Late Summer Musings

Stuffed tomatoes, an all-time favorite, and more about beautiful old utensils, adding to the discussion a friend started last week. Also a truly special book!

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.

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.

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.

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 mother’s hand beater and one of the first 1970ies Moulinette that came to Athens (sold at Ebay)

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

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.

It is ideal especially for mashing fish and vegetables to make the wonderful fish soup I learned from my mother. I found it on eBay as well.

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.