dulcis in fundo

Lemon and fresh basil linguine with Belper Knolle

2012-06-24T22:56:00.000+01:00

Ever since before we bought a house and moved into it, one of my "not exactly requirements but sort of on the back of my mind" was to have a big windowsill where I could put herb pots to grow. You see the previous house had absolutely none of that, the kitchen window (being the most appropriate one) was very low, reaching behind the cupboards (which means it pretty much took a body-builder to open it!) and had no sill, and in the other rooms the windowsills (if any) were 4cm wide. Not even enough space for one of those tiny cactus pots...

So finally, when we bought our house, and although that was not a deal-breaker, I was happy to notice a VERY big and wide windowsill in the kitchen, tiled as well (extra useful if you spill water over the plants and the wall, like I do!) and I set about finally buying and planting my herbs. I had a sad-looking deadling of a basil, which when taken out of his miniscule pot grew to extremes, and also some rosemary, thyme and mint joined him soon after. And I got them pretty red pots too, as I wanted a black, white and red theme for the new kitchen.

I, of course, wanted the herbs more for eating, rather than decoration, so I thought I would soon deplete them, but they have been growing so fast and well that I keep having to dig out recipes that require lots of them to use them up, as I hate cutting off bits and throwing them away just to keep them healthy.

Being Greek I love basil, and the way it makes a whole room smell when you "rub its head" affectionately (yes, you'll see most people, grannies and children alike, in Greece "caressing" basil when they pass by it to release the scent and enjoy it!) and lemons are also so deeply ingrained in my culture that if something's edible, you'll find a Greek squeezing lemon juice on top of it, from bread to meat/fish/vegetables, to olive oil (to make a dressing), to fried potatoes, absolutely anything.

This pasta caters to two needs, firstly my basil's "coiffure" and secondly my love for lemony things. Since the other half is not that keen on lemon, while he's away for a long trip to the US between jobs I took advantage and made this one-pot wonder quite a few times, it's so simple and quick, and even vegetarian (knowing me, that's shocking!). Try it, with some ground Belper Knolle on top (a very nice parmesan-ish kind of Swiss cheese wrapped in a layer of pepper, I discovered it one day in a Swiss cheese stall in the Borough Market), or even some za'atar sprinkled in the sauce, and you will not be disappointed. Plus you might have to get a basil plant and slaughter it frequently, to satisfy your need for more of this pasta!

Lemon and fresh basil linguine with Belper Knolle
Source: Adapted from NOMU

Serves 2

200g linguine (preferably fresh)
125ml cream
Grated zest of 1 lemon
Juice of 1 lemon
25g grated parmesan
A few pinches of za'atar
A big handful of fresh basil leaves, roughly torn by hand
Grated Belper Knolle (or parmesan and black pepper)

Boil the linguine until al dente. Drain but keep a couple of spoonfuls of the water in the pot, and return the pasta to it. Pour in the cream, lemon zest and juice, parmesan, za'atar and basil, and mix well on gentle heat until the cheese is melted.

Put in a bowl or plate, grate some Belper Knolle on top and enjoy!

Mixed nut, dried fruit, coconut and chocolate granola

2012-06-10T19:03:00.000+01:00

Ah... something healthy finally. It's been a couple of months since I've been feeling like I've been eating quite badly, and a recent "your body fat percentage has increased by 5% in the last two years" in my health check report didn’t help in appeasing the evil spirits in my head, so I decided to stop my usual easy-access morning cereal (mainly chocolate based ones, I hate cereal so I have to make it somehow more appealing, although with the things you read on the packs, even the healthiest-looking ones have tons of sugar and salt in them) and start making my own again.

When I first arrived in London back in 2006, I remember I was making every couple of weeks my favourite muesli (I wrongly called it that, as I realise now it's baked, so the right name is granola!) but I hadn't made any in years, and it's something that I really used to love, it's healthy, has no sugar or salt, and kept me going for quite a while in the mornings.

Lately I've been feeling quite heavy and slow, it's not just food-related, but also the nasty weather (with a break of 2 weeks of sun) we've been having, which makes you want to curl up next to the radiator, and eat lots of crappy things, and the fact that my country, Greece, is getting slowly destroyed to the last bit. Depressing news always abounded about it, but now they're everywhere I look, in every newspaper cover when I go to the office kitchen to have my lunch, in every internet news site, and even in all my friends' facebook walls... So it's not that difficult to get down with all of that, and the potential doom and gloom of not having a summer at all for the next 3 months...

To give myself a boost, I decided to buy some ingredients and start making this granola again, at least this way I would feel a bit less guilty about eating rubbish for breakfast, and maybe it would help lift my spirits a bit as well. I always use Greek honey, firstly to try and support my country (we export so little...), and secondly because I love its more intense, almost treacly taste. In Greece you can get thyme honey, which is even better, if you manage to spot some in a deli in the UK, or if you travel to Greece, buy some and you'll remember me. Thyme honey aside, this granola is very simple, quick to make, and keeps very well in a sealed jar/box/tupperware – that is if you don't devour it in the first few days (and need to make more!)

Mixed nut, dried fruit, coconut and chocolate granola

Source: Inspired by a Rowse honey recipe

Serves 2

250g jumbo oats
100g mixed hazelnuts, almonds, cashews (or other nuts of your choice)
50g coconut chips
100g butter (melted)
100ml Greek thyme honey
50g mixed dried fruit & raisins
Two handfuls of chocolate drops

Line a big deep tray with greaseproof paper (I use a turkey baking tin). Mix all the ingredients together, apart from the dried fruit and chocolate, and place in the tray.

Bake in a preheated oven at 160°C for 20-25 minutes until golden, stirring every 5-10 minutes to make sure nothing burns and the honey doesn't all get stuck in one place.

Take out of the oven and leave to cool completely. Add the mixed dried fruit and chocolate drops, mix again, and place in a jar or plastic container with a tight lid. This will keep for about a month, in room temperature.

Breadmaker rosemary and sea salt focaccia

2012-04-24T21:08:00.000+01:00

Ah bread... Really, if there is one thing that I miss in this country, it's probably good bread. Something that is intrinsically simple and can be found in every corner in other countries (France, Italy, Spain, Greece...) here is a "gourmet" item, only to be found in posh neighbourhood delicatessens, artisanal bakeries in just a few obscure areas of the capital, and, best-case-scenario, some food markets. All of the above of course sell bread at a cost that would make any French/Italian/Spanish/Greek person laugh and quickly run away... £5 for a focaccia? £4.50 for a ciabatta? £4 for a baguette? Come on, it's just flour, water and yeast, of which 3 ingredients one comes for free through the tap!

Facing this frustration of spongy/squishy/bouncy/never-hardening madness, or otherwise called "supermarket Chorleywood process rubbish bread", all these years I had tried many times to make bread at home, with not so great results. I know it's easy, and I know it's simple, but the manual labour of kneading quite a few times, plus all the waiting for it to rise annoyed me, and the end result was nothing like the 1 Euro loaf you can get in any corner bakery in Greece. Plus if you think of it logically, how much money do you charge for your time? If you're getting paid £6 an hour in your normal job, and you take 3 hours to make bread, that means your loaf costs an overabundant £24, which makes it actually cheaper and easier for you to take the train to E5 bakehouse and get some great loaves from there!

Hence, the breadmaker comes into the picture! I had never been sure about these things, but when a friend told me that it was great waking up to the smell of freshly-baked bread, I thought I'd go for one. I slowly brainwashed the other half (also a REAL bread lover) over some time, so I finally got one as a nameday present last year! I got the one that was rated as the best at the time (and probably was the most expensive one as well), and I have to say that I love how it makes life easier. Sort of. There are two aspects of it, at least that I have tried, and I'll tell you the results. First, you can make bread the VERY easy way, which is throw all the ingredients in the machine, programme it, and then it does everything on its own, and you wake up in the morning with the aforementioned nice smell. The bread made this way is better definitely than the supermarket ones, but due to the breadmaker bin shape it always will be a squareish loaf, with soft crust. That's ok for sandwiches that are going to be toasted, but if you're looking for something different and crusty, there's the other option.

Dough. Same as before, you throw everything in, machine does everything, but DOES NOT BAKE. So it takes less time, and when done you can shape the dough yourself, let it rise once in a warmish place (I use the oven at 40°C as in this country of constant winter no place in my house is ever warmish enough!), knead a bit, shape, let rise again and then bake. Yes, it's still gonna take up some time off your life, but the main "getting sticky and messy, and kneading 15 minutes till you think a personal trainer would be giving you the puppy-treatment in comparison" thing is gone!

I have up to now made extremely successful sweet breads of various provenances (Greek tsoureki, Mexican Pan de muerto, English hot cross buns, Italian panettone, Mexican Rosca de Reyes) as well as this nice focaccia. It's never going to be the focaccia you will buy from an Italian bakery, but it's a pretty good substitute, and the best solution I've managed to find in order to not have to change 2 buses and 3 tubes from where I live (or just 1 train + 1 airplane!) to get a decent one...

Breadmaker rosemary and sea salt focaccia
Source: Mix of online recipes along with the Panasonic breadmaker recipe booklet

For the dough:

2½ cups strong white bread flour (plus a little more for kneading)
2 tbsp sugar
½ tsp salt
1 tbsp olive oil
1 cup warm water
1½ tsp dried yeast

For topping:

A handful of fresh or dried rosemary leaves
A few pinches of rock sea salt
A drizzle of olive oil

Put all the dough ingredients in the order they are mentioned in the breadmaker bin and choose the standard dough programme (mine takes about 45 minutes).

Take out the dough and knead for a bit. Put in a large bowl and cover with a clean towel, then place in an oven at 40°C for an hour (or until doubled).

Take out, roll and pat the dough into a 30cm x 25cm rectangle on a greased baking tray. Make indentations over the dough with your finger, and allow to prove in the 40°C oven for another 30-40 minutes, until doubled.

Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with rosemary and sea salt. Bake in a preheated oven at 210°C for 10 minutes, then check and return to the oven for a couple more minutes if not ready and golden.

Crabcakes (just that!)

2012-02-25T21:26:00.000+00:00

We all have things we've liked eating since we were kids (pizza, French fries, souvlaki for me, in about that order of preference), and then there are some things we've never eaten in our lives and suddenly we discover and they become all-time favourites that we cook again and again. For me, these kind of things were mainly added to my diet when I left Greece and came to the hub of international cuisine called Britain (yes, I know most people would snigger at that, but seriously, it's way more advanced than my poor little homeland, and you CAN find pretty much everything you want either in specialised shops or online for any cuisine in the world!). One of the things I had never had in Greece was Thai food, which is now probably my top favourite cuisine, up there with Italian (find me 1 person in the world who doesn't like Italian, and I'll probably... spit on them, but trust me, that person doesn't exist!), and although you can find quite good restaurants in Britain, you can also now increasingly find Thai ingredients everywhere, from fish sauce to curry pastes, and from kaffir lime leaves to galangal.

I don't try to recreate Thai food at home much. We have a couple of good Thai favourites that we usually eat when we go out to Thai restaurants, and those are far too difficult to recreate (or rather look easy but fail miserably every time I've tried) but one of our latest favourites to make at home, especially when looking for something quick and light, and the fridge is empty, are these Thai crabcakes that I first spotted James Martin making in Saturday Kitchen (possibly one of my rare Saturday morning indulgences, if I manage to wake up early enough that is...).

If you've got some canned crabmeat, a potato or two and some stale bread and spices, that's about it, and they are amazingly lovely (I know potato is not very Thai in any way, but that's why I'm not calling them Thai!) and way way waaaaaaaaay better than any fishcakes or crabcakes or any other -cakes I've had in a Thai restaurant anywhere in the world (including Thailand!) So good, that we actually made them for our New Year Eve's dinner, while watching the fireworks falling over the London Eye on TV (chickenpox time, remember?)

Crabcakes
Source: Adapted from James Martin

Serves 2

1 big potato (about 250g)
10g butter
1 tbsp double cream
½ tsp curry powder
½ tsp chilli powder
½ tsp garlic powder
250g tinned Jumbo white crabmeat
Fresh or dried breadcrumbs (optional)
1 tbsp vegetable oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Ready-made sweet chilli sauce

Peel the potato and chop it into small cubes. Place in a pot of cold water, with a pinch of salt, and boil until the cubes are tender and a knife easily goes through them (around 15-20 minutes). While the potatoes are boiling, flake the crabmeat, making sure there is no pieces of shell.

Drain, return to the pan, and mash as well as you can with a potato masher. Add the butter, double cream, curry, chilli and garlic powder, and mix well. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Mix in the crabmeat until fully incorporated, then shape into 4 balls, and flatten slightly. In a small plate spread the breadcrumbs and roll the crabcakes until covered on all sides.

Heat the oil in a frying pan and add the crabcakes, cooking them until they are golden on both sides (5 minutes each side). Serve with sweet chilli sauce and some salad leaves.

Coffee, hazelnut, walnut and raisin biscotti

2012-01-16T19:46:00.046+00:00

Hmmm... biscotti... The year before last we went to Italy at Christmas-time and spent a few days with a lovely friend and her family, who gave us the best Christmas we've had in our lives... It was so memorable and warm that everything about it wakes up cuddly feelings in me still, and in-between the madness of food food food that we had, I remember something I had never tried before, "ricciarelli", crunchy outside and soft inside, which are some unique cookies from Siena, traditionally eaten at Christmas time with a glass of Vin Santo.

I love Vin Santo. Have I ever said how much I love Vin Santo? I brought a bottle back with me when I went to Santorini a few years ago (they make a really nice "version" there!) and I have been treasuring it to the point that I was giving severe killing looks to my partner's father when he saw it and had a few glassfuls at some point... There's still some left, and I use it very sparingly, as I'm not sure I can find as good a bottle anytime soon, but thinking of Vin Santo and that Christmas, another thing came up in my memories. Biscotti! I also love biscotti, they are amazing on their own, but even better with a cup of coffee to dip in, made a tiny bit softer to bite and also absorbing all the coffee flavours like a sponge...

We make some similar cookies in Greece (paximadia), which I absolutely love and they follow the same kind of double-baking method, only they are usually flavoured with aniseed. I had never made biscotti before, but neither do I like the hard as cement versions you can find in British shops (I remember even some from Konditor & Cook were inedible without serious coffee/tea dippage), so I thought I would try to make some, to see if a. they would turn out genuine and remind me or the ones in Roma, and b. they would be slightly less tooth-breaking than the shop-bought ones you can find here.

They came out quite good, not as tooth-breaking (phew...) and were praised all around. I have to say I'm quite happy with my first attempt, and I'll be trying them again in the future, maybe with some different flavour combinations (pistachio anyone?) A little caffettino makes this a match made in heaven!

Coffee, hazelnut, walnut and raisin biscotti
Source: Mixture of different recipes I found online

Makes around 40

210g plain flour, sifted
½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp instant coffee powder
150g caster sugar
A pinch of salt
60g butter
2 eggs
½ tsp vanilla extract
55g hazelnuts
55g walnuts
30g raisins

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Blend the flour, baking powder, coffee, sugar and the pinch of salt in a food processor for a few seconds, then add the butter and mix until it all looks like breadcrumbs. Add the eggs and vanilla extract and blend again until it becomes a smooth dough.

Knead the dough on a floured countertop, incorporating the hazelnuts, walnuts and raisins. Divide into two parts and, using lightly floured hands, shape each into a log of about 20 centimetres long. Place the logs on a lined baking tray, pressing the top down to make it a bit more flat.

Bake for 35 minutes. Cool for about 20 minutes, and reduce the oven temperature to 170°C. Cut the logs into one-centimetre slices, place them sideways on the tray and bake for 30 minutes (turning once halfway during the cooking time). Cool, and store in an airtight container, they will last for about 2-3 weeks.

Pork chops with cider, apples and sage

2012-01-09T20:06:00.003+00:00

I never make new year's resolutions. They're kind of stupid, and I feel that they can just throw you into a deep depression if year after year you count how many you "failed at". But, every new year I see things that I like, like people deciding to take one new photo for every day of the year, or changing things in their life that they always wanted to do, or even just deciding it's a darn good time to start using their food leftovers more efficiently! So, inspired by them all, I thought that this year I would make an extra effort to cook new things I've never cooked before as frequently as I can (see, if I said every day, that would be setting me up already for failure... don't we all need to have an disgustingly oily takeaway pizza every now and then, and go out to eat a few times too?) and for the past few days I've managed to stick to it.

Luckily I'm not a cookbook hoarder, as I rarely find that I like (or want to make) more than 10% of the recipes in any cookbook, and if it's just 10% it's more worth it borrowing the book from the library and getting some free photocopies made in the office than buying the whole book (let alone that we already have 6 bookcases and no more space in the house). However, I do hoard recipes from all kinds of places, from free supermarket magazines, to things I saw online in blogs or newsletters and printed out to keep for future use, and also from the one cooking magazine that I have a (free, got it with Tesco clubcard points) subscription to...

Coming to that last one, although I have loads of recipes in a box, I find myself lately tending to make more and more frequently recipes from past issues of my delicious magazines (lovingly ripped off from the mag, before it takes its lonely road to recycling, and maybe one day becomes again a magazine... it's a funny thought that one recipe could be recycled and appear as another in a future magazine... ah, I'm such a hopeless recycling-obsessed romantic...). I find that they are usually very accurate (which can be the curse of blogs and other more unofficially-sourced recipes, which omit ingredients, forget to describe what you do with them in the process, and then you realise that your bread/stew/pie ended up as a stone/sock water/something out of Alien lying in the floor of the oven...

Since I like pork, cider and sage, I decided to try this one, and it turned out very nice, without any adjustments, and it's quite easy too... And you do get to drink the rest of the cider, which I guess is an extra bonus!

Pork chops with cider, apples and sage
Source: delicious magazine

Serves 2

15g butter
2 tbsp olive oil
2 pork loin chops
1 eating apple, peeled, cored and thinly sliced
100ml cider
2 tbsp crème fraîche
2 tsp chopped fresh sage
Salt and pepper for seasoning

Season the steaks on both sides with salt and pepper. Melt the butter and olive oil over a high heat in a frying pan large enough to hold the steaks and apple slices. When the butter starts foaming, add the steaks and cook 2-3 minutes on each side until browned. Turn over again, add the apples and cook for 5 minutes, until the apples are softened and browned and the steaks cooked.

Pour the cider, mix in the crème fraîche and sage and let it all bubble for a few minutes, until the sauce is a bit thickened. Serve with roast potatoes (recipe here).

Sweet potato, squash, chorizo and goats' cheese tart

2011-12-31T17:01:00.012+00:00

Ah, ah... Not only were my last two posts all full of whining (mostly about 2011 misfortunes), but the unluck continues until the end of the year... I'm so happy I'll be rid of it by tomorrow, and hopefully 2012 will be a little wee bit more easygoing... So, what happened now? Well, first Santa (I mistyped Satan, I'm wondering about THAT kind of Freudian slip...) brought my 35-year-old boyfriend chickenpox (YES, chickenpox of all things, for the "little" child!), which meant that all plans for New Year's Eve are cancelled, as he has to be in quarantine so he won't give it to the rest of the world. Luckily I had already had it when I was small, so I won't get it, but I'm not going to leave him in house isolation and go out to have fun on my own... A quiet night it is then. I had again many plans for this bank holiday weekend, and I had booked since months a restaurant I wanted to go to for my Birthday dinner (on Tue, which is also the first day back to work, and therefore a miserable day by definition), but all that will have to wait... I have to say I am now getting quite fed up of cancelling things, especially the ones with no refunds. But as I said, I have high hopes for 2012, and it's almost here!

To continue the misfortune story, since the little chickenpox-ridden one was looking like a sad (Dalmatian) puppy, I decided to make this tart that I had in a list of "cool new things to make during the holidays" since a while, and it was indeed really good and managed to lift both of our spirits a tiny bit. After I made it and we ate it, I went to the kitchen to put the plates in the dishwasher, and when I turned on the light it went "poof!", and the kitchen, bathroom and guestroom lights went out... Thinking it must be the fuse, I went with a flashlight (the joys of it being dark already after lunchtime...) and switched all the fuses between themselves, but no result. At the same time, the oven is also not working, but luckily the hob, the lights under the kitchen cupboards, the sockets and subsequently the fridge still have power, so at least we won't starve to death/have takeaway for New Year's Eve or lose all the nice food we have piled up in there. What a better way to start the year than peeing with a candle...

And when I thought, what more can happen, now it's almost 2012, I opened my nut drawer to get some cashew nuts and found that a mouse had taken affectionate bites off pretty much half the stuff in there, and it must have been quite stupid too, as it had taken bites of all the plastic wrappings, but not of the nuts themselves. Argggggggggh... All these nuts are now in the rubbish, fantastic. The ones that survived (the unopened ones and some that were not to its liking it seems) are now safely inside a tupperware, but I really hate the idea that there might be a mouse lurking around somewhere behind the cupboards...

Anyway, enough now, tomorrow is a new day, a new year and hopefully some new good karma! Happy New Year everyone!

Sweet potato, squash, chorizo and goats' cheese tart
Source: Adapted from delicious magazine

Serves 4

375g ready rolled puff pastry
400g sweet potatoes
350g butternut squash
½ tsp whole coriander
1 tsp whole cumin
3 tbsp olive oil
2 eggs
150ml double cream
100g chorizo, chopped into small cubes
80g goats' cheese, crumbled
A few leaves of rocket
Salt and pepper for seasoning

Line a deep tart tin with the puff pastry, prick the base with a fork, line with scrunched up baking parchment and fill with baking beans. Chill for 15 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 200°C. Dry fry the cumin and coriander in a small frying pan, until lightly browned and fragrant, then tip into a pestle and mortar and smash into powder. Peel the sweet potatoes and butternut squash and chop into small cubes. Place in a baking tray, making sure that they are all in an even layer, drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with the salt, pepper, coriander and cumin. Put in the bottom shelf of the oven, and at the same time put the tart tin in the top shelf of the oven and bake both for 10 minutes.

Leaving the vegetables still in the oven, take out the tart tin, remove the baking beans, and bake for another 10 minutes, until the pastry is golden and the vegetables are softened. Beat the eggs and mix with the double cream, then fold in all the vegetables, adding salt and pepper if required. Pour the mixture into the pastry case, sprinkle the chorizo and goats' cheese over it, and then bake for 20 minutes or until set and browned. Take out of the oven, leave to cool for 5 minutes and then garnish with rocket leaves.

Frangiminci pies (Frangipane-topped mince pies)

2011-12-25T10:44:00.014+00:00

Remember what I was saying in my previous post? 2011 has definitely not been a good year, and from what I gather from grumbling friends, not just for me... Thinking that the end of the year couldn't bring any more disasters, we had arranged for my mom and aunt to come and stay with us for the holidays (beautiful visions of endless food, shopping together, visiting Christmas markets and favourite exhibitions + throw a show or two in the mix, arise in my imagination...), however a last-minute old relative being hospitalised in critical condition meant that the trip had to be cancelled, one day before they were meant to arrive.

Hence, depression ensues = time to make sweets descends upon me. I am a quite strong proponent of the Como agua para chocolate theory (if you're sad, you'll make sad food, if you're happy your food will taste amazing and bring happiness to those who eat it), so I'd rather just cheer up and make sweets, than have my feelings ruin a good bowl of dough. And since I've never made mince pies before in my life, and I was planning to anyway (I had found a "alternative" inspiring recipe in delicious magazine and had already made the mincemeat a month ago in anticipation), I quickly set to make these. Having never tried it, I was a bit sceptical, but they were a resounding success, and people told me that they were even the best ones they've had (my answer was "it must be the alcohol"). Since they are not covered with the typical pastry on top, but with a frangipane-like almond mix, I decided I shall call them "frangiminci pies"!

I guess everything can be looked at optimistically. I've had a bloody cold of some sort or other since the 19^th of November, which kind of goes away only to "dress up" as something else and come back with a vengeance, culminating in a recent fever, and a few days spent working from home. Dangerous thing this working from home. While normally you wouldn't go to the office and work with a fever, being at home kind of gives you the idea that "oh, well, yeah, maybe, it's just a little bit of work", which eventually ends up in hours spent sitting in front of the PC. However, if my mom and aunt HAD come, things could potentially be worse, I could have given them the cold, we could have all be sniffling during Xmas, plus I wouldn't have stayed to work from home, and made these mince pies. On a day that really no work from home could be done. Because the Internet and all systems in my company were down. Just for the irony of the matter, may I add that we are an "online" company. Giggles ensue + mince pies are made during working hours = that's the spirit of Christmas!

Frangiminci pies

Source: Adapted from delicious magazine

Makes around 30

For the mincemeat

2 green eating apples
Zest and juice of 1½ lemon
500g dried mixed fruit (I used one from Tesco, should be a mix of raisins, currants, sultanas and candied citrus peel)
25g chopped almonds
130g vegetable suet
500g soft brown sugar
¼ tsp ground cinnamon
¼ tsp ground ginger
60ml cognac or brandy
50ml Cointreau

Preheat the oven to 200°C. Core the apples and bake them in a lidded dish for 1 hour. They are ready when they are soft and the peel has sort of exploded around them. Scoop out the flesh of the apples and place in a big bowl to cool. When in room temperature, add the lemon zest and juice, and then the rest of the ingredients, mixing well with each addition. Cover the bowl with clingfilm and leave it to rest in a cool place, stirring every few hours. It can be used on the same day, but ideally you should allow it to "develop" over a month, so after a couple of days of stirring move it into sterilized jars and seal, making sure there are as few air bubbles as possible. I allowed it to rest for 25 days, and it was yummy.

For the mince pies

For the pastry

350g plain flour
125g caster sugar
½ tsp salt
125g butter, cold from the fridge
3 eggs (2 whole and 1 yolk)

For the frangipane

150g butter, at room temperature
150g caster sugar
150g ground almonds
40g plain flour
2 eggs, beaten
2 tbsp rum

For topping

Flaked almonds
Icing sugar

To make the pastry put in a food processor the flour, sugar, salt, butter and pulse until the mix resembles breadcrumbs. With the processor running, slowly add the eggs until a dough is just formed. Take the dough out, knead it a bit, wrap it with cling film and cool in the fridge.

To make the frangipane topping, beat the butter in a food processor or mixer until soft. With the processor/mixer running, slowly add the sugar, almonds, eggs and rum, until well incorporated. Move to a bowl and chill for at least 15 minutes.

Butter the holes of a muffin tray (I had a 12-hole tin, which I used 3 times to make all the pies). Roll out one third of the pastry on a well floured counter, until it is 3mm thick. With a fluted cookie cutter cut out 8cm rounds, and push them lightly into the muffin tin holes. Chill the whole muffin tray for 15 minutes, before filling with a big spoonful of mincemeat, and topping with a heaped teaspoonful of frangipane. Preheat the oven to 180°C, sprinkle the mince pies with the flaked almonds and bake for 20-25 minutes, until nicely browned.

Remove from the muffin tray while still hot and cool on a rack. I prefer my mince pies warm, so when you want to eat them put in an oven preheated to 160°C for 10 minutes, and then dust with icing sugar.

Kourampiedes (Traditional Greek Christmas sweets)

2011-12-22T20:02:00.000+00:00

I know, I know. It's been a long time, no post. Oral spank spank. But I haven't given up, oh ye who worry and pester me! It's just that...well...life sometimes takes up time. Like, ALL OF IT. In the last few months a few hundred thousand distracting things happened, which took me away from blogging and pretty much from humanity, a few among which are:

Buying a house (well, ehem a flat-sort-of-thing, only it's not flat, it goes up into the attic, and then down, and then up the stairs again into the garden, I should probably say "buying an up-and-down not-so-flat")
"Fixing" the house (including creating a super-wow kitchen from a "meh" kitchen, finally I have some counter space that is bigger than a postage stamp!)
Moving house (that takes a normal person one day, it took us 2 weeks and the unpacking and putting things in place 3 months...)
Getting fired from my job (the politically correct term, I believe, is "made redundant") while all of the above was happening (and then rehired in a slightly different role, as it turned out I was not really THAT redundant, minus my whole team which is now represented by a big empty space in my office, sad frowny face...)
Doing DIY (the volume of IKEA boxes we recycled was about the same as that of our dining room. That probably says a lot about our new dining room = 2 m²)
Travelling (Paris - to avoid the Royal Wedding frenzy, Greece - to join the family frenzy, Greece again - for the funeral of a very dear, young, talented friend who died pointlessly at 32, Japan - last-minute opportunity that could not be missed etc.)

So, now that things have sort of (just sort of) quietened down a bit, it's time to quickly dish out some Greek sweets for Christmas, just in case I tempt any late-Xmas-sweet-makers with these inspired, tree-shaped beauties!

I usually make these traditional sweets with my mom's recipe (passed down through generations) but this time I wanted to try something a bit more alternative, so I looked around and got inspired by Stelios Parliaros, who adds pistachios and rum to the mix, a sacrilege that probably would be met with some great ass-whooping by my elderly female relatives, but which surprisingly worked quite well. Since traditionally kourampiedes are sprinkled with orange blossom water, I thought of using Cointreau instead of rum, and I also mixed and smashed pistachios and almonds together which in the original recipe are left separated (some kourampiedes with one, some with the other), but if you can have the best of both worlds why not mix and match?

Have a great Christmas, and I hope 2012 brings a bit less panic, sorrow, hecticness and unexpected chaos in all our lives!

Kourampiedes (Κουραμπιέδες)
Source: Adapted from Stelios Parliaros

Makes around 30

100g almonds (not blanched)
40g pistachios (not blanched)
300g butter
110g icing sugar
600g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp vanilla extract
30ml Cointreau
300g icing sugar (for coating)

Preheat the oven to 180°C, place the almonds in a tray and roast for 6 minutes then add the pistachios and roast all the nuts for a further 6-7 minutes. When cooled, chop or smash into small pieces (I used a plastic bag and a rolling pin, but be careful, don’t turn them into dust, you need to have some bite there!)

Mix the butter with the 110g of icing sugar in a big food processor or mixer until light and fluffy. Add one by one the flour, baking powder, vanilla extract and Cointreau and mix well until all the ingredients are evenly incorporated.

Stir in the chopped nuts, and shape into rounds, or cut out different shapes with Christmassy cookie cutters. Place on a tray lined with baking parchment, making sure there is a 6-7 cm distance between them, as they tend to spread, and bake for 30 minutes (or until browned).

Take out of the oven, and before they have a chance to cool, turn them upside down and sprinkle with icing sugar. Immediately turn them the right way up, sprinkle with sugar again, and rest until cool. After they have cooled down, you can move them to a serving plate and sprinkle them with the rest of the sugar, for that genuine Greek Christmas overdose!

Flourless chocolate brownies with nutella swirl ice cream

2011-04-11T22:11:00.004+01:00

This weekend was the first really summery one we've had since last year, and luckily a couple of friends of ours, who had recently bought their first house, invited us for a BBQ on Saturday. The weather was beautiful, just BBQ-perfect, and the food was in infinite supply (just the way I like it!) and very tastily marinaded by the man of the house. But, as every time that there's good weather, what I was craving most for was some ice cream. So Sunday came, same temperature, and the time was ripe for whipping out the ice cream machine (don't think for a second that I haven't made ice cream at home since last summer, I'm an all-winter-ice-cream scoffing freak, but somehow it tastes even better when it's hot outside!) and making something new.

Ever since I went to Rome for the first time in 2003, I have been dreaming of the nutella ice cream I had in gelaterias everywhere. It was my favourite flavour from the ones I tried (and trust me, I tried many!) and for some reason on follow-up visits to Rome in later years the nutella ice cream I so loved was gone. What I wanted was a stracciatela-like vanilla ice cream with little hard nutella swirls you could bite into, and which was heavenly, but it seems it had either gone out of fashion in Rome, or it had been replaced by an "all-nutella" chocolatey-hazelnutty ice cream, which although very nice, was too sweet and chocolatey for me. If presented with the choice of only vanilla or only chocolate ice cream, I'm pretty sure 70-90% of the population would go for only chocolate, but I would go for vanilla, as I find too much chocolate "too much". So stracciatela is one of my favourite gelato flavours of all time, as it combines both vanilla and chocolate in just the right proportions.

Inspired by this, and not having tried to make stracciatela at home, I tried to invent a stracciatelonutella version, using a trusted recipe for vanilla ice cream and adding warmed up nutella in swirls before the ice cream was fully set in the freezer. It came out heavenly, and brought back all those memories of Roman Spring in 2003...

However, since the other half is not a big fan of ice cream (yes I know, does that species exist in nature, especially in its male version?), I had to make something to satisfy his puppy-dog look of "and I'm not getting any dessert? Bouhou!", that would go with the nutella ice cream. I've made these brownies dozens of times before, they always come out fantastic and the extra bonus that they are flourless makes them suitable for people who are gluten intolerant, plus you can sort of pretend they're healthier (which the other half does) and feel a bit less guilty (as if the chocolate, butter and almonds are not enough to make you rounder!). Instead of baking them in a tray, I got inspired by Tartelette and baked them in individual tart tins, which made them perfect for topping with generous ice cream scoops. Getting carried away, I added 3 scoops on mine one night, and then I had to be removed by a crane from the sofa and gently placed on my bed, to avoid bursting. I have to say, that's never to be done again...I'm sure there's a moral somewhere there about too much of a good thing... but I haven't heard of it yet...

Flourless chocolate brownies with nutella swirl ice cream
Source: Adapted from Allegra McEvedy and Gourmet Worrier

Makes 8 brownies and 800ml ice cream

For the brownies

175g 70% dark chocolate, chopped
90g butter
2 ½ tbsp strong coffee
2 eggs
220g granulated sugar
½ tsp vanilla extract
125g ground almonds
½ tsp baking powder

For the ice cream

2 cups full fat milk
1 cup double cream
1 cup single cream
8 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp vanilla extract with seeds (or vanilla seeds from 1 pod), I used this one
2 rounded tbsp nutella

For the brownies melt the chocolate and butter in a bain-marie, and stir in the coffee (it's 2 ½ tbsp of brewed coffee, not coffee powder!). In a big bowl whisk the eggs and sugar for 4 minutes, add the vanilla extract, and stir in the chocolate mix. Add the ground almonds and baking powder, making sure you mix well until everything's incorporated. Pour into a buttered tin or pyrex dish (or individual tart cases, as I did in this case) and bake at 160ºC for 35 minutes (25 minutes if it's in tart cases).

For the ice cream mix the milk, single cream, double cream and sugar in a saucepan over medium heat until the sugar is melted. Cool and add the vanilla extract. Churn in an ice cream machine for 30 minutes. Melt the nutella in a saucepan over low heat, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon, and be careful that it just melts and doesn't burn.

Put a layer of the vanilla ice cream in the freezable container you'll store the ice cream in, top with 1 tbsp of the nutella and swirl around with the spoon or a skewer. The nutella will freeze in place almost immediately so you have to be quick. Top this with the rest of the vanilla ice cream, and then with the remaining nutella, swirling again quickly. Freeze until set and serve in scoops over the brownies, while they're still warm. The day after you can rewarm the brownies in the microwave, they become soft and gooey on the inside and are even better!

Butternut squash, pine nut and sage ravioli

2011-03-14T22:35:00.002+00:00

A few weeks ago, as I mentioned in a previous post, my partner was in Athens for business, and I was left alone in London craving souvlaki, Greek pizza and everything else that he was posting in facebook as a status update with the words "I am eating Greek X now...yuuummm". However, to make it up to me (all those hours of suffering looking at facebook photos with my friends...grrr...) he was contracted to carry back a suitcaseful of Greek treats, plus the greatest (and heaviest) of them all, my mom's ancient pasta maker.

This little gem, a Marcato Ampia, was bought sometime in the 1980s by my mom who thought it would be a trendy item of kitchenalia (things imported from Italy were a big deal at the time in the Greek culinary gadget world!), plus it might at some point help her in making filo. Yes, filo. Now, anyone who knows what filo is can guess that the experiment failed miserably, and the pasta maker (clue, the suggested use is "in the NAME" μαμά!) stayed stacked in a cupboard, miserably gathering dust over the years, as my mom proclaimed "this metal thing is rubbish, all dough stick and do not clean!" (forgive the stereotypical Greek "translation"). After having gone through dozens of cookbooks, online recipes, and Italian friends' stories, I realised that making your own fresh pasta is not a scary task, and remembered the poor old Marcato, and resuscitated it finally!

My partner might have grumbled about carrying all that weight (mom had persuaded me it weighed only 1 kilo - more like 4 that is...), but in the long term he has come to terms with the "inconvenience", as the pasta this machine makes is AMAZING! And since I paid nothing for an "antique" item, I can't even complain about the investment. Plus there's something essentially romantic about kitchen bits and pieces being passed down from generation to generation (even the unused ones!), that makes me a bit sentimental.

Anyways, so pasta machine in hand (or rather on counter - it's too heavy to carry around purposelessly) I was ready for experimentation. And what would be the first recipe? Lasagne, tagliatelle, linguine? Nah, I need more challenging stuff, with filling! Quick search in my head, quick search on the internet, and definitely butternut squash overpowered all other options. I absolutely love ravioli di zucca al burro e salvia (pumpkin and sage ravioli) and as I had some butternut squash and pine nuts, I went for a classic recipe by Rick Stein, changing a few things along the way, and getting a few invaluable tips from Italian friends.

The ravioli turned out amazing, the filling was the best one I've had (up to now my favourite shop-bought ones were the award-winning Tesco Finest Pumpkin Ravioli) and definitely was beyond compare with even the Tesco ones! If you don't have a pasta machine it's still possible to make homemade pasta, but much more effortful, and since you can buy one not too expensively, it's highly recommended. You know what goes in your pasta, it can be as fresh as your eggs, and you will choose your filling, amount of salt and everything else (I actually didn't need to put any salt at all, the parmesan is enough, which is an extra bonus!)

Butternut squash, pine nut and sage ravioli
Source: Dough by my Italian friend's mom and filling inspired by Rick Stein

Serves 2

For the pasta

100g "00" flour
1 egg
Big pinch of salt

For the filling

200g butternut squash, cubed
1 tbsp olive oil
A big pinch of crushed fennel seeds

1 egg yolk
25g grated parmesan cheese
A pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
2-3 tbsp dried breadcrumbs
A pinch of salt
1 tbsp toasted pine nuts
Freshly ground black pepper

For the sauce

40g butter
1 tbsp crushed dried sage leaves
A few parmesan shavings for topping
1 tbsp toasted pine nuts for topping
Freshly ground mixed peppercorns

Put the cubed butternut squash in an overproof dish, toss with the olive oil, the fennel seeds and some black pepper and roast for 30 minutes at 220°C until tender and caramelised. Cool slightly and mash with a potato masher.

Pour the flour in a bowl and make a well in the centre. Break the egg in a separate bowl, beat well and pour into the centre of the flour "well". With a fork fold in the flour gradually from the outside of the egg towards the centre, mixing well constantly until it's all incorporated, then dig in with your hands and knead until you have a smooth soft ball. If it's too sticky add a bit more flour, if it's too dry add a bit of water, but if your egg is medium sized it should all work perfectly fine. Wrap the ball of dough with cling-film and leave in the fridge to rest for at least 15 minutes.

In the meantime prepare the filling by mixing the mashed butternut squash with the rest of the ingredients in a bowl. Once the pasta has had its rest, divide it into two bits and pass each one through a pasta machine, finishing with setting No 7 (the thinnest in my pasta machine). Lay one sheet of pasta on the counter, and place small spoonfuls of the filling in regular intervals, making sure to leave some space between them for the dough to stick. Wet the dough by dipping your finger in a glass of water and rubbing "water lines" between the filling and on the edges. Cover with the second sheet of pasta, pressing down to close and stick, and then cut with a pasta cutter between the ravioli, or if you don't have one you can use a pizza wheel (that's what I did!) or a knife. Trim the ravioli if some are too big and boil for a good 6 minutes (try them to make sure they're not undercooked, it will all depend on the thickness of your pasta sheets) in well-salted water.

Melt the butter with the sage leaves in a small saucepan, drain the pasta and toss in the melted butter, topping with lots of parmesan and some black pepper.

Lemon, lime and lavender cupcakes

2011-03-12T21:02:00.007+00:00

Sometimes I bake because it makes me happy, but most of the times I bake as it makes other people happy too. If I ate everything I make solely myself, my ass would be the size of China by now, so happily sharing my love of food with others serves three purposes: I get happy, they get happy, ass stays smallish.

The first sign of slight springiness came yesterday, when I managed to arrive home and it was still daylight, something which hadn't happened since last autumn, and which made me so happy that I decided to bake something to celebrate. My partner having been away for business for the week (in Athens nevertheless, which was unusually snowy but still full of my friends and family that HE was having fun with!) I was in food-smell-welcoming mood, so I decided to go for something he would prefer, and as he's a lemon nut (lemon cake, lemon meringue pie, lemon tart anyone?) I decided to make some lemon cupcakes. As our downstairs neighbour had given us some limes (she works in various events around London, and this week they were promoting, well... of all of things, limes...!) I decided to try a twist on the traditional, and I also added some lavender for good measure, making this the "triple L cupcakes" - Lemon, lime and lavender all in one!

I got inspired by this recipe from James Martin, who is a chef I really like, he's such an amicable guy and always makes me laugh with his additions of endless butter in Saturday Kitchen, and his usual "and if I was a Michelin star chef I would do this little thing with the spoon like that" (at which he does a fancy swirl/splat in the plate, which actually ends up looking pretty Michelin-star-chefy!). I found it bizarrely ironic that the recipe doesn't have butter (how on earth can it be a James Martin recipe? I was so shocked I almost went and licked a stick of butter!) but oil instead, and went for it... The house smelt lovely when the other half arrived, and the cupcakes were quite cute, although they got hard quite quickly. I think next time I'll substitute the oil with butter, (or even better, swede!) but for the time being, here's my adapted recipe, and the first sprigs of spring!

Lemon, lime and lavender cupcakes
Source: James Martin

Makes 12

2 eggs
85g caster sugar
240ml milk
100ml vegetable oil
300g plain flour, sifted
3 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
3 lemons, zest only
1 lime, zest only
1 tbsp dried lavender flowers

For the icing

100g icing sugar
1 lemon, juice only
a few dried lavender flowers to garnish

Preheat the oven to 200°C, and put some paper cupcake cases in a 12-muffin/cupcake tin. Mix the eggs with the sugar until light and fluffy, then add the milk and oil and combine well. Gradually add the flour mixed with the baking powder, salt, lemon zest and lime zest. Spoon the mixture into the cupcakes cases and bake for 25-30 minutes.

In the meantime make the lemon icing by mixing the sugar with the lemon juice quickly with a wooden spoon. Cool in the fridge until the cupcakes are out of the oven and totally cooled. Spread the icing over the cooled cupcakes and decorate with the lavender flowers.

Recent culinary adventures abroad...

2011-02-18T22:27:00.011+00:00

I know I haven't written a post in a while. A long while. The main reason is that winter has brought with it the infamous English 3 o'clock nights (where by 3 o'clock in the afternoon everything is pitch black) meaning that taking decent photos of things I cook after work (which is mainly when I cook!) has become virtually impossible. As an antidote, we generally try to stay away from this country at this dreary time, and this has resulted in quite a lot of travelling, which – while full of food as usual – does not frequent blogging allow (in Yoda mode). However, since most have been asking for it and have been waiting for it, I wanted to at least post some photos of the most beautiful and delicious things I've had in my travels over the past few months.

2010 being the year of weddings, my three trips in November and December were all in order to attend weddings of friends scattered around the globe. Having being invited to 10 weddings since May, I was at least glad to be able to attend 4. And a funeral. But that's another story...

So, on we headed to Mexico for my boyfriend's good friend's wedding in the beginning of November, and since we were there anyway we decided to stay for 2 weeks (you don't go to the other side of the world and not take advantage, you might as well make the jetlag worth its while!) and visit a couple of places I had never been to before, namely San Miguel De Allende and Guanajuato. They were both beautiful, and I definitely recommend them. San Miguel is this artists' paradise, with picturesque houses in all kinds of colours, lovely relaxing courtyards and lots of good food! And Guanajuato is a bustling student city that competes with San Miguel for the Most-multicoloured-Mexican-city Award.

To start things off though, we first stopped in Mexico City, where my boyfriend's from, and where I've been 3 times before. And when in Mexico City the musts for me are: Brunch at Las Lupitas (lovely little place in Coyoacan, top left photo), some amazing steak and chips in a basket made out of potatoes (!) in the Argentinean Cambalache, and some freshly made tortillas from the corner shop, where they just taste divine warm out of the comal, sprinkled with some salt and rolled up. Mexican heaven...

And then, to finish it off, some cajeta crêpes, and cafe de olla! This coffee is possibly my favourite in the world, no matter how much I like espresso and Greek coffee (Turkish coffee actually, the Greeks just like to call it Greek, chauvinistic remnants of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus...) this just beats them all to a whimpering submission. Flavoured with cinnamon and pilloncillo (raw cane sugar) and "cooked" in a clay pot, even thinking of the earthy smell of this coffee gives me a warm fuzzy feeling! And since we were around during the Mexican Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), we also got to get some sugar skulls as presents, along with a variety of sweets which you can find in the ubiquitous sweet shops scattered in Mexican markets.

On next was the wedding. Of course Mexican weddings revolve around food, food and more food. You start with a tamarind margarita (with salt and chilli powder on the glass rim) at around 1, then go on to lunch, best bit of which was the shark gordita (had tried shark before but I wasn't impressed, this time it was mind-blowing!), desserts (some meringue/cream/fruit concoction that was positively cloud-esque) and then some dancing, more food, dancing, oh, let's have some Mexican sweets, dance a bit more, damn! it's already 7 at night, let's have someone bring around tortas ahogadas (oh god, that was spicy like hell, but oh so delicious I just couldn't stop having more and more despite burning to death... even thinking about it I'm drooling now!) and then on and on the feeding frenzy went!

We tried to pace ourselves, as we knew the next morning we had to have breakfast (the hotel had really cutely enveloped their butter in corn husks, making it look like mini tamales!), and then go to the newlyweds' house for post-wedding brunch. Yes, as if we hadn't been fed constantly until 1 o'clock the previous night (normally it would have been until 5 o'clock in the morning, only it was so bizarrely cold that the wedding guests ran home earlier than expected! Cold in Mexico...who would imagine!), we had to now choose between pozole and chicken flautas. Guess what. I had BOTH. I love chicken flautas, but it was the first time I tried pozole and I have to say it's not my thing. Thank God, at least there's one Mexican thing that I won't need to add to my already full belly next time I go there. Unlike tortilla soup. Oooooh, the tortilla soup. With little pieces of avocado. And chillies. And cheese. Miam miam is all I can say. Drooling just thinking about it now...

Next stop on the world trip was Athens, this time for my friend's wedding. My friend being a sweet-toothed girl we indulged not only in the prettiest wedding cake ever (served as individual mini-cake portions!) but in a selection of other little pots of pleasure, all of which of course I had to try. Initially I thought "Just a spoonful of each, so I can tell her which one was the best" and then after I saw that no one was eating the rest, I had to have them all. We don't waste food in my house, and especially cute desserts! (even after an endless wedding buffet!) After a brief stop in Rome to visit a very good friend of mine, who literally showered us in freshly-cut salami and fed us for 10 hours a day during Christmas and Boxing Day, we were off to Palermo in Sicily for the last wedding of the year. Having eaten quite a lot (as you can see by the above) during the preceding months, this was the top of the iceberg. Italians eat a lot, they eat even more in weddings, but what we didn't expect was a 10-course meal of the most amazing variety, of which we could eat a forkful each time, as we were waiting for the next and the next. The one thing that I positively devoured all of, was this sublime salad topped with the most amazing tuna carpaccio (marinated in a toasted hazelnut emulsion) I've ever tasted. I still have drooly dreams about it!

And just as you thought this madness might come to an end, here comes January, with its "most depressing week of the year", which we spent safely tucked in the sun of Singapore and Bali. Quick walk through Little India where colourful bananas were scattered everywhere, and then it was time for some famous Singaporean chilli crab in Jumbo. Burning hot, but oh so good! Even the getting messy bit was enjoyable. A few days later we were having rijsttafel in Bumbu Bali in Tanjung Benoa, and trying some of the best curried fish cooked in banana leaf in Sails in Amed.

A big handful of freshly grilled prawns on the beach (these are what I call gigantosaurus prawns!) were followed by pancakes with palm sugar (that even beats cajeta!) and some of the best food we had in Bali which was in a little café in the middle of the rice fields near Ubud, called Sari Organic. If you see "chicken with mushrooms" in a menu in Britain you definitely don't expect what you see above, and some more palm sugar adoration ensued when our banana fritters arrived with some extra yummy syrup of the palmy kind.

Ubud being kind of the touristic centre of Bali you can find some amazing food there, but we were also lucky to be staying in the area while a religious festival was taking place and the Pura Desa temple was covered in offerings consisting of the most amazingly arranged towers of... food! Apart from cakes and fruit there was also a pretty intricate "chandelier" of meat skewers and I can say my mouth stayed open for quite a while when I realised what it was, as from far away it just looked like a flower arrangement! Having gotten hungry with the cornucopia at the temple we had some sticky cashew nut chicken for dinner, followed by a modern twist to the traditional black rice pudding.

Last but not least, some of my favourite things that I tried in South East Asia were the Indonesian crackers (kind of like the Chinese prawn crackers but waaaaay better!) and SHOCK SHOCK SHOCK, pizza! There were two amazing varieties. One in Gili Air, a tiny island near Lombok, which – sans electricity but for some hotel/restaurant generators – has devised an ingenious idea. Wood-fire pizza ovens. Yes, pizza in Indonesia. And if you manage to get lucky, you get some Italians who have permanently moved there to make the most amazing prawn and mushroom pizza ever for you. Best dough I've had in life, and despite my severe scepticism about combining seafood with cheese, this was one of the most amazing pizzas I've had in the world. Including Italy. Sorry Italians, please don't kill me, did you notice I said that IT WAS AN ITALIAN who made this? Albeit in far more exotic lands. The other amazing pizza was in a Japanese place in a super-mall in Singapore. Again, despite the aforementioned scepticism, and bearing the good experience in Gili Air in mind, I was stunned by how good this prawn, bacon and wasabi mayo pizza was. Yes, wasabi. The Japanese are crazy with their culinary combinations, but that only makes me love them more. Japanese has to be one of my favourite cuisines right now. Definitely.

Ah... so that was eat [sic]. And if you didn't have enough already, I leave you with a smile on a plate...

(Somehow I'm getting peckish again...)

The most amazing Breadmaking Christmas party

2010-12-10T20:47:00.006+00:00

We all know the usual pre-Christmas restaurant outing/outrage. Desperate office boys and girls around London huddle around overpacked restaurants, eat restrictive bland 3-course menus with 2 choices of main, 2 of starter and (if you're lucky at all) 2 choices of dessert. Add to that the embarrassment of having to quickly wolf down everything so you can be out of there before the minus two hours of the booking are finished (and your double-decker has turned again into a butternut squash). And what about having to pay anything from £35 to £extortionate, upfront when you make the booking, AND getting charged full price if one unlucky sod happens to fall ill in the snowstorm? There you go…now you've got your typical London Christmas party. And "due to extreme popularity, we are only able to accommodate your group for a Christmas dinner on the 19th of November". Don't tell me you haven't heard this one! Christmas is Christmas, and whether you like it or not, a dinner in November does-not-a-Christmas-party-constitute, in anyone's (and much less a foreigner's) book.

Hence, this time my international colleagues and I went for an alternative Christmas dinner. One where you get your hands dirty (and sticky!), one that requires at least one full body apron per person, no loose hairs and future wonderment on how flour has managed to end up everywhere (including the inside of your underwear!). What I'm talking about is an evening spent making bread (and eating it) in the e5 Bakehouse. Ben McKinnon's love child is a lovely bakery squished under one of the London Fields train station arches, which dishes out yummy organic loaves. The master feature is the wood fire oven that Ben and his sister designed and built from scratch, using information found on the internet and reclaimed materials. Despite being mismatched, it's extremely pretty, sitting there and puffing fire like a gentle ancient dragon.

We ended up in the bakery after my friend Natalia (who lives nearby and met Ben when she was passing by and smelt the bread, leading to a small coffee-making day collaboration) thought it would be a good alternative idea and a great chance to avoid the usual pre-holiday restaurant rat-race. And what a fantastic idea it was. After we confirmed numbers, Ben kindly booked us in to come and make some great ciabatta breads on a freezing Thursday evening. Thinking that we would be eating only the bread, we brought along some nuts, olives, cold meats and LOTS of cheese and wine to go with it. However we were in for a surprise...(or two!)

We started with Ben showing us around and passing on the recipe for the ciabattas, and while we got messy measuring water, flour and leaven he showed us the next steps, which involved a lot of waiting for the dough to rest, and not as much kneading as I actually expected. After an initial mixing and resting we folded the dough by lifting it off the edges of the bowl with a spatula, from the outside towards the centre, something that was repeated again two times after intervening rests and cheese-and-cracker-nibbling.

After the few times of folding and resting were over, we transferred the dough into a well-floured surface, where we stretched it, and finally decorated it with rosemary, olives or sundried tomatoes, and - following the example of the Italians in the team - drizzled it with olive oil and spread a few salt flakes on top.

Then we moved on to the long table that Ben's girlfriend had cutely decorated with tea lights and where all our cheesing and wining was previously performed, and heard something about "dinner". Thinking that was the bread we had just baked, we were shocked to discover that the guys had even made some vegetarian lasagne for us which were followed by dreamy mince pies (I had been eyeing those earlier when they were patiently sitting in the bakery shelves, but I had no clue some of them were meant for us!)

After being totally filled up to the brim with food, we finished off with some freshly brewed coffee from Square Mile that Natalia had brought with her and went off into the frost with our little bags stuffed with leftover ciabatta and some of the signature Borodinsky rye bread that Ben had also made for us and which we "styled" into the bread tins.

An amazing night overall, and an amazing bakery, go in and get a loaf any time you're around Hackney, or visit the Bakery's facebook page to stay updated on future events and baking classes, which take place usually on Saturdays.

e5 Bakehouse

Arch 402, Mentmore Terrace

London, E8 3PH

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Update: 10 March 2011

I was really stunned and delighted to see last night that Ben's bread featured in the BBC's Great British Food Revival. Michel Roux Junior even exclaimed that his bread "turned him on"! I don't think even I expected such quick progress when I wished Ben "even more good luck in the New Year", but he definitely deserves it and I'm really glad to know his bread keeps on selling out.

Gooey chocolate and almond cookies

2010-11-15T23:24:00.002+00:00

Ah...cookies. My life-long weakness. Ever since I was a kid, I've lived on cookies, any kind of cookies. Apologies to the severely British, but I can not call them "biscuits". Biscuits in my severely sugar-damaged bread are something salty, not sweet. Like a cracker kind of thing. Sort of.

Anyway, back to cookies. I buy them. I eat them. Every day. Around 11:30 to 12:00, all my colleagues will testify it's cookie-munching time. If I miss them one day, I get grumpy. Can be any kind of cookies, but chocolate chip ones are a definite favourite. By "can be any kind of cookies" I mostly mean cookies with some form of chocolate in or around them. If I had to define the perfect one, then...hmmm...it would probably be the chocolate covered speculoos. Simply majestic. Anyways, needless to say, I also make them. I've tried many kinds, but never these ones, as I generally don't like chocolate too much (just a little bit) but these are just the right amount of gooeyness and cheweiness, they stay like this for quite a few days, and they're enough to share with friends (which all my friends will verify is NOT something I usually do with cookies. With cakes maybe. NOT with cookies).

In Greece the typical breakfast is a coffee and a cigarette, or - if you're not a smoker - a coffee and a cookie or a pastry of some kind. Seriously. When Greek people marvel at the fact that I can eat a full English/Mexican/Asian breakfast with cooked things in it, that are not sweet but salty, this is the reason why, because it's extremely atypical to find anything non-sweet in a Greek breakfast. On the other hand, the American "milk and cookies" at night thing, that we don't have. Cookies are for breakfast, or for elevenses, not for dinner or post-dinner. How weird we Greeks are...

Gooey chocolate and almond cookies
Source: Inspired by 17 and baking

Makes about 40 cookies

½ cup ground almonds
2 tbsp sugar
150g 70% dark chocolate, chopped
2 ½ cups flour
2 tbsp cocoa powder
2 tsp baking soda
¾ tsp salt
1 ½ cups light brown sugar
8 tbsp softened butter
2 eggs
¼ cup whole milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
¾ cups icing sugar

Mix the almonds with the sugar. Melt the chocolate in a bain-marie or in the microwave and set aside. Sift the flour together with the cocoa powder, baking soda and salt. Mix the butter with the brown sugar at high speed with an electric mixer until well-combined. Add the eggs, one at a time, and continue mixing until they are fully incorporated. Fold in the melted chocolate and add the milk and vanilla. Finally slowly add the flour mixture and mix until all is combined.

Shape the dough into a ball, cover with cling film and chill in the fridge for at least 2 hours (preferably overnight).

When you are ready to bake, preheat the oven to 180°C. Put the icing sugar in a big bowl and scoop out little heaped tablespoonfuls of dough, roll them into a ball and coat them with the sugar. Transfer to a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper, leaving at least 5cm breathing space between each cookie ball. Bake the cookies for 15 minutes, until they are cracked but not completely firm. Cool them on wire racks.

Caramelised apple cinnamon cake

2010-10-16T19:53:00.002+01:00

Ah... Autumn. The cold is seriously setting in now, due to an unexpected boyfriend cold yesterday we threw out the window our resolution to NOT turn the heating on in the house until November started, and here I am looking at gloominess outside being all cuddly and warm inside. Usually the onset of winter brings me down a notch, but this year for some reason I have made so many plans and so many interesting things are coming up, that I'm still happy as a bunny and really looking forward to the future. So much, that I didn't think hard about putting a neologism I created as a facebook update, and then had to face endless speculation, excitement and finally disappointment from friends who thought that me being "futureexpectant" meant that I was pregnant. I have to admit, if I had thought a bit harder I might have seen the connotations there, but I can assure you, I definitely am not pregnant, neither do I have the time to be at the moment!

What I finally had the time to make was an autumn-fitting cake on one of the few Friday nights that I have managed to leave work on time. After rushing out to catch the next train and forgetting to buy half the ingredients I needed, I got off one stop early, managed to find the stuff I needed in a corner shop, walk back home through the "scenic" route (which can be even more scenic and nice in this time of year), bake the cake, make homemade pizza for dinner with some leftover wonderful Italian cheeses (mozzarella, fontina and provola) I had picked up in Greenwich Market last Sunday and be in bed by 23:00. Record time! And I even managed to fit in an episode of Fringe between all that too!

I hadn't tried this cake before, but it resembled one that I really love making, which has less apples and more of a crumbly top, and I was a bit sceptical about how this one would turn out, but it was immediately approved by the sniffling boyfriend, so I'm assuming if someone with virtually no taste buds would promptly scoff it, then it must be good enough to be worth a post! The apples on the inside made it very moist, and it tastes great warmed up with some vanilla ice cream (I keep writing this for pretty much every cake I post, but is there really anything in the world that DOESN'T taste good warmed up with vanilla ice cream on the side? Nope. Thought so. OK, this one would taste great with some cinnamon ice-cream, if I had had the time to make some. Any good recipes out there? If you find one, give me a shout!). I adapted the recipe a bit and added cinnamon in the cake, and topped it with some icing sugar and NOMU Sweet rub, which is a mix of sugar, cinnamon and sweet spices from a great little South African company. I tried it once years ago, and I've been ordering it online ever since, as I can't do without it, in cakes, pancakes, even on top of hot chocolate!

Caramelised apple cinnamon cake
Source: Adapted from Tesco Real Food

Serves 12

4 apples
juice of ½ a lemon
275g golden granulated sugar
5 eggs
100g butter, melted
pinch of salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
215g plain flour
¾ tsp baking powder
2 tsp cinnamon powder
100g ground almonds
1 tbsp icing sugar
1 tbsp NOMU Sweet rub (or a mix of sugar, cinnamon and mixed spice)

Grease a 23cm spring form cake tin and line the base with greaseproof paper. Peel the apples, cut them into ½cm-thick slices and mix them in a large bowl with the lemon juice, 1 tsp of the cinnamon powder and 50g of the sugar. Scatter another 50g of sugar over the base of the tin, and top with enough apple slices to cover the base, overlapping the slices slightly to make a nice circular shape.

Preheat oven to 180°C. Beat the eggs, melted butter, remaining 175g of sugar, salt and vanilla extract together until combined. Sift the flour, baking powder and remaining 1 tsp of cinnamon over the mixture and add the ground almonds. Mix in the remaining apple slices with their liquid and fold together quickly. Pour into the tin and bake for 50 minutes, checking the cake after the first 30 minutes to make sure it's not getting "suntanned". If it is, bake it covered with foil for the next 20 minutes.

When it's totally cooled, turn the tin upside down onto a plate so that the base is on the top and sprinkle with icing sugar and then NOMU Sweet rub, or the mix of sweet spices and sugar.

Spiced honey duck with caramelised sweet potatoes

2010-09-29T21:40:00.003+01:00

Mmmm...duuuuuck... Thus spoke my boyfriend at the idea of buying some breasts of this favourite of ours to cook at home. Little did we know that unexpected commitments would come up, disasters would strike (like the day I came back home from work, licking my lips with the idea of duck on my mind, only to find that there was no electricity in the whole neighbourhood. Needless to say, takeaway pizza just wasn't the same and the most infuriating thing was that the electricity DID come back two hours later, the moment I was blindly and fiddlingly trying to open the pizza box), the days would pass and the duck would be still lying in the fridge.

Nevertheless, after an almost week-long odyssey we finally both managed to be at home, and feeling experimental, I decided to try a different recipe this time. I've made duck many times before, always using sweet sauces as I love it this way (my all time favourite used to be this tamarind duck I could get in a lovely Thai restaurant in Norwich called The Sugar Hut... ah, I miss that so!) and I stuck to the sweet principle this time as well, but with some extra spice. My boyfriend was extra helpful and experimental alongside me this time, when he dug out half a monster sweet potato that we had left over in the fridge (from making a batch of these coffee cupcakes for a charity coffee morning at work, in case you're wondering!) and suggested that we make roast sweet potatoes to go with the duck. Yes, sweet potatoes with sweet duck.

However, it worked beautifully, and I was really impressed, so much that this is now definitely my favourite recipe for duck, and I'm sure I'll repeat it again and again. The sweet potatoes were not too sweet (as I thought they would end up being) and although I could have made them into a purée, I like the bite and the chargriled edges (plus saves me some time puréeing and washing the extra utensils!).

Spiced honey duck with caramelised sweet potatoes
Source: Severely adapted from John Burton Race

Serves 2

2 duck breasts
1 medium sweet potato
4 tbsp runny honey
1 tsp coriander seeds
½ tsp ginger powder
½ tsp Chinese five spice powder
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp maple syrup
¼ tsp chilli powder
¼ tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp nutmeg
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to 220°C. Peel the sweet potato, chop it into cubes and toss with the olive oil, maple syrup, chilli powder, cinnamon and nutmeg in a tray. Season with a bit of salt and pepper and bake for 35-40 minutes until soft and caramelised, frequently mixing the potatoes around so they don't stick.

Crush the coriander seeds in a pestle and mortar (or put in a strong plastic bag and bash with a rolling pin or tin can). Mix in the ginger, Chinese five spice and some freshly ground black pepper.

Clean the duck breasts and score the skin in a diamond pattern with a sharp knife. Season with a little salt. Place the duck skin side down in a very hot pan, reduce the heat to medium and cook for 5 minutes. Pour the fat out of the pan and turn the duck over, cooking it until it is nicely browned.

Reduce the heat and sprinkle the spice mix over the skin of the duck breasts. Drizzle the honey over them and continue cooking, basting them constantly with the melting honey until nicely glazed. Turn the breasts over and when they're ready remove them from the pan and keep warm.

Serve the sweet potatoes topped with the sliced duck and drizzle with the rest of the spiced honey.

Pear and chocolate frangipane tart

2010-09-26T20:57:00.000+01:00

It's official. The winter is here. And yet, somehow I feel like I've been saying this since weeks ago. But then again, weeks ago I didn't have to get the "autumn" coat out, neither did I think for a second that I would feel like turning the heating on already (when last year I only turned it on in November!). So yes, something's definitely going on right now. You can call it Autumn, but I'll call it Winter.

For someone who comes from a country with two seasons (Summer=hot hot hot and Winter= mildly cold + snow once every 10 years) living in a place where there is such a strong distinction between summer, autumn, winter and spring is refreshing to say the least. Never had I seen autumn leaf colours in Greece (there's it's one day here, tomorrow on the floor, no in-between stage!) and never had I realised that there are things that just "go" with autumn.

Like this pear frangipane tart. I discovered this a year ago, and it's become one of my favourite feel-good desserts to make when I'm down, or when it's cold outside (which is usually one and the same!). The fact that you serve it warm makes it even more appropriate, nothing better to warm you up inside than something warm that...goes inside your mouth! It's also become one of my boyfriend's favourite desserts, so I get a lot of special requests. Yes, it takes a while to make, but oh...how much it's worth it!

Pear and chocolate frangipane tart
Source: Valentine Warner in Olive magazine (November 2009)

Serves 8

For the pastry

250g plain flour
150g butter, fridge cold and cut into small cubes
1 tbsp golden caster sugar
1 egg, beaten

For the filling

3 firm conference pears
2 tbsp lemon juice
100g 70% dark chocolate, chopped into small pieces
50g good quality milk chocolate, chopped into small pieces
175g softened butter
175g caster sugar
125g ground almonds
75g plain flour
½ tsp salt
½ tsp baking powder
2 eggs, beaten
¼ tsp vanilla extract
15g flaked almonds

To make the pastry put the flour, butter and sugar in a food processor and blend until it resembles breadcrumbs. Add the eggs, blend again and turn off when the dough forms a ball. Roll out the pastry between two big sheets of cling film so it doesn't stick (I learnt this trick from Raymond Blanc's Kitchen Secrets, and although I can't stand the guy and his cockiness, at least I got something useful out of the show!).

Line a deep fluted 25cm tart tin with the pastry, by carefully peeling one sheet of cling film and gently lowering the pastry into the tin (or the other way around, putting the tin upside down on the pastry and carefully turning the whole thing around, so that the dough falls into the tin). Place on a baking tray, prick the base with a fork and put in the fridge for 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 200°C. Line the pastry case with crumpled baking parchment and fill with baking beans. Bake like this for 22 minutes, then remove the beans and paper and return to the oven for a further 5 minutes, or until the base is dry. Remove from the oven and leave aside to cool.

Reduce the oven temperature to 160°C. Peel and cut the pears into quarters. Remove the cores and put the pear quarters into a bowl with the lemon juice, tossing them so they are all covered, so they won't turn brown.

In a mixer blend the butter and sugar until pale and soft. Add the ground almonds, flour, salt, baking powder, eggs and vanilla. Blend well, take the mixer out and stir in the chocolate pieces with a spatula.

Spread the almond mixture evenly over the cooled pastry case, arrange the pear quarters on their sides in a circle around the tart, pressing gently into the almond mix, narrow ends towards the centre.

Bake on the tray in the centre of the oven or 30 minutes. Sprinkle the flaked almonds over and return to the oven for a further 35-40 minutes, or until the pears are tender and the frangipane filling is well-risen and golden brown. Leave to stand for 15 minutes before lifting from the tin. I love this served warm, if you have leftovers you can reheat it in the microwave later on, and serve with some good quality vanilla ice-cream, it's delicious when the chocolate bits are gooey and melt in your mouth.

Orejitas (Sugar and cinnamon cookies)

2010-09-12T18:56:00.002+01:00

For those of you who were wondering where I've been for the last few weeks, I had a brief holiday back in Greece to attend my best friend's wedding, see family and friends and get some last sun for the year! Now, the sun part didn't exactly happen as planned, since in the second part of our trip we got rain, clouds and 9-Beaufort winds (I witnessed my first horizontal hanging flowerpot...seriously, it was blowing THAT hard!) but at least we got to get out of the daily routine, and have a bit of a break.

Coming back, I was faced with my partner's excitement about the Mexican Independence Bicentennial celebrations (and his disappointment that he wouldn't be in his country to see them) and I was specially requested to make his favourite Mexican cookies. These are the things he puts on a pedestal the most when it comes to sweets, and the first time I tried to make them I felt daunted at the idea of trying to recreate something so "sacredly perfect", but it ends up that they are extremely simple, and he even prefers my homemade version to his favourite pre-packed ones!

A Mexican friend had suggested a recipe to me at a party, and after a quick look at a video online I was set to create my own version. We both love cinnamon, so my recipe includes quite a bit of that, but then again I can't think of many people who hate cinnamon, so hopefully that's a good thing! Alternatively (when I've got some in my cupboard, as it's hard to find in Britain, I've only been able to get it online), I sometimes use an amazing Sweet rub mix that NOMU (a South African company that makes amazing spice mixes) produces to substitute the sugar and cinnamon. If you can find it, try it, it's the most heavenly thing! (but in this case just mix a few spoonfuls of it with less than the 1 cup of sugar).

Orejitas (Sugar and cinnamon cookies)
Source: dulcis in fundo (Inspired by Cocina de Yolo)

Makes about 40

500g puff pastry (in a block, not the already rolled kind)
1 cup golden granulated sugar
4 tsp cinnamon
A few tbsp of flour
A bit of butter for the tray (optional)

In a bowl mix the sugar with the cinnamon. In a big and well-floured surface roll out the pastry into a rectangular shape until it's about 4mm thick. Sprinkle with half the sugar mix and roll out more with the rolling pin, making sure the sugar gets embedded into the dough. Turn upside down, sprinkle the other half of the sugar and embed it again into the dough by rolling further.

At the end of this you should have a 2mm-thick long rectangular dough. Grab one of the long sides and start rolling it tightly with your hands towards the centre, creating a little "snail" shape. Stop when you get to the middle, and roll in the same way from the other side. You'll get a very long tightly rolled together "double snail". With a sharp knife cut off 4mm-wide pieces from the rolled dough, and place them on a very lightly buttered tray (or if you have a very good non-stick one, you can skip the butter). You need to make sure that you place them in the tray very near each other, leaving not much space, otherwise they will grow to immense proportions and "uncurl" (I learnt that the hard way the first time I tried to make them!)

Finally, put the tray in a preheated oven and bake at 180°C for 25-30 minutes. They're ready when they're nicely coloured.

Nameday Lemon meringue pie

2010-08-16T18:51:00.002+01:00

No, this is not a special pie called "nameday". Name days are even more important in Greece than birthdays. A name day is the day of the saint whom you're named after, and as it happens, mine falls on one of the most popular days of the year. (Ironically, it's the saint that corresponds to my name that I don't even use anymore, but there's always reason for celebration!) The 15th of August for Greeks equals the end of the summer holidays, and as a matter of fact all of Athens empties in the beginning of August and slowly fills up again after the 15th. Ever since my childhood it signified that "last bit of fun" before the "having to go back to school" and the start of the boring winter routine (everything that is not summer, and especially not summer holidays, we call winter in Greece, despite the fact that winter there is half the winter that winter is in the UK. And everything that is winter is also boring).

So, to go back to this name day, due to an unforeseen friend's wedding I was stuck in London this year, but of course I had to have a little get-together to celebrate. In Greece simply everyone you know comes to your house on your name day, mainly uninvited, as everyone knows the day of the year that your name is celebrated. My name days were always massive feasts of purely desserts, late in the evening, sitting in the courtyard under the vine trees, heavy grapes hanging precariously over our heads. Feeding more than 30 people (who all wanted to try all the cakes) meant at least two days shut in the kitchen, and a whole evening spent cutting, serving and spoon washing (for the next batch of guests). Ah, wonderful days...

Since the weather has been pretty miserable lately, no grapes and no sitting in the garden could be applicable in the London gloominess, but there was dessert to cheer us up, and I decided to make this lemon pie which I had made a week before for my other half's birthday, and was a great success. So great that it all disappeared and he was crying for more (aiming his best "puppy look" at me), so this time I made a big one for the guests, and a tiny individual one just for him. The ingredients are quite enough to do that, so if you've got a small tart case, you can make your individual version for a special someone too!

Lemon meringue pie
Source: Adapted from ASDA magazine

300g ready made shortcrust pastry
4 tbsp cornflour
425g golden caster sugar
Grated zest of 2 lemons
4 large eggs
150ml lemon juice

Preheat the oven to 200°C. Roll out the pastry and use it to line a 20cm tart tin. Prick the base, lay a sheet of foil on the pastry and weigh down with baking beans. Bake for 10 minutes, remove the foil and return to the oven for 5 minutes.

Reduce the oven temperature to 180°C. Put the cornflour, 225g sugar and the zest in a pan. Gradually stir in 250ml water until smooth and blended. Heat until boiling, stirring all the time until it's clear and thick. Remove from the heat and set aside for 15 minutes.

Lightly beat the egg yolks and slowly pour into the cornflour mixture, whisking all the time. Whisk in the lemon juice and then pour into the tart case. Cook in the oven for 15 minutes.

Whisk the egg whites until stiff. Pour in the remaining sugar, 1 tbsp at a time, whisking until stiff again after each addition.

Pipe on to the lemon mixture with a piping bag, starting at the outside edge and working towards the middle. Bake for 20-25 minutes. Leave it in the tin until it cools down, and then put it in the fridge for a couple of hours.

Roasted chicken with pancetta, artichokes and red wine

2010-07-29T22:33:00.003+01:00

These days it's gotten colder and gloomier. Having gotten spoiled by the sun this summer, and enjoying light food due to the heat, I've missed a few all-time favourites. Hence, now the last few days that it's been getting cooler I found the opportunity to turn on the oven, and make this great one-tray dish.

Chicken is the most ever-present staple food in Greece, and the meat of choice for most Greeks. I still get surprised when people come to visit, and anywhere we go, no matter the cuisine, they will order the chicken out of everything else. Sweet and sour in Chinese restaurants, Tikka Masala in Indian, teriyaki in Japanese, whichever way sounds more Greek in Italian places and don't get me started about Lebanese, Turkish, Arabic restaurants and the like, which serve food almost identical to Greek anyway...

I don't have any gripes with chicken. It can be great if cooked properly, and I eat it gladly, but when I have the choice, I'll usually go for some more "exotic" meat. This is due to the fact that usually in Greece chicken is overcooked, overdry, and too chewy, and that heritage follows me closely, to the point that in most unfortunate occasions I've managed to ruin meals myself by being uncertain about its pinkness and overcooking it.

But this recipe...ah...it is amazing. Probably my favourite chicken recipe right now. It can be made with breasts or thighs (if you want extra-guaranteed meaty moistness) and because of the addition of the oil and wine, it doesn't dry up, and tastes wonderfully rich. The potatoes are also impregnated in the bacon and artichoke juices, and along with the wine they become this amazingly tender pieces of heaven!

Try it, seriously... Just drooling thinking about it. Maybe it's not that bad after all to have some "cold" days...

Roasted chicken with pancetta, artichokes and red wine
Source: Adapted from Waitrose Magazine (March/April 2008)

Serves 4

500g baby new potatoes
4 skinless chicken breasts or thighs
4 tbsp paprika
280g jar chargrilled artichokes (I love the ASDA Extra Special ones)
140g pack pancetta cubes
75ml red wine (I usually use my leftover wine, but a fruity red works great)
Pinch of sea salt
Pinch of freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Place the potatoes in a pan filled with water, cover and bring to the boil. Simmer for about 5 minutes, to part-cook them. Meanwhile, season the chicken breasts or thighs with salt and pepper and sprinkle the paprika on them, rubbing it in on all sides. Drain the artichokes into a bowl, reserving half the oil.

Put the pancetta in a large non-stick frying pan over medium heat and fry until it starts to turn golden. Drain the potatoes and add to the pan, with a tablespoon of the artichoke oil, and continue cooking until they start to colour. Add the artichokes and give them a quick stir. Transfer to a roasting tray and arrange the chicken over the top of the potatoes. Pour over the red wine and the remaining artichoke oil and season generously.

Put in the oven and roast for 30 minutes until the chicken is thoroughly cooked, there is no pink meat and the juices run clear. Remove the chicken from the tray and keep warm. Return the potatoes to the oven and continue to cook for 10-15 minutes, until lightly golden. Return the chicken to the tray, turn off the oven and leave to warm up for a few minutes. Share the potatoes between 4 plates, place the chicken on top and drizzle with the pan juices.

I scream, you scream, we all scream for... gelato!

2010-07-25T20:50:00.022+01:00

Ever since I bought my ice cream machine, I've spread my obsession with it all around, making friends and colleagues drool along the way with my descriptions. So the time had come to invite some of them over to my place, to have a cooking and ice cream-making day. As my partner was away getting in touch with his 3-year-old self in Disneyland, I decided to make this a day for the girls, and after some drinks in the pub on Friday I polled everyone and the popular choices were mushroom risotto, a salad (for which I chose and enforced my favourite Roasted butternut squash salad – needless to say no one complained!) and strawberry ice cream.

Although I love strawberry sorbet, I usually won't choose strawberry ice cream if there's anything else on offer, and therefore I had never made any before, so I thought it was a great opportunity to try a recipe by ice cream icon David Lebovitz. My Italian friend did the shopping and brought some wonderfully ripe strawberries along, maybe a bit too old to eat but 100% perfect for ice cream. While frantically making all the food I almost forgot to put half the ingredients in the ice cream machine, but at the end it was all a success, and the gelato had a very fresh and light flavour, since by using just milk it didn't carry the usual heaviness of cream.

We took the food and ice cream to the garden and had a great day discussing food and what we each like to cook from our countries now that we live in Britain (with the group comprising of one Italian, one Brazilian, one Japanese and one Greek, some interesting combinations came up!), and even more, how much it annoys us that the simple ingredients you can find everywhere in each of our home countries need a special trip and a much deeper pocket when you're in the UK (real Italian savoiardi, Japanese sticky rice, Brazilian fresh fruit and Greek pita breads – not these concoctions they sell in the supermarkets here, but REAL Greek pita breads), if they are to be found at all (I haven't found the real Greek pitas in London yet, if anyone knows any place that sells them please please tell me!).

A day later, I find myself with some leftover mascarpone, and a challenge. I don't feel like tiramisú, but what about tiramisú ice cream? Here we go. A bit of internet scouting, and a few minutes later I'm getting somewhere with an experimental recipe, since I had never thought I could make ice cream out of mascarpone. I love tiramisú ice cream, and this one, although heavier than the gelato that I usually prefer, was absolutely yummilicious. Only thing is, I added quite bit of Baileys, so this is actually a Baileys-tiramisú ice cream. If you love Baileys, you will love this, if not, use a bit less... By the way, I barely managed to take some pictures before I devoured it all (I only made a small dose to try it, I'm not that big a piggy!)

The strawberry ice cream was a lot more, so I had some more today, and I discovered that drizzling it with melted dark chocolate (which solidifies after it hits the ice cream!) makes it even yummier... Drool...and let's hope the good weather continues!

Strawberry gelato
Source: Adapted from David Lebovitz

Makes about 900ml

500g ripe strawberries
100g golden granulated sugar
2 tbsp honey
370ml full fat milk
2 teaspoons lemon juice
2 tbsp kirsch

Clean the strawberries, shake them around in a bowl with the sugar and honey and leave to rest for 30 minutes. Pour the whole contents of the bowl in a blender and liquidise. Pass through a thin sieve, squishing out all the flesh with a spoon and scraping around until only the seeds are left. A lot of recipes skip this step and put the strawberries whole, but I think it's really worth going the extra mile, as seedless gelatos are so much smoother and melt-in-the-mouth than the ones containing seeds.

In a big bowl mix together the milk, lemon juice and kirsch, adding the strawberry purée. Pour into your ice cream machine, or if you don't have one put in a freezable container (preferably metal) and freeze for 1 hour, then take out, squash with a fork and refreeze, repeating the process every half an hour or so.

Tiramisú ice cream
Source: Adapted from Tracey's Culinary Adventures

Makes about 900ml

450g mascarpone
125ml double cream
125ml full fat milk
130g sugar
pinch of salt
60ml Kahlua
45ml Baileys

For the chocolate ripple

100g sugar
80ml water
½ cup strongly brewed espresso
50g cocoa powder
½ teaspoon vanilla extract

In a large bowl blend together the mascarpone, milk, cream, sugar, salt, Kahlua and Baileys. Chill the mixture in the fridge while you make the chocolate ripple.

In a saucepan mix together all the ingredients for the ripple over a medium heat. Bring to the boil, stirring constantly, until the sauce thickens and covers the back of a spoon. Remove from the heat, cool, and then chill in the fridge.

Pour the ice cream mix into your ice cream machine, and when it's done, drizzle the chocolate ripple between layers of ice cream when you're transferring it into its freezable container. If you don't have an ice cream machine put the ice cream mix in a freezable container (preferably metal) and drizzle the chocolate ripple also in layers, freeze for 1 hour, then take out, squash with a fork and refreeze, repeating the process every half an hour or so.

A not-so-English summer and a butternut squash salad

2010-07-13T20:41:00.002+01:00

Whomever is complaining this year about there being no summer, please shut up NOW (and don't jinx it for the rest of us!). If you add the "summer" days we've had from 2004 to now, the average is 7. Seriously. Spread out over 3 months. So, right now it's bit after mid-summer (in my biological calendar, which defines summer as 1 June - 31 August) and we've already had more than 7 days of sun, warmth, and - dare I even say it? - "mini heatwave".

Being a dedicated meatterian during the winter, I find that once the summer comes I become mostly a strict icecreamterian with some fish and seafood mixed in (not in the ice-cream, in my food regime). I'm not a big fan of salads as I find them mostly boring, but I love to discover weird combinations, and mix and match things to my taste, most of the times including a favourite ingredient that becomes the key, like parmesan, or - in this case - butternut squash.

Although on a very hot day the last thing I want to do is turn the oven on, when I think of this warm salad I drool, and I make up for the extra heat in the kitchen by disappearing quickly out of it as soon as the squash is done and the salad is plated, enjoying it in the cool garden or living room.

I had found this recipe in an old Tesco Magazine and had cut it out, but I didn't like some things in it (like the red onion and the lack of dressing) so I adapted it a bit more to my taste. This has become my all-time favourite salad, and that's saying a lot, coming from me. Try this with a chilled glass of fresh lemonade on a hot day, it's absolutely dreamy...

Roasted butternut squash salad
Source: Adapted from Tesco Magazine

Serves 2

½ butternut squash
¼ tsp chilli powder
A pinch of cinnamon
A pinch of nutmeg
A pinch of salt
3 tbsp olive oil
3 tbsp maple syrup
1 bag rocket
A handful of pumpkin seeds
A handful of dried cranberries
60g goats' cheese (I prefer Soignon)

Preheat the oven to 220°C. Cut the butternut squash in small cubes and toss in a tray with 1 tbsp of olive oil, 1 tbsp of maple syrup, the chilli powder, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg. Roast for 35 minutes or until browned and caramelised.

In a small bowl mix the remaining 2 tbsp of olive oil with the 2 tbsp of maple syrup and set aside. Place the rocket leaves on a plate, add the squash hot from the oven, sprinkle the pumpkin seeds and cranberries on top, add the goats' cheese in small pieces and drizzle with the dressing. Serve before the squash has the chance to cool down, this will make the goats' cheese slightly melt, which gives the whole salad a wonderful texture.

Summertime and strawberry pleasures

2010-07-08T22:48:00.135+01:00

Ever since I moved to Britain and discovered the amazing quality of English strawberries, I have been praising them to everyone around the world. Sure, strawberries are a big favourite everywhere, but you've really got to taste the ones in Britain, when in season, to experience the difference. They are somehow perfect; fragrant, small, shiny little things, that fill your mouth with juicy sweetness. I love them, and every winter I can't wait for the summer to come for one more reason, so that I can have my most beloved fruit. I refuse to have them out of season, and always aim to find new varieties to try every year. My trick is to always smell them, and choose the smallest ones, those are the ones that I always find the most tasty. If they don't smell amazing, chances are they won't be, and these massive beasts that look more like golf balls than strawberries always make me suspicious that something else is going on under their skin...

After an unusually cold winter (the worst in 30 years) this summer arrived surprisingly early, and English strawberries benefited from the extra sunshine and joined us earlier than usual so I've been enjoying them for quite a while now. One of my favourite quick desserts is to clean some, throw them in a bowl with some good vanilla ice cream and smash some shop-bought mini meringues on top, drizzling chocolate syrup over everything (including, frequently, my fingers and the whole kitchen counter).

It's rare that strawberries will stay long in our fridge, but in cases when we've been away and I haven't managed to devour them all, and they've become and bit slushy and don't look to die for, it's always a good opportunity to make one of my favourite sorbets, adding a Greek sweet dessert wine that I had brought back a few years ago from the island of Santorini, which gives it a great little flavour twist.

This week I happened to come across some strawberries that were a bit "unhappy", but since they were only 60p I grabbed the opportunity to adopt them for a sorbet, along with some fresher ones for a few strawberry tarts, which are also yummy and not too difficult to make. You can make one big tart, but I prefer individual ones as we're only two people in the house, and I can make as many as I want this way. With my consumption of strawberries, I'm always two kilos heavier at the end of every summer (not from the strawberries themselves, but from what I make with them!), so I try to cut down by making a few portions, and this recipe works equally well for one big tart or with the ingredients divided into two.

As I'm writing this, it's one of the hottest days I can remember, and the smell of jasmine is coming in through the window from our tiny 2x2 garden. Despite its tininess it contains a gigantic magnolia tree, half a plum tree (the rest belongs to the next door neighbours), a massive jasmine bushy mess, a rose tree and some bamboo. So I'm starting to consider what kind of dessert I can make with jasmine flowers, I've thought of a few combinations but if you've got any tested ideas send them along. It's so huge, and there's so many flowers it's a pity to let them go to waste. And then, the wait starts for the first plums and the wonderful things I can make with them...

Strawberry tarts
Source: dulcis in fundo

Makes two individual tarts (9cm in diameter)

For the pastry

125g plain flour
75g cold butter, cut into small chunks
½ tbsp sugar
1 small egg, beaten (if your eggs are too big just use the yolk only)

For the filling

5 strawberries
2 tbsp butter
¼ cup of sugar
1 cups full fat milk
1 egg
1½ tbsp corn flour
½ tsp vanilla extract
A pinch of salt

For the pastry, mix the flour with the butter and sugar in a food processor until it starts to resemble breadcrumbs. Add the egg and mix again until everything is incorporated. Shape into a ball, and flatten between two sheets of cling film, rolling it a few centimetres bigger than the size of your tart cases (it makes enough for two 9cm tart cases, and I had some leftovers, which I froze for another time). Unstick one piece of cling film from the dough and lower into the tart cases, pressing carefully and filling in the gaps. Roll the rolling pin on top of the tart cases to "cut" the surplus dough, pierce everywhere with a fork and chill in the fridge for 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 200°C. Line the tart cases with baking paper and fill with baking beans (or rice or normal beans). Bake for 15 minutes, then take off the paper and beans and return to the oven until browned.

While the tart cases are cooling, prepare the cream filling by blending the sugar, eggs and corn flour with a handheld mixer. Warm up the milk with the salt in a small pan until it bubbles lightly, stirring every now and then with a wooden spoon, and slowly pour a few spoonfulls of milk into the egg and sugar mix, blending constantly with the mixer. Pour the mixture back into the milk pan, and carefully and quickly stir over a low hear, until it thickens (but careful, you don't want scrambled eggs! Of course in the not-so-rare case that this happens, pour everything into a blender, and then pass through a sieve and back into the milk pan).

After a couple of minutes, pass through a sieve to ensure that no chunks have formed, add the butter and vanilla extract, stir until everything is incorporated and leave to cool. Cover with cling film, pushing it down to stick on the surface of the cream, as you don't want a "skin" to form while it's cooling, and put in the fridge until it has cooled down (about 30-40 minutes). When both the tart cases and cream are totally cooled, fill the cases, adding thinly sliced strawberries on top, in a fan shape.

Strawberry and Vin Santo sorbet
Source: dulcis in fundo

Makes about 800ml

190g sugar
200g water
200g ripe strawberries
3 big chunks of lemon peel (equal to the peel of 1/3 of a lemon)
1 cinnamon stick
1 star anise
2 tbsp lemon juice
A big glug of Vin Santo (according to taste, I put 3 tbsp in mine)

Put the water, sugar, cinnamon, star anise and lemon peel in a saucepan and warm up until the sugar has melted. Boil for 1 minute and set aside to cool. After it's cooled a bit add the lemon juice, move it to a suitable container (I use a plastic measuring jug) and put it in the freezer, so it can cool quickly.

Clean the strawberries and wash thoroughly. Put in a blender and liquidise. Pass through a thin sieve, squishing out all the flesh with a spoon and scraping around until only the seeds are left. A lot of recipes skip this step and put the strawberries whole, but I think it's really worth going the extra mile, as the seedless sorbets are so much smoother and melt-in-the-mouth than the ones containing seeds.

Remove the cinnamon stick, star anise and lemon peel from the sugar syrup and add the strawberry pulp. Put in the freezer again until cool. Pour into your ice cream machine, or if you don't have one put in a freezable container (preferably metal) and freeze for 1 hour, then take out, scrape/squash with a fork and refreeze, repeating the process every half an hour or so.

Coffee cupcakes

2010-06-28T21:05:00.001+01:00

The last few years have brought a huge trend for macarons and cupcakes (at least in Britain) which I pretty much didn't subscribe to. Most macarons I had tried were pretty chewy and tasteless (until I realised that you have to have the ones from Ladurée to be able to tell why they are so exceptional!) and most cupcakes looked to me like something geared towards 3-year-olds, with their radioactive Technicolor looks and Barbie-doll decorations (come on, who needs a butterfly on top of their "small muffin"?). However, there are some that break the mould, and I discovered a few interesting cupcake recipes in the exceptional book Red Velvet Chocolate Heartache (which I've written about in a more than a few past posts).

The book calls these Cappuccino cupcakes, but sometimes too much embellishment is not really needed, and since these don't contain any real coffee (let alone any cappuccino!) I've converted my adapted recipe into just Coffee cupcakes. Another worry that I always have with cupcakes is the amount of butter and the extreme sweetness of the icing, which (although I have a relatively sweet tooth) I always found too much for my taste. This version uses mascarpone and less butter than the average, which makes a much creamier and lighter icing, and I reduced the sugar in the recipe, upping at the same time the amount of mascarpone, which made the result even less sweet, and really well-balanced.

After icing them, I put them in the fridge for the icing to set, and I discovered they they are great even cool, served with some vanilla ice-cream. I took some to the office and they were a great success, so I guess I'll be changing my mind about cupcakes, at least about the non-Technicolor variety! They look great, they're very light and moist, and they go fantastically well with some iced coffee...

Coffee cupcakes
Source: Red Velvet Chocolate Heartache

Makes 12

2 eggs
160g caster sugar
200g peeled and finely grated sweet potato
100g flour
100g ground almonds
2 tsp baking powder
¼ tsp salt
3 tbsp Camp chicory and coffee essence

For the icing

50g cold butter
170g icing sugar
60g mascarpone
2 tsp Camp chicory and coffee essence

Whisk the eggs and sugar in a large bowl for 5 minutes, add the grated sweet potato and whisk again to incorporate. Add the flour, ground almonds, baking powder, salt and coffee essence and mix again.

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Line a 12-hole muffin tin with paper cupcake cases, spoon the mix into the cases and bake for 20 minutes.

For the icing, cut the cold butter into cubes and whisk until it is pale and fluffy. Add 100g of the icing sugar and whisk to create a paste, beating for an extra 10 seconds. Add the mascarpone and coffee essence, along with the rest of the icing sugar, and mix by hand with a wooden spoon, until everything is incorporated. Keep the icing in the fridge until the cupcakes are out of the oven and have cooled down. After the cupcakes are completely cool, put the icing in a piping bag and decorate, adding a chocolate coffee bean on top of each cupcake.