Bread and Butter

“Whatever I found in the fridge” salad

                                 

In essence, this salad is made with whatever vegetables you may find in the fridge. The only thing to follow is to prepare a green base of  -let’s say- spinach or rocket and add other vegetables that may be in season. I could add beets or even baked aubergine.  What we cannot add is cabbage, cucumber and other vegetables with lots of water because they are just going to weaken the taste.

You may sprinkle sesame seeds if you like because it becomes crunchier.
You will notice this salad tastes better if you eat it while listening to The Time is Now, by Moloko.

For 2-3 servings

• 2 cups spinach, chopped 
• 1 cup rocket, chopped 
• 2 cups red bell peppers, or orange or yellow or green 
• 3-4 sun dried tomatoes chopped 
• 2 spring onions chopped 
• 2 tbsps dill, chopped 
• 2 tbsps parsley, chopped 
• 2 carrots, chopped
• some sesame seeds (one handful)

For the dressing

• 4 tbsps olive oil
• 2 teaspoons balsamic vinegar
• ½ garlic clove, pounded    
• Salt, pepper

Mix all the vegetables together in a big salad bowl. Mix all the dressing ingredients together in another bowl. Just before serving, pour the dressing on the salad.

Soya kebabs with vegetables

                                    

These are really yummy and very easy to make. If you want to tease kids into eating soya try them, preferably with some rice or if you are really bold, some chips on the side.

There are three secrets you have to know:
-Don’t over boil them because then, they won’t be able to absorb all the nice spices you are going to season them with.
-They do need lots of spices and you may experiment with them. You can try cumin or curry (but not at the same time) and serve them with basmati rice or oregano and garlic like I did.
-Don’t tell anyone these are substitutes for meat. They might look like meat but they taste nothing like it.

For six (depending on how hungry they are)

For the kebabs

• 1 bag of soya kebabs (about 250 gr/8 oz)

• 1 clove of garlic, finely chopped

• half cup of oil

• 1 tablespoon grated ginger

• 1 tablespoon coriander

• at least 3 glasses of vegetable broth (if you use ready made don’t add salt)

• salt-pepper

• skewers for the kebabs

• 2 big red peppers deseeded and cut in squares (well not real squares!)

• 2 big yellow peppers as above

• 500-600 gr. button mushrooms or any other kind you like

For the marinade

Mix together:

• 2 cups olive oil

• juice of two lemons

• 2 garlic cloves finely chopped

• 2 tablespoons oregano

• 1 tablespoon mustard

In a big and deep frying pan, heat half a cup of olive oil and add garlic, ginger and coriander. Add the kebabs and stir continuously for a couple of minutes, so that they absorb the flavours of the spices. Add a glass of vegetable broth and bring to the boil. Add more broth as needed. Keep an eye on the kebabs the way we do with risotto. When the kebabs are tender remove from the heat.

In another pan heat some oil and add peppers and mushrooms. Stir fry them until they become tender. Now we thread the kebabs, peppers and mushrooms on to wooden skewers (or metal ones). That’s the difficult part, so ask for help at this point. It is not really difficult, it’s just that it takes a lot of time to thread all of these kebabs.

To make the marinade, we mix together oil, lemon juice, garlic, oregano, mustard, and spoon the marinade over the kebabs.

I served these with some spinach salad with guacamole and they were great. And you can eat hundreds of them because they are much lighter than meat kebabs.

 

 

 

Savoury “Pancakes” with cheese

                                        
Mix a pancake,
Stir a pancake,
Pop it in the pan.
Fry the pancake,
Toss the pancake,
Catch it if you can.

Christina Rossetti

My English, Australian, Canadian and American friends talked to me about Pancake Tuesday, or Shrove Tuesday. Apparently they eat lots of pancakes on that day which is a wonderful custom to observe, if you ask me. And they say they even eat crepes, which are really pancakes in disguise. So, I listened to that song, Pancake, by Tori Amos and made those savoury pancakes for breakfast.

For 6-7 pancakes

• 2-3 eggs

• 500 gr all purpose flour

•  1/2 tsp. salt

•  1 tbs butter  

• oil (for frying)

• 2 cups grated (or crumbled) cheese: feta, parmesan, whatever we like but preferably a salty cheese
• milk

• 1 tbs parsley or oregano especially if your cheese is feta

Mix butter, flour, eggs, parlsey, salt. Knead with a little warm milk as much as you need for the dough to not be too hard. Make dough balls (as big as a Satsuma) and flatten them down with your hand (about ½ cm thick).
Fry them one by one in hot oil until they are golden. Place them on kitchen paper to get rid of the oil.
Serve warm with cheese and parsley.  
You can really top it with whatever suits your fancy. You can even break it and add it to salads instead of croutons.

 

My apple jam

"And then she went to a secret lonely chamber, where no one was likely to come, and there she made a poisonous apple. It was beautiful to look upon, being white with red cheeks, so that any one who should see it must long for it, but whoever ate even a little bit of it must die. When the apple was ready she painted her face and clothed herself like a peasant woman, and went across the seven mountains to where the seven dwarfs lived."

Aren’t apples good looking? In fairy tales, you seldom read about oranges or pears or bananas. The tree of life is an apple tree. And what about the golden apples heroes have to steal? And remember Adam? Or even Isaac Newton? What about Chris Martin’s and Gwyneth Paltrow’s daughter? And the Big Apple? Or the apple of our eye?  It’s always apples. Red, shiny, firm, not too sweet, those are my favourite to eat. But for jam, they’d better be sweet and not as firm.

My mum goes to the open market every Friday and buys tons of apples and pears and oranges. Then, when I go to see her, about once or twice a week, she gives me carrier bags with fruit enough to feed ten people for a week. So I decided to make some jam so that all this fruit wouldn’t go to waste.

Now, it is known that the best time to make apple jam is November. But I made some a few days ago and it was delicious. I didn’t add pectin. Some recipes recommend it, but I disagree, since apples are already rich in pectin. My apples were already very sweet and I even halved the sugar in the original recipe.

We need

• 7 cups apples, peeled, cored and thinly sliced (try to include apples of the same kind)

• 3-4 cups sugar (depends on the apples really, my recipe asked for 6 cups of sugar but I added 3 and a half)

• 1/4 cup lemon juice

• 2 tbs cinnamon

1. Place thinly sliced apples in a large saucepan over a high heat.
2. Add the sugar, lemon juice and cinnamon while stirring continuously.
3. Let the mixture boil for about 20 minutes or half an hour until thickened, removing any scum that may rise to the surface. Don’t forget to stir continuously. Some water might be needed, again, depending on the kind of apples you are using.
4. Pour the mixture into jam jars, seal and store away. It’s delicious on toasted bread and butter, or with crepes, or cakes, or tarts.

 “And what is more melancholy than the old apple-trees that linger about the spot where once stood a homestead, but where there is now only a ruined chimney rising our of a grassy and weed-grown cellar? They offer their fruit to every wayfarer--apples that are bitter-sweet with the moral of times vicissitude.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne-Mosses from an Old Manse-The Old Manse

Listen:

• Apples and Oranges - Pink Floyd

• Appels and Oranges - Smashing Pumpkins

• Rotten Apples - Smashing Pumpkins

• Little Apples- Momus

Russian Salad with homemade mayonnaise

                                    

There is not just one Russian salad. We have an expression i n Greece, and use it when we want to say we made a mess of things: “It’s Russian salad”. So, maybe it means the Russian salad is everything mixed together without any particular order.
Well, the idea is that we mix together boiled vegetables and add mayonnaise. It can be found with beets, with eggs, without eggs, and even with some greens. The recipe that follows is the simplest one but is made special by the homemade mayonnaise which has nothing to do with commercial mayonnaise. Neither in colour nor in taste. Contrary to popular belief, making mayonnaise is an extreme sport and is easy to make.
I usually make this salad in the winter and have it as an appetizer. If you drink alcohol, try accompanying it with a shot of iced vodka.

We are going to need:

• 150 gr Peeled potatoes
• 150 gr.  Peas
• 150 gr. Carrots
• 3 tbsps caper
• 3 pickled cucumbers, chopped
• 2 hard boiled eggs (cold) 
• 2 tbsps chopped parsley  σούπας
• 1-1 ½  cup mayonnaise 
• salt, pepper 

Boil the vegetables al dente. They should retain some crunchiness. Drain well. Chop potatoes and carrots in small squares. Put in large bowl, add the caper, eggs (sliced) and cucumbers.  A little before serving add the mayonnaise. Season to taste, Stir everything together but not too vigorously, so that the vegetables stay in one piece. Sprinkle with parsley.

For the mayonnaise

• 2 egg yolks    
• ¾ teaspoon salt
• ½ teaspoon mustard powder
• 1/8 teaspoon sugar
• 1 dash of pepper (if you have white pepper, use that)
• 4 teaspoons lemon juice
• 1-1/2  cup quality olive oil (this is very important)
• 4 teaspoons warm water

Whisk egg yolks, mustard, sugar, pepper and one teaspoon of  lemon juice together, until everything looks pale yellow.
Add ¼ of the olive oil, little by little, whisking all the time. It is important that we don’t just pour the olive oil. Add another teaspoon of lemon juice, a bit of warm water and another ¼ cup of olive oil, again slowly but steadily. We whisk all the time. Another teaspoon of lemon juice, some water, and oil slowly but in a steady flow while whisking. Add the remaining lemon juice, water, olive oil as before. If you want it thinner, add a bit of warm water. It’s going to be good for 5 days to one week if you keep it in the fridge.
If you decide to use the blender, add yolks, salt, mustard, pepper, sugar and 3 teaspoons of lemon juice and blend everything together for 15 seconds (low speed).
With the blender always on, slowly add ¼ cup of olive oil and increase speed. It gets thicker and thicker and we add more and more oil and lemon juice (what is left of it), steadily and slowly
The mayonnaise is not going to come out right if:

1. We pour lots of oil at once
2. The kitchen is too hot
3. The eggs are not fresh
4. The oil is not of good quality

But we are not the kind of people who use second class oil and bad eggs, are we?

Thanks for breakfast

                                    

I always thought that breakfast is the best meal of the day, and NOT because I usually eat it without any company. No, no, that’s not why. It’s because it is easily prepared, I can eat as much as I like and I don’t even have to talk. I can just read my newspaper or my friends’ blogs.

For a better breakfast experience I suggest
-Bach, especially the violin concertos. Louis Armstrong is great breakfast material too.
-No TV dramas, bad news and the like. Just calm weather reports.
-No talking, calling people, and all that, before 3 hours after waking up have passed. This ensures that the rest of the day is going to go smoothly since most people are cranky in the morning. I felt vindicated about my belief in this -after all the accusations that I am unsociable- when I read the following: A British reporter, Charles Wheeler, speaking of his acquaintance with spy George Blake said that he had looked really suspicious to him because “He smiled rather too much. He smiled during breakfast you know”.
-Strong coffee or tea. Although I really need to speak the truth here, to people who don’t drink coffee: Coffee smells better than it tastes. Much, much better. It’s a sweet deceit. In your mouth, it never tastes like the promise it gave to your nose.
-A nice view, maybe in a sunny room. That really wakes people up.

What’s for breakfast?
I could never eat cereal for breakfast and I have nothing but admiration for people who eat breakfast out of a box. It just doesn’t make me want to seize the day.

The best thing for me is scrambled eggs, the fluffy, creamy kind, sprinkled with chives and eaten with toast and maybe grilled mushrooms or tomatoes or all of the above. A wonderful landlady in Edinburgh used to make these for me and they were so filling, although I don’t remember that stopping me from eating some of her orange marmalade, which along with lime marmalade (“thank you” to my friend Steve at this point) are the best breakfast marmalades in my opinion since they are not too sweet.

Scrambled eggs

2-3 people (unless I am there)

This isn’t anything new of course. But the truth is not many people pursue the Ultimate Scrambled Eggs. USE happen only if whisk them maniacally. Otherwise, they won’t be fluffy. Before you pour them in the pan, they should be a bit frothy and of the same colour.

• 6 big eggs
• 6 tsp milk
• salt (3 pinches)
• 1 tbs butter (real butter please)
• pepper
• 1 tbs chives 

 

Heat a non stick pan, a bit above average. Whisk eggs, milk, salt, in a bowl. Really, really whisk. Whisk like it’s the last thing you’ll ever do.
Melt the butter in the pan and pour in the eggs.
Don’t start breaking them apart and messing about. Give them some time (we are talking 30 seconds) to set. With a wooden spoon start pushing the eggs towards the center of the pan, towards an imaginary pile. This is Martha Stewart’s advice so obey.
Go on like that and when they are really setting, start ‘cutting’ them with the wooden spoon in big chunks. Leave for some seconds more (about 15 unless you want them totally done and without any creaminess)
Add salt and pepper and sprinkle with chives. Only eat them hot, I beg of you. They are best friends with

• Grilled or sautéed mushrooms, especially portobellos
• Grilled tomatoes
• Toast
• Cream cheese on toast

Breakfast soundtrack:

1. Everybody Here Wants You – Jeff Buckley
(“Twenty-nine pearls in your kiss A singing smile/Coffee smell and lilac skin /Your flame in me/
I’m only here for this moment”)

2. New Morning –NickCave and the Bad Seeds (“Thank you for giving This bright new morning/ So steeped seemed the evening In darkness and blood/There’ll be no sadness There’ll be no sorrow There’ll be no road too narrow
There’ll be a new day/ And it’s today for us”)

3. Good day Sunshine – Beatles
4. Sun hits the sky – Supergrass
5. Till Kingdom Come – Coldplay