Torta di Sant'Antonio

 

An apple red wine tart, flavoured with cinnamon.

Made in the Italian alpine village of Oulx to honour the town's patron Sant' Antonio.

- Recipe for the Pastry

2 cups of flour 

1 tbsp sugar

1 tsp baking powder 

6 tbsps cold butter cut into pieces

1/2 cup milk

2 egg yolks 

Rub butter into the flour till it looks like breadcrumbs. Add1 tbsp sugar and baking powder. 

Whisk eggs and milk. Mix into the flour. 

Knead into a smooth ball. Chill 1 hour. 

- Recipe for the Filling mixture

1 1/4 cups of red wine

1 tsp cinnamon

5 tbsp sugar 

4 apples thinly sliced

Zest 1 orange

In a pot simmer -

Apple slices

Sugar

Orange zest/cinnamon

Wine

For about half an hour till the wine has turned to a syrup.

Leave to cool.

Roll out the pastry and place in the baking dish . Let the dough hang over the sides. Trim. Fill with the apple mixture and fold over sides of dough.

Cover the bottom with baking paper, or grease the dish.

Sprinkle with sugar.

Bake 180oC for about half an hour.

If you're artistic form leaves and flowers with the dough trimmings and decorate the tart before baking.

Good luck and Bon Appetit 

Classic Eats

 

I made moussaka' for the family.

Layers of fried

Melitzanes (eggplant or aubergine )

Kolokythakia ( zucchini or courgettes )

And potato

Topped with ground beef in a tomato sauce, finished with a layer of cheese sauce 

Quite a bit of work . I cook the meat and fry the vegetables the previous day. Then put it all together and make the bechamel/cheese sauce.

Moussaka and Greek salad are the two most well known greek dishes . However neither of them are considered the national dish.

That's fassolatha, bean soup.

I baked it early in the morning but then had to deliver it down to their houses in town.

On the worst day of winter.

As they say here

'ti na kanoume'.

And a shrug.

What could I do. We had to take the food down while it was still warm. 

The rain had been coming down like kareklopodara (ha, try saying that!), chair legs, or cats and dogs .

 We did it. Dragging s-in-law Kyriakos out of his house to grab the oven tray, covered in foil and a plastic bag, and run back up the slippery marble steps.  I got drenched in a minute and so did he.

The football field which is at sea level had turned into a swimming pool . The road round the back of the island called Turkodromos, Turkish road, was closed because of rock falls. The harbour road was flooded and water rushed down the stone steps like a series of waterfalls cascading down to the sea .

Dear granddaughter Luli loves moussaka. The 'stage coach' battled the blizzard and delivered the 'mail'. 

Meantime in Athens granddaughter Nels made a big baking pan of pastitsio, Greece's other favourite. Something to stick to the ribs and warm you up in the winter....or summer.

It's a layer of thick tubed macaroni with a tomato and ground beef sauce topped with lots of cheesy bechamel.

Xmas Baking

 I used the last of last years Xmas mincemeat to make something different

Christmas mincemeat cookie cake

A cake base, a layer of mincemeat and more cake mix on top. 

It turned out really well. 

Since then I've seen a recipe for Xmas mincemeat shortbread. Same sort of thing. Shortbread base, mincemeat, shortbread.  Looks easy and delicious. 

Then I made traditional fruity mince pies as well. Homemade filling and pastry

Great with custard says friend Jan, who should know. She's a local-alien from England and has eaten the 'real thing'. 

Even if it was 45 years ago

Gingerbread with Petimezi instead of molasses or treacle.  A simple gingerbread recipe using petimezi which is syrup of grapes. 

I made this by boiling down 5 litres of grape juice till a half litre remained. 

I've never seen molasses on sale here but Grape syrup is sold everywhere. It lasts forever. I use it in cakes and biscuits.

 Gingerbread men

This morning I took English Christmas cakes, doused in 5* Metaxa brandy, along with bottles of red wine liqueur, to the girls in the accountancy office where daughter Elli works. 

The 3 girls and granddaughter Luli  spent all day Sunday baking Xmas cookies and muffins. 

Their gingerbread men are epic. Nice and peppery. Ginger gives it the basic flavour but the recipe has salt and pepper too.

Elli and Maria are girls with mothers who are local aliens. One from NZ and one from Honduras. Honduras is the country whose capital city has the wonderful name of Tegucigalpa. One New Years Maria brought us homemade tamales! 

You could say that Katerina is another alien child. Her mother comes from Methana, the town under the volcano, down the road a while and round quite a few corners.

We're a cosmopolitan island. 

Food

 

Classic NZ Fish Pie.  Or as classic as you can make it in a foreign country with substitute ingredients. 

This should be made with fresh smoked NZ kawhai.  I made it with frozen north sea cod.

My daughter who loves anything from downunder has asked me to make this for months.  Or is it years, Elli Mou?  Although I've eaten this pie in years gone by I don't think I've ever cooked it.

It should be smoked fish in a white, or cheese sauce with parsley and boiled eggs topped with mashed spuds.  I used the recipe from Edmonds Cookery book.  This has been, and still is, the bible of NZ cooking.  My copy is falling to pieces. I've used it often over the last 45 years.  It is stained and has copious notes in the margin.  

Pie on a plate

Carnivore Flatbread 

For the last 2 and a half years I've been eating an animal based diet.  Mainly meat and eggs, fish, cheese.  No bread, cake or packaged goodies.  No sugar.  Most of the time. I eat cake and icecream on a birthday or a name day.  If I feel like it.  You get the picture.  I've lost a lot of weight in the past 4 years.   One day I'll tell you all about it and show the photos.

I miss bread for the  sandwiches and its satisfying chewiness.  Now and again carnivore bread recipes turn up on the youtube vlogs I follow.  I've found an easy one which turns out like a wrap and I can wrap it around some ham and cheese and maybe a slice of lettuce or tomato.

Take a pot of cottage cheese, mix in 2 eggs.  Spread it out on a baking sheet and bake for 20 minutes. Leave to cool. 

Not bad, but I'm over it now.  

I just found another recipe, grated cabbage and eggs.  Mix and bake.

Or avocado, grated cheese and egg. 

Or how about, if I want a piece of bread then I'll just eat a piece of bread! 

Grated cabbage and egg. Who the hell thinks these things up. Life is too short to grate cabbage.

               Lamington Balls

My dear kiwi family brought  packets of this mix with them.  I've made one lot.  Chocolate balls with coconut in them and cashews.

Just add coconut oil

Maple syrup

and water

Substitute, substitute.

I used olive oil , honey ....not water.  I  used some homemade liqueur instead. 

One packet makes 10 balls.  I ate 3 of these.

Sorry kids.  You didn't get a taste this time but I have another packet, for the holidays.  Or my birthday maybe.  That's closer than xmas.

My Greek Kitchen

                      My Greek kitchen, or kouzina as it's known here. 

Our IKEA kouzina, bought and put together in 2008.

Quite a dramatic time.  K had 2,000 euro in his back pocket and he lost it somewhere in the parking lot.  By the time he realised what had happened it was far too late although he did report it and we searched and searched.

Remember, Jan?

It was someone's lucky day. I hope they needed the money. 

We had his *cousin the carpenter with us and together with the IKEA staff  they designed our kitchen cabinets and we bought it all, on credit card.  Hey ho.

It cost us less than 2,000 euros, back then. 16 years ago, IKEA was still something new and they were cheap.  We bought other furniture and essentials as well that fateful day and had them all trucked to Poros.

At least it was him that lost it and not one of us.  There would have been an eruption of grand proportions. 

The kitchen is in a  fairly decent state except for one cupboard which had a fire inside it.   We have a traditional little gas burner on which we boil greek coffee.  I must have put it away in the cupboard while it was still very hot and it touched the side and slowly smouldered.  Thank goodness it extinguished itself and by the time I discovered it there was a bit of soot and charred wood but nothing major!

* We 'imprisoned' his cousin for a month or so. He was an excellent carpenter and joiner but was wont to lose interest, down tools and wander off leaving half finished work behind him.  So he lived in our spare room till he finished.  He got home cooked meals, I washed and ironed his clothes, he had free  internet and he and K discussed and debated and recalled their childhood long into the night over glasses of wine or raki. 

Along the top of the kitchen cupboards, clay pots, a casserole dish, a slow cooker which doesn't work very well and an old pressure cooker.  They are deemed treasures by some.  We do use the clay pots a few times a year for bread and stews. 

Essentials in this greek kitchen.  They have a permanent place on the bench

- Marmite.  Always no. 1.

- Plastic oil pourer.  I hate it.  But K loves it.  Life is short.  It's not worth niggling over an oil pourer.  I would have preferred a small glass one with a nice olive design on the side, but they both do the same job.

- Olive oil spray.  A new addition.  We always poured our oil.  A spray is a fine mist which barely covers.  However olive oil is very expensive now and a fine mist will often have to suffice.

- Then the vinegar pourer.  At least that's glass.

- And..that little gas burner which burnt our cupboard.  It's used every morning to make a traditional greek coffee

It's a galley kitchen with a high beamed ceiling, flows into the sitting room and the dining room. 

 Dining room -  Big wooden table, handmade by carpenter cousin, with 10 'charmingly' mismatched chairs

On the other side of the bench is a candle, stuck in a brass candlestick.  K is of an age when his classmates are beginning to pop off.  If he hears of a death he will light the candle in memory. 

He also has vivid dreams, which he remembers in great detail.  If any of his dead relatives happen to pop in to pay him a nighttime visit he will light a candle for them the next day too.

Big, very heavy, brass urn, 'gifted' to him by a 'friend'.  On top of the cupboards.  It was once polished and shiny bright.

We have no idea what it was used for but another friend insists it's a baptism font.  It's big, but not that big, not for greek baptisms where the baby is dunked right under, yelling and splashing, and can be anywhere from 6 months to a few years old.

That's our well used kitchen where the grandkids make traditional biscuits, bread and brownies, where dear daughters Elli and Danae have spent backbreaking hours scrubbing dirty oven trays, where I make stuffed tomatoes and boil pigs' heads, but not where K fries fish or cleans offal or boils trotters, stews his greens or prepares  traditional but smelly greek dishes.

Thank goodness there is an outside kitchen for all his cooking with a gas stove, electric oven with a handmade door (one of his treasures), wood fired pizza-style oven, big bbq and a marble sink.

 Photos for Dave from the Northsider blog. http://northsiderdave.blogspot.com

Alas Poor Porky

I got a helluva fright while digging through our big chest freezer the other day.  A plastic bag I picked up suddenly split open and out popped a grinning snout with perky brown ears.  

The head of the pig that was spit roasted back in June.  It was roasted just a tad too much and the skin and ears were not crispy but as tough as leather.   After the visitors left we were more than over-done  with eating pork so into the freezer it went and was soon forgotten.

Oh dear Porky. On the menu once again

I boiled the whole head for an hour.

K and the wild cats licked their lips for days.

The skin and snout were soft and gelatinous.  I cut it all up into thin strips for the cats.  They fought and yowled over it all that night.

  There was a lot of good meat on the skull, tongue and brains included, and it came away easily from the bone. 

K enjoyed some of the meat for lunch.  I did not.  It had a very porky taste and and was, sort of slimy, well gelatinous.

That night I boiled rice, pilafi, for K in the juices that were left in the pot.  He enjoyed that as well for a couple of meals.

Last night I made youvetsi with the leftover meat.  Youvetsi is meat,  stewed in tomatoes with orzo which is a fat rice-like pasta.  There's enough left for a meal on Friday.

Friday because today, Wednesday, is the eve of the 15th August and the big church celebration of The Assumption of the Virgin Mary.  I would say it's the biggest fiesta in the Greek Orthodox church and most of Catholic Europe.

Wednesday K is fasting and Thursday we feast.  

Alas poor Porky.  He fed us well

I don't remember anyone crunching on the eyeballs. Maybe they fell out into the fire.

The skull bones came apart into 4 or 5  pieces and I've put those back in the freezer, into a bag with bones from lamb and chicken carcasses.  When the bag is full I will boil them all up for an hour or so to make bone broth.  The broth is full of nutriments and will add loads of flavour to  more meat dishes.

Nose to tail eating.

I have already turned the trotters into bone broth. The liver is in the freezer in a separate bag. I'd better deal with that next. 

Or K will.

Liver and onions perhaps

Ekmek Kataïfi - A Turkish Delight

 

 

             EKMEK KATAÏFI OR KADAYIFI

INGREDIENTS

Syrup

• 2 cups water
• 2 cups sugar
• 1/2 lemon (juiced)
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 1 tbsp honey

Kataïfi Base

• 350 grams kataïfi pastry
• 250 grams melted butter

Custard

• 4 eggs
• 200 grams sugar
• 100 grams cornflour
• 100 grams plain flour
• 1.5 liters milk
• 1 tsp vanilla essence

Cream

• 600 ml thick cream
• vanilla
• 20 grams icing sugar

Instructions 

SYRUP - In a saucepan, make the syrup by adding the water, sugar, lemon, cinnamon, and honey. Bring to the boil and after 2 minutes, set aside to cool. Preheat the oven to 180Oc

 

PASTRY - Add the kataifi pastry to a deep dish and separate it out evenly. Pull the clumps of pastry apart. Pour over the melted butter. Mix the pastry around till it is all covered in butter. Press down.   Place into the oven until golden brown and crispy,  20-30 mins at 180oC.

While the pastry is hot pour over the cooler syrup. Hot pastry, cool syrup

 

CUSTARD -

Make the custard by putting the eggs and 100g of caster sugar into a bowl, beat until creamy and set aside.

In a saucepan, add the milk, cornflour, plain flour, 100g caster sugar and vanilla essence. Whisk all together until it’s warm (not too hot).

Using a ladle scoop a spoonful of the warm milk mixture and put it into the egg mixture. Mix it together and add the egg mixture to the remaining milk mixture in the saucepan. Mix thoroughly over the heat until the custard thickens. Let it cool. Don't let it boil or the eggs will set.  If this does happen just whisk till combined.

 Pour the custard over the top of the pastry and spread it out.  Place in the fridge for an hour to set.

WHIPPED CREAM - Add the cream, vanilla and icing sugar to a bowl and beat until whipped thickly. Then add to the top of the custard.  When evenly spread, decorate the top with a sprinkle of finely chopped nuts.

My sis in law in NZ, Bev, puts crushed toffee on the top.  That sounds more to my taste! A little bit of chocolate wouldn't be bad either. Who cares if it's not the traditional fistikia, pistachio nuts. 

Bev's ekmek

This is my Greek sister in laws speciality and she makes it for every family fiesta. 

I've never made this so if anyone has a comment, advice, then add it down below. 

After writing and rewriting the damn recipe 3 times, I couldn't save it at first, I've decided it's actually quite easy. I'll try making it for Ks name day towards the end of the month. Yes, there's still another celebration this month. Kosta, Elli, Nels, Dina all share a name day and Poppi and I have ours the day before. 

Stuffing

Christmas has come and gone but a good old Sunday roast can be eaten all year round. I thought I'd tell you what I discovered about stuffing. 

 Yes, good old sage and onion stuffing.

For years we ate pork (at the Greek end of the table) and stuffed turkey (down the other end) for Xmas lunch. Alongside a table-full of other edible goodies. .

The turkey was a french one, deep frozen with a pop-up thermometer. Cheap and cheery. All the big supermarkets sold them at that time of the year. 3 euros a kilo. And the turkey was around 3 kilos.  K tried to persuade us to buy a local one, sold with head and feet, nasty black feathers under the wings. No way!!

Seeing them hanging by the neck in the butcher's shop, with drooping naked bodies and horrid yellow thorny toes was enough to put me off turkey for life.

Our french turkey, like an  oversized chook, was stuffed with traditional stuffing, breadcrumbs, lots of onion, a pinch of sage and a little oregano and mint, and maybe an egg. Very nice. And I always made an egg and lemon soup with the carcass.

 But really we all preferred chicken. So chicken it was for a few years . Stuffed the same way. Carcass made into soup.

Once the kids grew up we ventured into new realms. The 'foreign' side of the Greek family did anyway.

Stuffed chicken roll. Deboned chicken stuffed with ham, cheese and peppers. Since then we have stuck with this. Everyone, even a few Greeks, love it. We order it by the kilo ready rolled and stuffed. No fuss, cooks quickly. 

One problem. You can't stuff a chicken roll. 

I discovered Americans made pan stuffing, for some strange reason called dressing. Everyone loves stuffing so I made a large dish full. The first year it was ok, but it got better with every try. Plenty to eat and take home.

This year I discovered the Brits make things called stuffing balls.  I made a few of these to go with the dish of sage and onion dressing. 

They were a huge hit! Next year I'll double the recipe.

The Brits do a roast dinner best. Spuds, crisp on the outside, soft inside. Yorkshire puds.  A good gravy to bind it all together and a few brussel sprouts to give a bit of colour.

We also roast large pieces of orange sweet potato . In our house it's called 'kumara'.  Kumara is the name of the sweet potato brought to NZ by the Maori  a thousand years ago from the Pacific Islands. 

I could buy fresh parsnips from the British shop in Athens but my friend Jan and I are the only ones who have ever eaten a parsnip, and know the taste, so I don't bother. 

Do pigs in blankets go with a traditional roast dinner?  Small sausages wrapped in bacon for the uninitiated.  They appeal to me as an accompaniment but they might be too fussy to put together. 

What else does everyone eat with roast meat?

 

 

Home

Tuna on a tile. 

You've seen a similar photo before

Tuna cooked in the oven on a roof tile.

This one is well seasoned.  It has roasted a lot of tuna

Clean the tuna, let the blood drain out.  Stuff the belly and head cavity with lemon slices, garlic and oregano

Bake 40 minutes

Let it cool a bit.  Remove the flesh from the back bone and generously douse with a lemon and olive oil dressing.

Dressing.

  Juice from a couple of lemons, double that amount of olive oil, a little salt, a sprinkle of oregano, a squirt of mustard. 

Put that all in a screw jar and shake well.

Eat.  With a green salad, bread and wine

Spinach pie

spanakopita

Filling ... 

Spinach chopped and sweated, lots of chopped dill and fresh spring onions

One egg

Pepper

Lots of grated or crumbled feta cheese. 

Mix well

Homemade pastry.......

400-450 grams all purpose flour

200 grams water

70 grams olive oil

1 tsp baking powder

3 tbsps vinegar

salt

Mix well and knead till soft and elastic

Let it rest 20 minutes and then divide in half.  Roll out each piece for top and bottom of the pie

What the hell

Something has turned my cauliflower and broccoli leaves into lace work.

Gotcha

Half a dozen caterpillars.  White cabbage butterflies?

Boy can they chomp through these plants.

But not any more.

Photos From Our Home

 

Smerna (roll the 'r'), the mediterranean moray eel

Not 1 but 3 

This type of moray eel is dangerous. These ones were almost a metre long and 2 or 3 kilos each.  Their bite can be very nasty and fishermen aren't happy to see them in their catch.  They give them to K for nothing because he takes them off their hands.

Not many people eat them but they are a good fish to eat.  They have firm white flesh, with a few big bones.

K discards the head, chops them into steaks and fries them, in olive oil of course.

Now you can see why they are dangerous.

Their jaws are wide and those long sharp teeth tear and crush their prey.

We have a reputation as 'collectors'.  To put it politely.

The council truck stopped outside our gate last week and the two guys yelled for K.  Treasures, delivered straight to the door.  What fun.  For someone.  I don't know whether he asked for these or someone thought our house was the perfect dumping place.  He's not admitting anything.

One of the big pieces of  shelving was 'gifted' on to a friend who says it will come in handy.

So K is not the only keeper of treasures on the island.

And we have the other shelving unit taking up precious  space inside the house.  It's empty now but I know it will soon be full.

None of that....... 'if something comes into the house, then something must go out'..... rule here.

One Summer Afternoon

The heatwaves are over.  I hope.  We have visitors in the neighbourhood. All the houses are full.  There are cars coming and going.  The last of the summer out-of-towners.  

  Our elderly neighbour, Vaso, has her daughter visiting from the island of Lefkada where she was chief of police.

 Her son, an ex Navy officer, invited us for an ouzo on their patio. Vaso only had a basic education but she made sure all her children were well educated and had good jobs. Her other daughter was a school teacher .

Vaso is no longer in complete control of the 'estate'.  The younger generation is now giving the orders.  I think she's happy to relinquish control, at almost 90.  But she still gives her input, especially about the vineyard and the olive trees.  She's not happy if the work is not done to her standards.

Her son includes her in all the daily activities from peeling garlic, frying kilos of aubergines for their meals,  digging stones out of the fields or helping him reinforce their fences against the goats.  Actually she's the go-pher.  We hear him yelling 'Mana, bring me the wire cutters, bottle of water,  cigarettes' about 10 times a day. 

The Matriarch 

 

Their terrace-cum-patio is only 20 metres higher than us but their view, unlike ours, is spectacular.  We can see the lights of Athens on a clear night.  They enjoy the sight of the bay below, yachts and fishing boats plying their way from the big Port of Piraeus.      At night they can see the lights all the way down the coast of Athens and also the island of Aegina.

 

    Part of the vegetable garden under the olive trees.

    They grow or produce 90% of what they eat and drink.

We sat under the grapevines in a corner which gets the breeze coming up from the sea below

Everything except the ouzo and bread is from their land or made by them

small fish - brought from the island of Lefkada, pickled by the sister

smoked mackeral - also from Lefkada and prepared by Vaso's daughter

water - from their well

tomatoes and cucumbers -  from the garden

olives and oil from their trees

yellow split peas - made by me but not home grown

boiled eggs -from their chooks

wine - 2 varities, from their vineyard

Vaso has a good appetite.  After a few glasses of wine she had a cigarette or two and told us tales of her childhood. Stories which we have heard many times before but we are guests so we listen politely.  The bay below used to be full of large fish, sea urchins, octopus, kalamari, cockles  and limpets.  Nowadays they are a rare find.  It's illegal to take sea urchins, the shellfish have disappeared completely and you need a boat to go much further out into the bay to find a fish or an octopus.

We will reciprocate in a few days with fish and wine, their wine,  on our back terrace.

Fresh Lemonade

 

Our lemons are falling faster than we can deal with them.  We've given away bags and bags of them.  Time for drastic action.

I juiced dozens and dozens of the darn things and shall do another lot tomorrow.   This first lot of juice has been made into lemonade concentrate.

        I boiled 

- 1 big mug of water 

and 

- 1 big mug of sugar

till the sugar dissolved.  Added

-  one big mug of lemon juice.  

When it cooled I put it all into glass jars and into the fridge.

To make lemonade fill a glass with 1/3 of the concentrate and fill up with ice and water.

If you don't like it sweet, add more juice and less sugar.

The rest of the juice goes into ice cube trays or into small plastic bottles and into the freezer.  There they'll join the 3 or 4 bottles that are there from 2 years ago.  We hardly think of the frozen juice because we always have fresh outside in the garden.