What's in the Kitchen

An easy way of making mayonaise.  Thanks to a recipe on the blog 

'Living the life in Saint Aignan'. 

 Put one cup of oil (vegetable oil) in a long narrow container, crack in one egg, add a few tablespoons of vinegar, same of mustard, salt and pulse with one of those stick blenders.  Mayonaise in minutes.  Unfortunately once again I used olive oil which is all I had on hand.  It makes the taste too strong,  I ate it all but next time I'll use sunflower oil which is what I think we use sometimes for frying.  Can't remember what he used.  Search 'recipes' on his side bar if you want.  If you don't find mayonaise then you'll find a load of other wonderful, mainly french, recipes.

Add some crushed garlic for aioli

Round zucchinis.  These have been on the market for a couple of years now and are popular here.  More tender and sweet says my traditional person and they are the perfect shape for stuffing

Flat peaches.  Have you ever seen such a thing?  I saw them in a supermarket on a quick trip to Athens.  Can't remember the price but I did pick one up to make sure it was real.

Called a Saturn or donut peach, harvested at the end of spring (here at least), sweeter, less fuzz and less juice.  Introduced from China.

Says Wikipedia

Grating a big red juicy tomato.  Only the skin is left behind and that goes into the compost.  Makes wonderful juice for a fresh sauce

Egg shell and coffee ground mix, before and after being blended

A 'soupy' mix ready to go on the tomato plants

Olives preserved in a salt and water mix with olive oil on top.  

We still have many big jars of these.  Enough to last till the next harvest.  Now the classic greek salad is in season and traditional people insist on 5 or 6 olives on every salad.  Recipe for preserving olives and salt content coming soon.  I still have to consult with aging neighbour Vaso.  What she doesn't know about olives is not worth knowing

This is a thick slice of cheese though I'm sure you couldn't tell exactly what it is in the photo.  This is a hard cheese which softens but does not melt and is used to make 'saganaki' or fried cheese.  Just trickle a little oil into the frying pan and fry briefly till brown on both sides.  Delicious.  We found a nice salty cheese which holds its shape perfectly.  If it melts you might have trouble scraping it off the pan

Still squeezing lemons.  Sometimes a simple fork does the squeezing trick just as well

We were given a bag of apricots,  and strawberries are cheap just now so I made jam.  The second batch of strawberry jam was overcooked and set as hard as toffee.  After a bit of googling I scraped it with difficulty back into a clean pot, added water and gently warmed it.  When it had softened I added a knob of butter and a shot glass of whisky, put in a bowl with a lid and keep it in the fridge as a strawberry sauce.  It's fine.  Tastes great and spreads.  

There were a dozen apples sitting out on the bench so I pureed all those and made a 'dutch apple cake' with half of the puree.  That disappeared fast although grandchildren do prefer chocolate-something-or-other.  The other half of the puree is in the freezer along with pureed pears which were going soft and plums from last year.

All that work was done before temperatures rose.  Its in the mid 30s now.  Too hot for faffing about in the kitchen, except for making icecream