Bread and Butter

Haloumi and grape salad

                                 

It is boiling hot in Athens. I cannot bear to be in the kitchen, at least not too far from the fridge where it is cool. So, no cooking. We have to make do with salads and fruit and cheese.
Really, I have never asked you: Do you like mixing fruit and vegetables? Or are you strict purists?
I do not like all combinations, my absolute worst is watermelon and feta cheese, which totally kills off the freshness of the watermelon.
So, what is your favourite fruit and vegetable combination? (erm, wine and a green salad don't count).

For 3 servings

• 200 gr shredded lettuce leaves or other salad greens
• 150 gr seedless grapes
• 250 gr haloumi cheese
• 2 tablespoons finely chopped walnuts
• 2 tablespoons pine nuts
• 3 tablespoons chopped parsley

For the dressing

• 3-4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• Salt – pepper

Toss walnuts and grapes with mixed salad greens or lettuce. Add pine nuts, parsley, and the cheese.
Dress the salad with olive oil and lemon juice. Season to taste. Serve cold.

Just eat it, don't make me repeat it

                           

I can live on salads, fruit and juices for the whole duration of summer. In Greece, that’s about 5 months. Sometimes, I consider myself lucky that as a vegetarian, I live in a Mediterranean country where there are lots of vegetables and fruit, but when I am in a bad mood, I just miss the variety I could find at british supermarkets. Being a vegetarian is so much easier in Britain. There is no convenience food for vegetarians in Greece. Veggie burgers are really difficult to find, and I haven’t even mentioned the lack of soya milk or tofu. I am not vegan, but if I were, I don’t know how I’d manage. You can’t always rely on health food shops to buy basic things like tofu. Not only are they sparse, they are ridiculously expensive too.
So I am constantly trying to find tasty things that can be made quickly. This salad is one of them because couscous is so versatile and you just need to boil some water to make it. And then, you just chop the vegetables. You could sauté them, I prefer to roast them when I have time.

Couscous, cherry tomatoes and roast vegetables salad
For 6 servings

• 1 medium sized onion, finely chopped
• 15 cherry tomatoes
• 2 courgettes, sliced in 3
• 1 aubergine, sliced in 3
• 1 red bell pepper, in strips
• 5-6 garlic cloves (don’t peel them)
• 4 tablespoons olive oil plus some more (about ¼ cup)
• 3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar      
• 6 tablespoons herbs:

-2 tablespoons thyme, chopped
-2 tablespoons rosemary, chopped
-2 tablespoons oregano, chopped

• 2 ½ cups water 
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 300 gr. couscous
• 1 cup pitted olives, cut in two
• 4 tablespoons caper
• 6 tablespoons lemon juice
• 4 tablespoons chopped basil      

Preheat grill or oven at 200 C.
Prepare vegetables, except tomatoes and onion. Place them on a baking tin and drizzle them with 4 tablespoons olive oil, herbs, garlic, salt, pepper. They should become tender but not too much. Make sure they are evenly roasted from both sides. Remove garlic cloves and we leave vegetables to cool.
Boil the water. Place the couscous in a big bowl and pour boiling water over it. Let it absorb the water for about 5 minutes.
Meanwhile, chop the roasted vegetables to pieces that should be the size of a mouthful. When the couscous is ready, add the vegetables, the tomatoes, the onion.  Add the olives and caper. Next come the olive oil, vinegar, lemon juice and basil. Toss the salad and serve.
If you want the salad to be served cold, refrigerate it for a while, but in that case you should add the tomatoes at the last minute before serving. They really don’t behave well in the fridge.

Garlicky aubergine salad

                                 
  Αubergine salad is very common in Greece and there are numerous versions of it. This doesn’t mean there is no room for one more version: mine.
Blame it for losing your friends if you want, but you can’t blame it for being tasteless. I think it’s a great sandwich spread too, especially combined with mozzarella. Just stay at home, alone and contemplate for a couple of hours after you have had it.
Please, before you serve it ask people if they are allergic to walnuts. Many people are, and it just never crosses our minds to ask. But we could kill them with the walnuts before we had a chance to kill them with our garlic breath.

You’ll need

• 2 aubergines

• 2-3 chopped garlic cloves

• Olive oil

• One yellow capsicum pepper (red or orange is fine too)

• One tablespoon balsamic vinegar

• 10-15 walnuts

Cut the aubergines in squares. Heat olive oil and sauté 2 garlic cloves, then add aubergines and cook until they are tender. If you see that you are running out of liquid in the pan, add some water.

Purée the aubergines in a blender. Add one more garlic clove, 1 tablespoon olive oil, ½ tablespoon balsamic vinegar in the blender bowl. Also, add the capsicum, the walnuts, salt and pepper. Puree again and add more salt, pepper or balsamic vinegar if you want.

Serve cold with some finely chopped walnuts on top.

“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.

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?