Eat Seasonal - Quick Meal

 

Many times I am surprised as to how tasteless certain fruit and vegetables are; not having any taste even when I buy them fresh from the supermarket or small grocery stores. It's a bit disappointing! Well, the answer to my disappointment is that if I start eating seasonal like I used to I could/would enjoy a better taste in my food. Here I am starting to do that.

I have to admit that when there is an abundance of a certain fruit and vegetables around, nobody will be busy growing that in any greenhouse or feeding it hormones to grow fast - the result!? ... get to enjoy the real taste of fresh food.

I will pick on zucchini today which we have in abundance starting in May and going well into the fall. They are easy to pair with a lot of foods or cooked on their own and they are very nutritious – having tons of vitamin A and C and some essential minerals such as calcium, phosphorus and Potassium!

Last night in just a few minutes I sliced a couple of zucchinis and braised them in olive oil (only a couple of teaspoons). In the end I topped them with some crumbled feta on top and fresh mint. It was my side dish that accompanied my meat pies. I cheated a little bit by using ready dough. I prepared my meat filling and then I stuffed my pastry pockets. I even played around with the shapes of my pastries creating triangles, square ….shapes.

Meat Filling

1 pound ground beef

¼ cup finely chopped yellow onion

½ cup puree tomatoes

¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon

¼ teaspoon dry mint

Salt

Pepper

¼ cup finely chopped parsley added only a minute before removing from the heat

Enjoy!

Καλη ορεξη!

Orlando's Pizza

Spend a few minutes talking with my beloved Gianluca Orlando and you will figure out very quickly that cooking is one of his biggest passions! He can spend hours talking about food and cooking. It’s easy to understand why he loves food  … he is from Italy! He was brought up in a Country where there is an abundance of fresh fruit and vegetables and where people love to cook  and enjoy sharing food with one another – Italy! He comes from the Northern part of Italy, Padova located 20 minutes away from Venice. As most of people in Italy, he grew up in a family where his mom cooked every day and prepared fresh meals for the family. Take aways and fast food were unknown in their household!

Gianluca an electronics engineer and an IT geek :-) is also trained as a pizza maker – true to his food fascination he realized early on that he had to explore his culinary passion and learn new ways to express it. Is there any better way other than the art of making pizza?! A few years ago he decided to enroll in a pizza making course along with other professionals such as medical doctors and lawyers. He proudly finished the course and got his pizza making certificate!

When you visit his home in Padova he will proudly show you his pizza making diploma and not his engineering and computer degrees!

I have already enjoyed his pizzas on several occasions and I can tell you that they are delicious and healthy! They have nothing to do with the average pizzas we eat in the United States. They have a thin and soft crust so that you can easily fold the pizza slice while eating it and the fresh ingredients used on his pizzas are used in moderation like they do back in his home Country Italy. For the Italians when they cook, less is more. Yes, they use garlic and tomato sauce and cheese BUT ALWAYS in moderation. They usually eat these individual pizzas which are about 25 cm in diameter and one wonders how can these people eat all this pizza and not be weighing 250 pounds – the secret is that all the ingredients used are in moderation and there is no oil. They drizzle a little bit of virgin olive oil on top of the pizza just before they eat it.

I have had pizzas made by Gianluca with artichokes. eggplant, zucchini, peas, gorgonzola cheese, roasted red bell pepper, chicken to name just a few of the toppings. All of his pizzas have been simply delicious. His latest adventure was to modify a barbeque grill into a pizza oven! 

Yes, you heard it correctly – grill serving as a pizza oven - only Gianluca can spend hours thinking and trying to covert a grill into a different oven! His new oven can reach 600 degrees F which is the temperature that a pizza needs to bake at for a couple of minutes only! I call it  pizza express!

All he uses for his dough is flour, salt, a bit of sugar, water, yeast and some water! After the dough rises for a couple of hours he starts opening his pizzas.

Here’s his dough recipe.

3 ½ cups unbleached all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons salt

1 teaspoon sugar

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 1/3 cups hot water or ½ pint (water’s temperature 110 F)

2 ½ teaspoons dry yeast

Makes 4 pizzas – approximate size 16 inch pizzas

Come join us for a fun evening of making pizza along with a glass of beer or wine!

Buon appetito!

Keftedes – Κεφτεδεs

My daughter’s graduation from high school is this coming Friday. Hooray!!!

She decided that she doesn’t want a big party like many kids want and she only wants a few of her friends and a few of mine to come over. After the graduation ceremony at school we will come home to have something to eat and drink. It will be a bit late for a sit-down dinner so I opted for finger foods.

On the finger foods menu we had to have something Greek – tyropittes and Cyprus style meatballs are a must!

 

Every culture has it’s own variation of a meatball recipe – one of the most versatile dishes! In the Cypriot cuisine we have our own which includes grated potato in the mixture. Yes, you have read correctly – grated potato along with parsley, mint …and other ingredients. Our meatballs is a meal by itself! Growing up I had to take meatballs to every school trip and picnic as if only meatballs could keep me in good health :-) according to my beloved mom’s nutritional book.  :-)

I learned how to make meatballs at the age of 12 years old. I made them successfully – with no salt but eatable according to my family’s comments at the time.

Recenty, I have discovered that you can also bake/grill them instead of frying them. This makes them a lot healthier and there’s no compromise on the taste – you’ve got my promise on that.

For my beloved vegetarian friends I suggest to use soya – I have also made the meatballs successfully with soya. 

Or you can go with a vegan recipe! 

Here's my variation of the Cyprus meatballs recipe

2 pounds ground beef (can a pound beef and a pound pork)

5 medium red potatoes – after they are grated 2 cups

1 medium yellow onion

¼ cup fine bread crumbs

½ cup chopped parsley

1/4 teaspoon dry mint

1 egg

¼ teaspoon cinnamon

Salt

Black pepper

For frying:

1 ½ cups canola oil

Makes approximately 60~65 round meatballs of one inch diameter

In a large bowl, mix the ground beef with the bread crumbs, finely chopped parsley, egg and spices.

Grate the potatoes and onion. You can either grate in a food processor or with a traditional grater. Place in a colander to get rid of any excess liquid. You should have approximately two cups of grated potatoes and onion.

Add in the meat mixture. Mix with your hands well.

Cover with plastic cover and place in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes before shaping the meatballs.

Fry in canola oil over medium high heat. The meatballs are cooked once they have a brown color on all sides.

Serve hot.

Καλη ορεξη!

Pasta Flora – Γλυκο Παστα Φλωρα - Pasta Frolla

Finally, I am back after being absent for two whole years!

I am more mature and may I say wiser?! For sure I am thankful of what I have and more appreciative of what life has to offer me! During this time a lot happened that did not allow me/did not leave room to express and enjoy my love for cooking and experimenting with foods for friends and family.

The loss of my beloved father marked my life in a lot of different ways during these last two years. In the beginning was the grievance of losing him and getting used to his absence which was difficult but as time went by I started to appreciate more and more his teachings and what I have deeply rooted in my heart from him.

The love for the earth and what has to offer us always connected me to my father. We always shared an immense joy from planting and growing flowers, trees, vegetables and then harvesting the fruit, vegetables ….

…and what’s being harvested each season enjoy cooking it.

SO I had to start cooking again, gardening and remembering …

The passage of my daughter into adulthood has also made a mark in my life in many different ways with lots of teary, laughing and joyous moments!

So I am back and here to stay!

Every year I make so much marmelade that I don’t know what to do with it so I end up giving to friends as gifts and also keeping a lot of it for my all year baking. Recently I started baking one of my favorite cakes which is perfect for breakfast or afternoon snack paired with coffee or tea.

Back in Cyprus and on the mainland of Greece we call it Pasta Flora. I recently found out that the Pasta Flora

same dessert is part of many culinary baking lists around the world in slightly different names – for instance in Italy is called Pasta Frolla.

Well here is what I baked recently. Nowadays I bake it once every couple of weeks using my homemade plum marmelade.

Enjoy and tell me what you think!

Ingredients

1 cup sugar

1 cup canola oil

3 eggs

3 teaspoons baking powder

2 teaspoons cognac

zest of a lemon

3 cups flour

¾ cup marmelade or more

1 egg white

Whisk the eggs well until fluffy and white.

Gradually add the sugar, then the oil and cognac.

Shift the flour with the baking powder into the mixture.

Add the lemon zest.

Take a round shallow baking pan of approximate size, 10 inches width, and pour ¾ of the mixture. Since the mixture is very soft using a knife to spread it across the baking dish is the best approach.

Spread the marmelade over that with the help of a teaspoon. The mixture is pretty soft so you need to work lightly with the teaspoon so you don’t mix the marmelade with the dough.

Form long tubes with the remaining dough while adding an additional half a cup of flour into the dough.

Brush the tubes with the egg white that you have whisked well along with a teaspoon of water.

Lay the dough tubes crisscrossing each other and forming little squares.

Put in a pre-heated oven for 40 minutes at 350 degrees or until it gets a light color on top.

Serve at room temperature with coffee or tea.

Καλη ορεξη!

Buon Appetito