The Oxford Dictionary tells me that a salad is “A cold dish of various mixtures of raw or cooked vegetables, usually seasoned with oil, vinegar, or other dressing and sometimes accompanied by meat, fish, or other ingredient” so on that basis my title is incorrect. I say the definition needs to be reviewed … [Read More...]
Recent Recipes
BBQ chicken and sourdough olive flat breads
This is my favourite way to BBQ chicken, the marinade of yogurt performs a small culinary miracle. It tenderises the meat beautifully and helps retain its moisture. The sumac gives it a summer lemon flavour with a nice heat from the pepper flakes. I made my own flat breads based on the way my grandmother use […]
Sweet custard tart
This recipe follows on from my Greek style greens pie. I used George Colombaris (Australian Masterchef judge) sweet pie recipe with some minor adaptations to make it simpler. Making filo pastry was hugely satisfying and well worth the effort, the difference in taste is significant. Fresh Filo Pastry: 400g plain flour 1 teaspoon salt 2 […]
Greek style greens pie
School dinners. I never had them, but my husband did and they sounded pretty revolting. It also goes some way to explain his odd, in my view, desire to smother a perfectly good ingredient with baked beans and cheese. I don’t care for baked beans and they are a banned item in my our kitchen. […]
Anatolian style kid goat loin with aubergine mash
In 1897 a woman called Maria Iordanidou was born in Constantinople, a city so grand the Greeks referred to as The City which is how it later got its name Istanbul which means ‘to the City’. She wrote a book called Loxandra a book about life, customs, the human spirit and food in Asia Minor. […]
East Med potato salad
The obligatory presence of boiled potatoes slathered with mayonnaise or salad cream at BBQs is something I never understood. Mushy, processed and sickly tasting: my association with potato salads. I actually do love potato salads, I grew up with them and had them once a week but just not in an amorphous slop. This is […]
Kid goat meat ravioli
Most weekends my grandmother cooked for her family. Lunch consisted of meat, potatoes, in big long iron trays cooked in an outdoor clay oven that had been heated with dry olive and carob branches. She also made a lot of pasta arranged in two large platters, one with pasta cooked al dente and another with […]
East Med wine posts
Greek wine for less than £10, does it really taste good?
Greek wines are the most common of the East Mediterranean wines you will find in the UK supermarkets and national retailers. Many people I talk to about Greek wines are put off by the unpronounceable grape names or the fact they once had a glass of harsh taverna table wine on a Greek island. Others […]
Israeli wines are seriously kosher
Let’s get one thing straight a wine labelled as being kosher has no bearing on its quality. For a wine to have kosher certification it needs to be produced by Orthodox Jews and that only kosher substances are used in the wines production. The actual production techniques from harvest to bottling are the same as […]
Red wine from Turkey, Lebanon and Greece
Throughout 2013 the supermarkets and national wine retailers in the U.K. started to stock more wines from the East Mediterranean region, after all it is one the oldest wine producing regions in the world. Lets hope the trend continues in 2014! There are currently around 50 wines easily accessible in store or on line in […]
