it at a 45 degree angle so that it has room to grow. Braid the remaining three dough logs to form the second loaf.

Final rise, finish and bake: Cover the loaves with a kitchen towel or two. (To avoid direct contact with the loaves, I make a tent by setting a raised cooling rack on the pan and covering it with a few kitchen towels). Let proof until doubled in volume, 1 to 2 hours. (When you press a finger into the dough, it should bounce back only halfway, leaving an impression on the surface.)

Position a rack in the lower half of the oven with at least six inches of open space above it. Heat the oven to 180C (350°F), or 165C (about 325°F) for convection/fan oven.

With a pastry brush gently apply the milk to the entire surface of the dough, being careful to avoid significant dripping to the bottom of the loaves; you do not want a moat surrounding your tsoureki. Let the loaves rest, uncovered, for 10 to 15 minutes. (This rest allows the milk wash to dry so that another coat can be applied.) Apply the second coat of milk wash, then sprinkle the almonds over the loaves.

Bake for 35 to 45 minutes, rotating the pan 180 degrees after 20 minutes to ensure an even bake. The loaves will have risen to pillowy, glossy, deep-amber braids. If you have an instant-read thermometer, the internal temperature should be 190°F.

Transfer the loaves to a cooling rack and let cool for at least an hour before slicing.

Besides Greece and Cyprus, I wonder where else people are so fond of ambelofasoula (green black-eyed peas). Although they are called ‘peas’ in English they are certainly Old World beans which originated in Africa and were brought to Europe and the US by the enslaved people.

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Their Greek name means ‘beans from the vineyard’ maybe because they are usually harvested near the time wine-grapes are picked.

The plants are prolific, but there is a catch: you need to pay close attention and harvest them a the right time, just as they turn dark green and plump. Even less than a day later the pods start to get tough, yellowish and stringy, as the little beans grow quite fast.

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This is the reason they are probably the most expensive of our various green beans. At the precise right time they are easily picked without waist. But growers must be extra attentive and harvest them before they mature, otherwise they get tough end chewy. We just briefly blanch them before serving the wonderful salad. I like to dress them with a simple garlic vinaigrette, sprinkling them with some Aleppo pepper flakes.

In Africa and Asia shelled black-eyed-peas are cooked in various ways, and I know that in the States "Hoppin' John" —black eyed peas with rice and pork— are traditionally prepared for the New Year. In various parts of India they are one of the elements in many curry dishes.

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In Egypt cooked with rice, meat and tomato they are a very common nourishing everyday dish. It is interesting that they are called lobia in Egypt, much like, their Cypriot name, louvia.

From Cyprus I got my favorite way of cooking the shelled black-eyed peas. Until then I hardly ever cooked them, as I prefer the texture of the other beans, especially the small very tender as well as the meaty giant beans for our winter soups.

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But in Cyprus I loved the simple louvia me lahana. They are cooked until tender in a little water, then braised fast in olive oil with onions and very little of their broth. A handful of greens —preferably wild— but also spinach or chard—is added, and the dish is finished with fruity olive oil and plenty of fresh lemon juice.

‘Bee Wilson has changed the landscape of the kitchen by breathing life into ordinary objects,” writes Ruth Reichl. “Through this remarkable book you will find yourself discovering meaning in plates, sadness in spoons, love in a measuring cup. I want to give this book to every cook I know,” concludes Reichl. I just started reading the UK edition and love it! Its cover is not so beautiful, but the above American version is coming out early in November.

Check my books, especially these two, which have my best Greek recipes!

Cranberry bean season is just ending here but we haven’t seen them fresh in the supermarkets and I wander if farmers’ markets sell them. You only get them frozen in packages. In fact I wonder if young people still know their name barbounia, the same as our most delicate, expensive, and loved fish.

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They are now called handres (beads) I guess because the companies that package and sell them don’t want to confuse their customers with the fish barbounia, also sold frozen for those who don’t want to pay the stiff price of the fresh, delicious fish.

You may think that it is difficult to compare a plate of braised cranberry beans with the crunchy, cornmeal-crusted fried barbounia, especially like the super fresh ones we get from a neighbor’s boat sometimes, along with equally succulent skaros —a kind of Mediterranean parrot fish that is a rare delicacy that we also get from the fishing boats.

The name barbounia, from the expensive fish was probably given to them not just for their red spots —which unfortunately disappear as they cook— but also because they were particularly loved!

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I assure you that cranberry beans, even the frozen ones, are among the most sought after beans here, especially as they need no overnight soaking —fortunately the habit of getting canned beans has not spread here yet...

Athanasia Moraiti, my late mother in law, cooked the mottled fresh cranberry beans together with potatoes and peppers, a combination I had not considered until I tasted it, and loved it. I was under the impression that shelled beans and potatoes were not the best combination for this easy stew, but I was wrong. Scroll down for the recipe.

I am surprised that lately most recipes in the newspaper and magazine newsletters I get propose contrived ‘healthy’ variations of colorful combinations of pre-cooked chickpeas with other kinds of beans plus various vegetables, raw and cooked. These are topped with nuts, dried fruit, and pieces of tofu, or chicken which features in most of these salad-dinner plates. They are usually doused in variations of Asian, or Mexican sauces.

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I guess my traditional dish of beans would look far too simple to those attracted to the colorful foods that look gorgeous in the pictures. I wonder who actually cooks them though, and how they taste. They definitely are not as easy to make as they claim, even with canned beans, chickpeas, artichokes etc.

I miss our figs terribly!

Up until three years ago we harvested so many figs from our trees that I hardly knew what to do with them. Then we had a terribly dry year and our most productive trees died as did most fig trees on Kea. I had never imagined that we had to buy figs from the supermarket, but we do now.

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Some of our new small fig trees started to bare tiny fruit this summer and we are hopeful… The other day I came upon a wonderful fig and almond cake by David Tanis and the craving intensified…

Cranberry beans with peppers and potatoes

I am not sure you can get fresh or frozen cranberry beans in the US or W. Europe, but dried beans of any kind, not just cranberry, can be used for this dish. Feta cheese, with its salty-sour taste, complements ideally this as any bean stew.

4 servings

1 1/2 cups dried cranberry beans soaked overnight and drained or 1 pound fresh shelled cranberry beans

1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil

1 large sweet onion, coarsely chopped

1 tablespoon tomato paste

1 large red bell pepper, cut into 1/2-inch strips

1/2-1 teaspoon cumin

1 cup chopped spicy sausage (like chorizo) casing removed (optional)

2 cups canned diced tomatoes

2 cups vegetable or chicken stock

4 thyme sprigs

2 bay leaves

1-2 teaspoons Aleppo or pinch of crushed red pepper to taste

Salt and freshly ground pepper

2 medium Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch dice

2 tablespoons finely chopped parsley (optional)

In a large saucepan, cover the beans with 3 inches of cold water and
bring to a boil. Cook for about 20 minute, until they start to soften.

Heat the olive oil in a saucepan and sauté the onion until translucent, then add the tomato paste and cook for 2-3 minutes , then the bell pepper and cumin and cook over moderate heat until the pepper softened, about 7 minutes. Add the sausage, if using, and cook for 3 minutes, crumbling it with a spoon. Add the beans, tomatoes, stock or water, thyme, bay leaves and crushed red pepper and season with salt and pepper.

Cover partially and simmer over moderate heat until the beans soften, about 30 minutes. Add the potatoes, cover partially and cook until tender, about 15 minutes longer. Stir in the parsley, and drizzle with extra virgin olive oil, if you like, and serve hot or warm, accompanied by feta cheese.

Tomatoes, peppers of all colors, and eggplants covered with tomato slices are stuffed with every bit of the pulp we take emptying them. To these chopped vegetable pieces I add rice, faro, pine nuts, and currants.

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It is a typical Greek dish that wastes nothing. I had posted the recipe two years ago, and in case you missed it HERE it is.

I haven’t written since June because I had health problems that have finally started to become manageable. Now I hope I will be able to post again every two weeks.

Accompanied by a good piece of feta cheese, gemista (stuffed vegetables) is an all-time favored and every cook has a different version, but I am sure you will love mine.

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It is not a dish you whip up in minutes but it keeps well in the fridge and it is even better the following days when all the flavors meld together.

Old Utensils

Renowned journalist and food writer Bee Wilson wrote in her new substack about the old hand operated beaters. Here is my mother’s, which she continued to use even after she bought one of the first French electric ones that arrived in Athens.

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She was far from thrilled with it though. She hated its sudden force and speed as you pressed the button making it splash cream or eggs allover. So for quite some time she kept going back to her old hand beater. Eventually she got the hang of it of course.

My most cherished old utensil is this vegetable mill I inherited from my mother in law’s kitchen.

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It is somewhat small and tarnished, so I had tried to replace it with a larger, quite expensive stainless steel one but hated it, and gave it to a friend. I still use this one which must be from the 1960’is.

A Precious Book

“I often say that if I could do nothing else except chop for the rest of my days, I would be happy,” chef Olia Hercules writes in “Strong Roots,” a memoir of her Ukrainian heritage that gives fresh charge to that dull old adjective “bittersweet,” writes Alexandra Jacobs in her NYT review.

We had the rare chance to taste Olia’s spectacular dishes at a diner she cooked in 2018 at the Oxford Food Symposium. I will never forget the spectacular and incredible delicious fish broth she served topped with a fish head to all 500+ symposiasts!

Besides the fish, I still remember the first course, a wonderful flat bread stuffed with all kinds of herbs and greens!

I cannot wait to start reading/listening to the book that I just bought.

It is not an exaggeration to say that each Greek cook and professional chef has her or his particular recipe for melitzanosalata (eggplant spread).

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Some are creamy with mayonnaise, others tangy with yogurt, or intense with spicy additions to the grilled and smoky eggplant pulp.

Mine is fresh-tasting and green, with the addition of olive-oil-fried peppers and plenty of parsley added to the eggplants I grill on the griddle until their skins get black and the flesh intensely smoky (scroll down for the recipe).

At a Kea tavern last year —I forget which one— the roasted eggplant was mixed with plenty of garlic, pickled cucumbers, and red, spicy pepper.

At Bobena, an Athenian fish tavern that has now changed its name, the chef chopped and dressed tableside the charred, smoky eggplant.

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For us, Greeks, as for people around the Eastern Mediterranean, eggplants are the king of summer vegetables, cooked in a multitude of ways, even made into sugary preserves, when small and unripe.

When we planted white eggplants in the garden, a few years ago, I finally understood why aubergines —as they are called in the UK and France— got their American name, as the little white vegetables looked exactly like eggs. And their flowers are truly beautiful!

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“Most commonly purple, the spongy, absorbent fruit is used in several cuisines. It is a berry by botanical definition. As a member of the genus Solanum, it is related to the tomato, chili pepper, and potato, although those are of the Americas region while the eggplant is of the Eurasia region,” Wikipedia tell us.

Native to south Asia, it still grows wild there. The kinds we cultivate now were introduced to Europe by the Arabs first in the Iberian Peninsula, and adopted enthusiastically by the Christian and Muslim populations, probably around the 8th century.

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Beside us Greeks, Italians, Spanish, Turks and all the inhabitants of the Eastern Mediterranean love eggplants. We prepare them in a million ways by themselves or in combination with tomatoes and all other summer vegetables and grains.

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It came to me as a shock when an American friend, by far not a picky eater, told me blandly that she hated eggplants. I had not imagined that anybody could not like them, and I still think that my friend had probably not tried them cooked properly…

Halved, drizzled with olive oil, then grilled over charcoal or close to the hot broiler, I adore the summer eggplants warm or room temperature, simply sprinkled with chopped garlic and parsley. This is THE easiest and most delicious meze you can whip up.

Eggplant, Pepper, and Parsley Spread

Makes about 3 1/2 cups, enough for 8-10 people.

2-3 large eggplants (about 2 pounds)

3 tablespoons olive oil

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Often during the summer I make a chewy, somewhat heavy and delicious flat bread using, instead of water, the leftovers of our tomato-onion-and-caper salad.

I like to vary and experiment with the breads I bake, as well as with the various savory biscotti —the bread slices I dry in the oven. recently posted a recipe for grissini with mashed spinach, which reminded me of the green biscotti I used to make using mashed nettles that I collect and blanch in the spring. I keep the pulp in the freezer and use it all year round.

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We love our tomato-salad-bread and often make it in the winter, when large vine-ripened tomatoes are not available. I use a combination of the all-year flavorful cherry tomatoes, upping their taste with a few sun-dried ones (See the recipe’s Note).

Keep in mind that I am no professional baker or chef, just a home cook. I have been cooking our everyday dishes with my mother and grandmother since I was 11 years old.

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I seldom use very precise weight or volume for the various doughs I make; and I do bake quite often. I know that the stainless-steel bowl of my KitchenAid holds about 6-7 cups of flour, and the larger, glass bowl almost 8. I usually drop in a combination of flours —heirloom emmer (if I happen to have some), strong, yellow bread flour —what Italians call ‘pasta flour’— and of course whole-wheat, and about 1 cup barley flour if I am lucky to have some.

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Just finished listening to Barry Diller reading his absolutely brilliant book Who Knew. I cannot recommend it enough and I am so sorry it ended.

I cannot recommend it enough and I am so sorry it ended! It was so wonderfully read by the author, and now I wish I can find something almost so exciting to listen to next…

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Strangely, while barley was traditionally the basic flour on Kea and the other Cycladic islands, these days I have to order it from Athens, while our supermarkets recently carry buckwheat flour(!) Seems it is the latest fashionable grain…

In my regular breads I usually add 2-3 tablespoons carob flour —we will talk more about carobs in another post. I enhance the bread’s flavor with my favorite aromatics: ground coriander and anise seeds, plus maybe some mahlep.

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But when I add mushed leftover tomato salad instead of water these aromatics are not needed.

Tomato-salad Bread

Yields 2 laganes (focaccia-like flat breads)

2 cups fine semolina or pasta flour

3 cups all purpose flour

1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour

1 cup barley flour (optional) or 1 more cup whole wheat flour

3 teaspoons instant dry yeast

2 teaspoons salt

3 1/2 teaspoons mixed ground coriander seeds, caraway, and mahlep (optional)

1/2 teaspoon ground white pepper (optional)

2 ½ cups tomato-onion-caper pulp (see NOTE)

4 tablespoons olive oil, and more for the bowl and to drizzle on the bread

About 1 cup spring water (non chlorinated), or more, as needed

TOPPING (optional)

2 cups coarsely grated or shaved graviera, or aged cheddar cheese

2-3 beefsteak tomatoes cut into very thin slices, or several cherry tomatoes, halved

Good pinch Greek oregano or rosemary and/or freshly ground black pepper

Place flours, yeast and spices in the bowl of a standing mixer and toss with a spatula. Make a well in the center and add 2 1/2 cups tomato pulp and the olive oil.

Fit the bowl to the mixer and work with the dough hook on low for 2 minutes. With the motor running add water as needed to make a soft dough and work it for 6 minutes or more, occasionally stopping to turn the dough over with a large spatula.

It should still be wet and somewhat sticky, but start to come off the sides of the bowl. If too dry, add a little more water, if too wet add a few tablespoons all purpose flour.

Lightly oil a large transparent or semi-transparent bowl, as well as a piece of plastic wrap. Turn out the dough onto a lightly floured surface and shape into a ball. Transfer to the oiled bowl, cover with the oiled wrap and let rise until double its volume: about 1 hour or more.

(When the dough has expanded to about 1 1/2 times its size you may transfer the dough to the refrigerator, and leave it overnight and up to 24 hours. It will continue to rise very slowly. Before proceeding further, bring to room temperature).

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface, and halve with a spatula.
Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper, drizzle the paper with olive oil, and place one piece of dough on each. Drizzle the top with olive oil, wet your fingers and press the dough, making dimples and streching the dough out to fill the baking sheet. Cover with oiled plastic and let the laganes rise for another 30 minutes — they won’t rise much.

Preheat the oven to 450°F (230 C).

Spread the cheese over each of the breads, to cover the surface. Press with your palm so that the cheese sticks on the dough, and top with tomato slices. Drizzle very lightly with olive oil, sprinkle with oregano or rosemary and/or finishing salt and freshly ground pepper.

Turn on the broiler and place the first baking sheet 5-6 inches from the flame. Bake for about 6 minutes, until the tomatoes start to sizzle and the cheese melts.

Move the bread to the bottom of the oven, and slide the other baking sheet into the vacated space, close to the flame. After 5-6 minutes, turn off the broiler and lower the heat to 375°F.

Transfer the second bread close to the bottom of the oven, below the first, and continue baking for another 15 minutes, changing once more the positions of the breads — always at the lower part of the oven. Check that the first bread is well browned on top and bottom; if not, bake it a bit longer. When done, transfer to a rack to cool, and bake the second bread a few minutes more.

Let cool for 5-10 minutes before you slice and serve.

NOTE:

To make the tomato pulp with summer, vine-ripened tomatoes, puree in the blender 2-3 medium tomatoes with 1 small onion, and 1 tablespoon drained and rinsed capers.

In the winter, soak in 1/3 cup warm water, 5 good quality sun-dried tomatoes (NOT the ones kept in jars with olive oil) for about 20 minutes. Transfer the tomatoes and their liquid to the blender, together with 8-10 large cherry tomatoes, 1 small onion and 1 tablespoon drained and rinsed capers.

Few gifts are as welcomed as homemade liqueurs and syrups. And they are so incredibly easy to make, unlike marmalades and jams that often need hours of chopping and cooking.

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For the liqueurs a few thin lemon peels together with some early summer thyme blossoms , or either oregano sprigs or fresh mint are left to macerate together in vodka for three to six weeks —depending on the herbs you use and your personal taste. Then the very fragrant alcohol is drained, and you can add to it as much simple syrup as you like to make the liqueur strong or mild.

I like to keep the peels and herbs in the sieve and pour the hot syrup over them in a separate jar. I let it cool completely before adding to the aromatic alcohol as much as I want to make the liqueur pleasant and not overpowering.

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Start by adding less, cooling the mixture in the fridge for several hours before you taste it and see if it has the flavor and kick you like. It is easier to add more syrup if you find the mixture strong, than make a new batch of aromatic vodka if accidentally you diluted it with lots of syrup…

The French consider thyme tisane an excellent cure for hangover. But a recipe for thyme liqueur I got from an old Provencal cookbook suggested two cups of late summer thyme blossoms and sprigs for three cups of eaux de vie (grappa or vodka) which in just a month resulted in an undrinkable dark, bitter potion.

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Maybe the thyme of Provence is milder than ours, and I am sure thyme grown further north will be even milder, so start with a handful and add more if you need stronger flavor and aroma.

Syrups and Sherbets

Besides liqueurs, syrups are also wonderful, non-alcoholic aromatic concoctions that you can make with garden herbs. Mint Oxymel is a vinegar syrup, or shrub with ancient roots that I introduced in my old book Mediterranean Pantry (1994).

Ancient Greeks called the drink oxymeli (vinegar-honey) and as the word implies it was a sweet and acid drink considered very refreshing. The tradition continues to this day but usually sugar is used instead of the honey. In the Muslim countries where alcohol is prohibited, drinks like this were very popular, and of course today they are again sought-after as many people want to drink less alcohol.

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In an 1862 Turkish Cookery Book compiled by Turabi Efendi, I found a vinegar-sugar syrup scented with sweet marjoram. The syrup was entitled oxymel in the table of contents, keeping the ancient Greek word for the drink.

Starting from the recipe in the old book I experimented with different quantities of sugar/honey and vinegar, using marjoram, mint and rose geranium as flavorings. Mint is the oxymel I prefer, but you can try other aromatics too.

Mint Oxymel (vinegar syrup or shrub)

Makes 1 cup

4 cups water

1 cup sugar

1 cup distilled vinegar

15-20 fresh mint sprigs

Simmer the water and sugar for 10 minutes then add the vinegar and continue simmering for another 10 minutes. Add the mint to the pan and as it starts to boil, remove from the heat and let cool completely, before passing through a fine sieve. Store in the fridge.

To serve add 2-3 tablespoons to a glass, and top with very cold water and ice cubes. Decorate with fresh mint sprigs.

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A fragrant, lemon verbena syrup, is another pantry staple of ours. We love to douse cakes with it, or use it in cocktails and sorbets. It also accentuates the flavor of any fruit salad, especially one that has peaches and apricots, which, unfortunately, are not as fragrant as I remember them…

I find that rose geranium besides quince preserves, pairs beautifully with the sorbet I make using our local, densely flavored pomegranate juice.

And of course we always have at hand our lemon liqueur. Sometimes, when we are lucky we get a few bergamots, so that the lemon peels are enriched with some —not many— bergamot peels to make the liqueur even more fragrant.

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Keep in mind, also, that our hardy garden herbs, besides flavoring our drinks and dishes, invite the butterflies, which are such a delight these days…

Having studied graphic design and then photography at the Polytechnic of Central London, I always spent time in bookstores during my trips to Europe and the US for various press events. I admired the plethora of beautifully illustrated Italian cookbooks and as no such book existed for our cooking, I decided to produce one, so, eventually, my Foods of Greece was published in the early 1990ies.

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Since my childhood, I have been cooking with my mother, grandmother and aunt, and I was quite comfortable preparing most seasonal everyday traditional dishes —like the ones we cook with our Kéa Artisanal guests.

Although I made mayonnaise from scratch, following my mother’s trick of adding a tablespoon of mashed potato as a stabilizer, I didn’t have any idea how to poach fish or seafood —we traditionally boiled them to death— or how to prepare the fresh asparagus that started to be available in some specialty shops.

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For the weekly magazine I was editing, I was writing and photographing for my stories, interviewing people, following events and doing fashion. Eventually, I suggested we publish weekly French Cooking Lessons, loosely based on a series we acquired from the UK Observer, written by Ann Willan. Translating and adapting these lessons was my initiation into food writing, which I soon expanded with my own research and experience.

I wish I could introduce our no-frills Greek foods much like Patience Gray, with beautiful descriptions of places and people, or like Elisabeth David, who offered inspiring accounts of Mediterranean dishes without detailed instructions, as she wanted to inspire people who, she assumed, already knew how to cook.

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After I signed my contract for a big, heavily illustrated book, it became obvious that very detailed and multiply-tested recipes were required. My publishers also thought that as a photo-journalist I was not qualified to do the photos required for such a book. To shoot the breath-taking images, the late Martin Brigdale, an immensely talented and tireless artist was contracted. He shot 4X5 inch color transparencies, dragging the huge view camera in various, sometimes almost inaccessible parts of Greece…

I never imagined that this first book would have such an impact, and I hardly aspired to be a food writer when I wrote it; I enjoyed editing magazines, photographing and writing for newspapers, thinking that recipe writing was for me a one-time thing.

Reading and Learning

Eventually the first book led to another, and then another, all beautifully illustrated by specialized photographers and artists. My own photos appeared on my third book, the Foods of the Greek Islands, published in 2000. It was the very first I wrote her, on Kea, and I consider it my best work. The book became my bestseller, always kept in print by Haughton Mifflin.

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Becoming a somewhat reluctant food writer, while I continued to work as a journalist, I felt I had to learn more about food and the traditions of other countries.

Ireland and its foods might seem faraway from our Mediterranean traditions, but Darina Allen’s unsurpassed book told me otherwise. It helped me enormously understand and appreciate our frugal dishes.

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Being bombarded by so many sumptuous Italian-American books, I felt that I needed to do original research in the various regions of that rich and marvelous country. But I had neither the time nor the funds to do it. So I searched for a no-frills book of regional Italian food, and fortunately I found it. With a dictionary —as google-translate wasn’t yet available— I slowly discovered a wealth of wonderful dishes, especially from Italy’s south, where the use of seasonal ingredients was very similar to what we, Greeks do.

Of course I wanted to learn more about the science/physics/chemistry behind cooking. Fortunately Harold McGee’s unsurpassed 1984 book taught me all I needed, and more. Later I complemented my knowledge with Hervé This’ ‘Secrets of the cooking pot.’

Long before Vegetarian food became so popular, Deborah Madison’s wonderful 2007 book broadened everybody’s horizon, leading the way to the many who recently followed. Flatbreads and Flavors, a true Baker’s Atlas, was the first in a series of extensively researched books Naomi Duguid compiled. She traveled, and spent time photographing documenting dishes in countries that didn’t welcome Europeans or Americans. She managed to struck meaningful conversations with locals in various colorful markets, even under the scarry supervision of local police and ‘officials,’ as she once told me.

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Beard on Bread (1973) was the very first baking book I bought, when I wanted to start baking. I had never made bread, and neither did my mother, so I learned the basics from this marvelous little book. Nicholas Stavroulakis was a rare scholar, the man who helped create the Jewish Museum in Athens. His Cookbook of the Jews of Greece has wonderful recipes, and his charming illustrations.

The larger than life, yet so accessible and friendly Claudia Roden helped me understand and appreciate the foods of our broader neighborhood, the Eastern Mediterranean. Recipes that were similar and related, although they might look different at first glance.

Last, but not least, my soulmate Paula Wolfert helped me enormously,especially when I was lost under the huge pile of recipes I had accumulated researching my very first book. ‘Which shall I choose to include?’ I asked her. ‘The ones you would like to cook and eat more than once,’ she told me.

I ate bialys for the first time in the 1980ies, on the Lower East side of Manhattan, of course, and loved them. I couldn’t understand why they were not all over the city, as bagels were. For me these simple breads topped with onion and poppyseeds were far more delicious!

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During the Kea Artisanal bread-baking day last week, with our wonderful guests, the Ross family, Alison Ross mentioned bialy, and I suddenly felt a tremendous crave for them, mixed with sorrow as I recalled the wonderful times Costas and I had spent with our dearest friend, the late Mimi Sheraton each time we visited New York.

The fascinating book “Bialy Eaters: the story of a bread and a lost world” was the result of Mimi’s tireless research that started from Bialystock, in northeastern Poland. The breads’ original name was Bialystock kuchen (‘breads from Bialystock,’ in Yiddish) but in that dreary town Sheraton found no trace of them, as there were hardly any Jews left to bake them.

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The very few Auschwitz survivors were murdered by ‘Polish mobs’ as she was told. Some locals even suggested that bialys were a New York invention(!) But, as she wrote “there is even a visual proof of the bialys existence in the documentary Jewish Life in Bialystock, produced in the crucial year of 1939 and distributed by the National Center for Jewish Life.”

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Mimi was a brilliant journalist, a persistent, and tireless researcher —not merely the critic ‘who had eaten 21,170 restaurant meals professionally in 49 countries,’ as the NY Times wrote in her obituary. By publishing her initial bialy research in some magazines, both in English and in Yiddish, she got a tremendous amount of responses from Jews whose families originated in Bialystock and were now scattered all over the world. A few claimed that their ancestors were the original creators of the breads, in the mid 19th century (!)

Baking Bialys on Kea

Bialys, of course, are not the Greek or Eastern Mediterranean breads, like the zaatar-topped lagana or koulouria (sesame-studded bread rings) which we usually bake here with our guests; but I suggested we bake some as I consider them not much different from mini Italian focaccias or our vegetable-topped laganes (flat breads).

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Maybe the reason they are not hugely popular in the US is their brilliant simplicity: they are not laden with butter, and lack the copious amounts of melted cheese everybody seems to adore these days. The caramelized, olive-oil-sauteed onions and the few poppyseeds cannot compete with the popular spicy sausage mini pizzas or the bite-size quiche with bacon and cream…

The recipe Alison suggested we use was published by Pete Andrews “a 25-year-old living in Washington DC and working in northern Virginia,” who writes that “simply put, most of my income goes to flour, sugar and butter.” In the recipe’s head-note he writes “bialys are a food that just begs to be experimented on and tried with different fillings. What if I cracked an egg in the middle? added bacon? sausage? bacon and sausage? and cheese? this is going to be good.” Well, in our humble opinion, bialys don’t need any addition. They are perfect the way they are.

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Next time, though, I will use the King Arthur recipe, as it has less yeast than Pete adds. Less puffy, the bialys will be closer to the ones I tried at the historic Kossar’s bakery, in the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

PS: A Lunch with Mimi

During one of our NY meetings, probably around 2000, Mimi had taken us to the then newly opened Pastis restaurant in the Meatpacking district —long before the area became so terribly trendy. She loved it, and kept explaining how the creator, Keith McNally, had brough or meticulously copied the mirrors, tiles, bar etc. from traditional Parisian brasseries.

As it happens, I am now deep into McNally’s fascinating memoir I regret almost everything, where he describes in detail his troubles while creating Pastis, after his instantly popular Odeon…

Our first harvest does not look much, but I can assure you these humble zucchini were beyond delicious, made into a simple salad.

We spoke at length last year about our love for zucchini.

Now we whipped up this colorful salad, thinly slicing the raw, super fresh zucchini, and pairing them with beets and arugula, dressing the salad with our favorite vinaigrette —lemony with some Dijon mustard.

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It was THE perfect spring salad, sprinkled with crumbled feta and toasted pine nuts. I thin that it could become a lovely lunch, accompanied by your favorite grilled or cold poultry, or complementing any kind of meat or fish.

Our season just started

Last night we welcomed the first Kea Artisanal guests with our customary mezze and dinner at the veranda.

We started with freshly baked Lagana (flat bread) Topped with Tomatoes, Smoked Cheese, and Rosemary (top). Smoky Eggplant Spread with Peppers and Parsley, Marinated Artichokes and Kalamata Olives with Wild Fennel, also Red Pepper and Hazelnut Spread with Pomegranate Molasses, and Tsirosalata: Smoked, Sun-dried Mackerel with Scallions and Dill.

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And of course we Charcoal-grilled Octopus, and served it with Santorini Fava topped with Caramelized Onions and Capers. For main course we served Slow-baked Local Rooster with Sour Cherries in Sweet Wine Sauce with Bay Leaves, accompanied by Bulgur, Buckwheat, and Toasted Vermicelli Pilaf.

We ended with fresh Strawberry ‘tourta’ with Lemon Cream, and our Strawberry Jam, inspired by one of my mother’s festive desserts made with a base of lady fingers dipped in Grand Marnier.

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This morning we rolled delicious grape leaf dolmades.

We will continue over the next days making goat’s milk myzithra (ricotta), breads, pies with home-rolled phyllo etc…

This time of year women all over the country use freshy harvested grape leaves to make the rice-scallion-and-herb dolmades, and this truly makes all the difference in their taste. Jarred grape leaves are a fair substitute, of course.

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The classic, vegan stuffed dolmades are not the only wonderfully frugal dish grape leaves help us create. In the baked yogurt-and-herb custard pies (asmapita) the leaves caramelize beautifully in the oven, becoming an unusual delicacy (Scroll down for the recipe).

During our spring and early summer Keartisanal cooking vacations, participants pick from our garden’s aged vines some deliciously tender leaves. Rolling dolmades was one of the very first dishes we cooked with our guests when we started our Kea programs, twenty yeas ago; it is still one of our guests’ favorite cook-along activity!

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Much like cooks all over the Eastern Mediterranean, stuffing grape leaves is often a group activity, as family and friends, young and old, gather to roll the somewhat time consuming dolmades.

Grape leaves toughen as the days get warmer, so in the spring we freeze the first tender and very tasty leaves to use, together with the commercial ones, which work equally well.

If you can get hold of even a few fresh grape leaves, use them as flavoring, placing them between the dolmades you roll with commercial, jarred leaves.

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Fresh leaves need to be blanched for only about 2-3 minutes, while home-frozen, tender leaves can be used directly after thawing, or blanched just for only a few seconds.

Yogurt-cornmeal-and-herb custard

In the late 1980ies discovered the original fried grape-leaf pies in Drama, in northern Greece, while researching for my very first book The Foods of Greece. I was traveling together with my dear friend, the legendary Paula Wolfert. She included her version of asmapita in her incomparable Cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean.

When my book Mediterranean Vegetarian Feasts came out, my friend, David Tanis —now the chef of the acclaimed LULU restaurant in LA— created and published in the New York Times his own, brilliant version of asmapita, substituting chard leaves for the fresh grape leaves.

“Whenever I’m looking for inspiration for cooking in a Hellenic direction, I turn to my friend and colleague Aglaia Kremezi, a well-known Greek food writer,” wrote Tanis. “Her cookbook “Mediterranean Vegetarian Feasts” is the kind that makes my mouth water […] It was there I learned about these little Greek-style pies, called asmapita.“

Yogurt and Herb Pies Wrapped in Grape Leaves (asmapita)

In this unusual recipe from Drama, northern Greece, a cornmeal-thickened yogurt is flavored with scallions and herbs, and baked or fried wrapped in tangy grape leaves, thus becoming a sophisticated “pie” with complex aroma and unexpected flavor.

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Serves 6

1 1/2 pounds (680 g) thick Greek-style yogurt

1/3 cup (50 g) cornmeal

2/3 cup (65 g) finely chopped scallions

2/3 cup (40 g) finely chopped dill

2/3 cup (40 g) finely chopped fresh mint leaves

1/2 to 1 teaspoon minced jalapeño or other fresh chili, or black pepper, to taste

Salt

15 to 20 vine leaves, fresh or frozen

About 1/3 cup (80 ml) olive oil, as needed

Preheat the oven to 375˚F (190°C).

In a bowl, combine the yogurt and the cornmeal; add the scallions, herbs, salt, and pepper and stir well.

Oil six 4-inch (10-cm) mini tartlet pans or shallow muffin tins. Line each pan or tin with 1 large or 2 small grape leaves, making sure they amply cover the bottom and sides. Brush liberally with olive oil and divide the yogurt mixture among the pans. Top each with a leaf, tucking the edges inside to make a neat package, and brush liberally with olive oil. Bake for about 30 minutes, until the mixture is set and a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.

Preheat the broiler. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and invert the pans onto it. Place the pies under the broiler for a few seconds to caramelize the leaves.

Serve hot, warm, or at room temperature.

Grape leaves stuffed with rice and herbs —dolmades nistisimi (vegan)

Adapted from my Foods of the Greek Islands (Houghton Mifflin)

Makes 8 to 10 servings

One 8-ounce jar brine-packed grape leaves, or half a 16-ounce jar, drained

3 cups chopped onions

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