feta and other food

 One of our winter's salads is made of lettuce.  The lettuce is cut finely and mixed with chopped spring onions (shallots) and dill.  The dressing is always lemon juice and olive oil.

The other salad which is found on every menu in winter is cabbage salad.  Finely sliced cabbage, grated carrot, chopped celery and a clove of crushed garlic.  This once again has a dressing of olive oil and lemon juice, or vinegar. 

Summer is Greek salad. 

 Whenever I get served a salad that is not traditional I get very excited.

Mixed green salad for a change, a distant cousin of a greek salad.

The pictured salad was made by my daughter's mother-in-law and was part of the spread for the celebration for all of the 'Dimitris' in the family. This is a name which runs in the male side of their family.  There are a grandfather, two grandsons, Uncle and cousin all with the same first name, and in one case with the same surname as well.  

 There were two big plastic bowls of salad.  Besides the obvious pomegranite, walnuts and lettuce that you can see in the picture other greens included spring onions, dill, spinach, rocket and two different kinds of herby greens which are picked from local fields.  She made a simple lemon and olive oil dressing.  The salad was the star.  Everything including the pomegranites are fresh and in season.

This photo shows one of the main courses, salt cod baked with giant beans.  The cod has to be soaked for two days to remove the salt and the beans must be soaked overnight.  Giant beans and village sausage is a familiar combo but I had never tried the beans with fish before.  The recipe is a keeper, though the fish has a strong taste which may put some people off.

A friend of ours has goats, lots of goats, and the family make and sell their own cheese.  We were gifted with some of this feta last weekend when we invited our friend and her family to eat fresh tuna with us.

The feta cheese on the left is hard and peppery (and a bit goaty), the pieces on the right are soft and salty.  Frankly, I prefer supermarket feta, the flavour is milder and the goat is less obvious.

So much feta.  I know you can freeze cheese but I don't want to spoil this feta although I personally will be eating very little of it.  Feta in a barrel or in the supermarket is preserved in a brine solution so I made the brine and tipped it into a deep bowl.  It doesn't keep this way forever but hopefully it will be long enough for the traditional person in our household to eat it all with his friends.  It goes well with a glass of rough white and a few salty olives just recently pickled.

I had just bought feta from the supermarket so I used that up by making  tyrokafteri, which means spicy cheese.  Think cheesy tzatziki.  I prefer it to tzatziki for eating with bbqed meat.  

Tyrokafteri  - Spicy feta dip

- about 250 grams of feta, any feta

- 2 tablespoons of yoghurt, sheep, goat or cow

- as many hot peppers as you can stand

Crumble the feta cheese and whizz in a mixer with the yoghurt and hot peppers.  That's it.  Normally the feta is quite salty so don't add any more salt.  Really nice with fresh bread.