Kalofagas - Greek Food & Beyond

Windows in Niagara Falls by Jamie Kennedy

Peter Minakis — Tue, 15 May 2012 15:10:45 +0000

Jamie Kennedy has long been associated with local, seasonal cooking in the Toronto area (some say he led the movement) and now he’s spread his wings to Niagara Falls where he treated some lucky guests to a dinner atop of the Sheraton Hotel’s Windows restaurant overlooking both the American and Canadian Falls.

Chef Jamie Kennedy with personal assistant Jo Dickins

Born and raised in Toronto, Kennedy has cooked for 37 years, now runs the Gilead Cafe (our meeting point before driving down to Niagara Falls, has a successful catering biz, JK ROM and once ran the Jamie Kennedy Wine Bar. Throughout his career, Kennedy has been dedicated to using local, seasonal, organic and sustainable ingredients and what better place than to showcase local (Canadian) ingredients than Niagara Falls?

Visitors to Toronto will usually to include a day trip to Niagara Falls to look in awe at the sheer power that is “The Falls” and perhaps visit one or two of the wineries in the now thriving Vineland of Niagara. Jamie Kennedy has teamed with wine aficionado and esteemed writer of all things Oeno to pair the food with local Niagara wines.

Chef Kennedy will be doing the Toronto to Niagara run on the QEW on an almost daily basis but he’s entrusted the helm of the kitchen to like-minded chef Ross Midgley who shares Kennedy’s food philosophy. The moment you arrive in Niagara Falls you hear the roar of the enormous amounts of water constantly falling and once the elevator doors opened to the Windows restaurant, you are treated to one of the best views overlooking The Falls. The American Falls are directly across and the Canadian Falls (horseshoe shaped) are south and to the right.

Our evening began with a Spring Salad of Soiled Reputation (from the farm of the Manic Organic fame) with Easter radishes and sorrel vinaigrette.

Next up was a Spring Minestrone with braised rabbit and an herb pesto that perked up the soup when you swirled it in.

The main was a duck duo of confit and seared duck leg served with schmaltz (fat) potatoes and a sour cherry glaze.

Dessert was a camomile tea spiked with Amaretto and served with a panna cotta topped with a rhubarb gelee and more delicious Niagara wines for those that lingered waiting for the lights to shine on Niagara in the Spring night.

Having driven back to Toronto and passing through the more touristy Clifton Hill (wax museums, etc), one also passes the diner’s wasteland of roadhouses and “food so dumb that high school students can cook it” restaurants, its hard to believe that Jamie Kennedy’s Windows will do anything other than succeed.

Niagara Falls was screaming for a restaurant for the meticulous gourmand and Jamie Kennedy has answered the call.

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© 2012, Peter Minakis. All rights reserved. If you are not reading this post in a feed reader or at http://kalofagas.ca then the site you are reading is illegally publishing copyrighted material. Contact me at truenorth67 AT gmail DOT COM. All recipes, text and photographs in this post are the original creations & property of the author.

Greek Food Gazette 13/05/2012

Peter Minakis — Sun, 13 May 2012 12:10:19 +0000

photo by Vicky Stamateas

Discover Toronto’s Greektown on the Danforth every Saturday from 11:30am – 2:30pm
A journey to the cherry orchards of Pella
The first Acropolis Half-Marathon takes place on May 20th
New York Times invites you on a Greek wine adventure with some recommendations
Feature Greek island: Amorgos
Tasty tips to enjoy mange tout or…fassaolakia

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Floriniotiki Strapetsada With Feta & Kebapia

Peter Minakis — Sat, 12 May 2012 13:10:02 +0000

To understand where this dish comes from is to first get a hang of what Strapetsada is: basically a scrambled egg dish containing grated tomatoes, olive oil and crumbled Feta and often eaten as a meze or late evening Greek dinner. There are may variances to this dish but those are the basics. Like with any cuisine there are also regional versions of dishes applied to the standards and strapetsada is not immune to this.

My parents come from the region of Florina (northwest of Thessaloniki) in northern Greece and proudly part of Greece’s province of Macedonia. The red “shepherd’s peppers” are enjoyed/eaten by the denizens of this region and they are called “Piperies Florinis” or Florina Peppers throughout Greece. For as long as I can recall, peppers have been at our family table from pickled peppers to stuffed peppers, fried peppers in the winter and charred peppers on the open flame that are peeled and simply dressed with olive oil and sea salt. Piperies Florinis (Florina Peppers) also have the distinction of being an appellation product (DOP) where only red peppers from Florina may be called as such.

air-drying Piperies Florinis, Amynteo

One uncle would even bring small chilli peppers with him to weddings: he’d snip some into whatever dish was being served. The folks from Florina love their peppers and if you choose to visit this beautiful region in the summer, you’ll see stringed red peppers hanging outside of homes, air-drying to be preserved for cooking in the cold winter months.

The love of peppers extends to egg dishes like the nationwide popular Strapetsada with sweet and hot peppers being added into the mix. Much like the usual strapetsada, ripe, sweet tomatoes are grated into a skillet and simmer with olive oil until reduced but peppers are first fried and softened then the tomato gets added here along with onions. Once the vegetables have cooked down and the sauce has thickened the crumbled Feta is added and finally the eggs. Most scramble the eggs but here I chose to gently poach two eggs (matia) into the sauce making for a gorgeous presentation and the taste of oozing egg yolk with the peppered tomato size and tart Feta makes for some wonderful flavour contrasts in the mouth.

photo courtesy of Florinapast

The finishing touch to this dish is my addition of a kebapi(a) which is what the rest of Greece would call a Soutzoukaki(a). Visitors to Florina will see lots of grill houses offering roasted peppers and an array of grilled meat, including kebapia. This sausage-shaped meat rissoles share same name given to these in the rest of the Balkans with the name having more to do with Ottoman 400 year rule than a Slavic influence. Kebab refers to meat that is cooked on or near open flame.

from the Kalofagas grill pit

The Turks can thank the Persians for kebabs and it’s important to note the differences in cooking kebabs: in Turkey and the middle east the meat (often lamb) will be shaped by hand onto to flat skewers and suspended over hot coals and cooked to perfection without the meat ever falling off! In Greece and throughout the Balkans, the Kepapia are grilled directly on hot grate – offering more flavour by way of searing.

My take on Floriniotiki Strapetsada is a hearty meal or great as a meze offering and definitely mopping-up material for good, crusty bread - “μακα-μακα” for those from this region of Greece.

Floriniotiki Strapetsada With Feta & Kebapia (Φλωρινιωτικη Στραπατσαδα με Κεμπαπia)

(serves 4)

1/2 cup olive oil

1 medium onion, diced

1 green bell pepper, diced

2-3 hot banana peppers, diced or sliced

6-8 ripe plum tomatoes, passed through a box grater

approx. 1 cup crumbled Feta cheese

4 large eggs

salt and pepper to taste

pinch of sugar

dried Greek oregano

Kebapia recipe

Using one large skillet or two smaller ones, add some olive oil over medium heat and add your hot peppers and lightly saute until just softened and remove and reserve. Now add the remaining oil, the onions, sweet peppers and sweat for 5-6 minutes or until softened then add the grated tomatoes and reserved fried hot peppers, season with salt and pepper and bring up to a simmer (medium) and cook-down for another 5-6 minutes or until the sauce has thickened and the water has cooked away.
In the meantime, you may fry-off your kebab (I use this master recipe for my kebapia) in a little oil and reserve/keep warm. Add the crumbled Feta into the pan (s) then drop the eggs, place the kebap in the center and reduce the heat to medium-low. Season the eggs with salt and cover the pan to gently poach and steam the eggs until the whites are just cooked (you want the yolks to still be runny).
Sprinkle some dried Greek oregano and serve the Floriniotiki Strapatsada directly from the skillets to the table with good crusty bread with Tsipouro(with anise) or a local Amynteon Xinomavro like the Alpha Estate Rose.

μακα-μακα

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Tyler Florence’s Fried Chicken

Peter Minakis — Mon, 07 May 2012 15:26:05 +0000

I read just last week that fried chicken is “trending”…did it ever go away? I think what is really happening is a movement to fry more at home rather than rely on restaurants and fast food eateries to handle what some consider “heavy lifting” in terms of cooking. Frying food is intimidating, it’s messy and if you don’t know what you’re doing it may result in terrible food.

Fried chicken at home is one of the easiest and most satisfying dishes and my last venture occurred late December when I shared Art Smith’s (of Oprah fame) fried chicken recipe. At the time of posting that recipe it was the best fried chicken recipe I had ever tried at home – until this one. The new “go-to recipe” for fried chicken is Tyler Florence’s.

It seems that many blogs with a bent towards SEO optimization have relied on “catch words” to drive traffic to their recipes with “best ever” or “greatest” recipe proclamations. This fried chicken recipe comes from Tyler’s Ultimate TV series and like most of the dishes he presented – they were slightly over the top, comforting dishes that definitely were worthy of “ultimate” status.

I present to you Tyler’s fried chicken recipe, similar to Art Smith’s but different and in my opinion, better: both recipes brine the chicken pieces, both use a similar seasoning for the flour, both use buttermilk and both fry the chicken in shallow oil for about 7 minutes a side. Paula (Dragon’s Kitchen) and I once again fried chicken together and we agreed that: where the two recipes differ is subtle yet very important with the two resulting fried chicken: Art Smith also has the chicken soaking in buttermilk then the chicken is dredged in seasoned flour followed by another dredging of flour before hitting the hot oil for frying.

The result garners crisp, flavourful fried chicken but it’s a little thick for my tastes. Now take the Tyler Florence recipe: after he brines the chicken they get dredged in seasoned flour, dunked in butter milk once and then there’s a second dredging of seasoned flour – less buttermilk and less flour clinging to the chicken. The coating on the chicken leaves a thinner crust without sacrificing crunch, flavour or juicyness.

The fried chicken still gets fried for 7 minutes/side, the coating holds up well to the time in the hot oil and you’ll get a lovely golden, crispy skin. Manna from the southern US! Where Tyler’s recipe is a little off is in placing the fresh herbs in the oil while frying the chicken. The result was blackened herbs that did little to flavour the oil and definitely not for use as a garnish. I recommend frying bunches of herbs after the chicken and placing on top as crisp garnish.

If you want to add your own touch to the dish, choose your favourite herbs & spices in the flour mix: could be lemon-pepper, oregano, sage, Old Bay, paprika or Szechuan peppercorns, pinch of curry blend or cumin. Your choice of hot sauces abound but my fave is Sriracha. This Ultimate Fried Chicken was accompanied by some corn bread from another Food Network star, Ina Garten. It is my favourite cornbread recipe with its balance of sweet and savory.

Ultimate Fried Chicken by Tyler Florence

(serves 4)

1 whole chicken, cut into 10 pieces

Brine

cold water

1/4 cup salt

Seasoned flour

3 cups all-purpose flour

2-3 tsp. salt

2 Tbsp. garlic powder

2 Tbsp. onion powder

2 Tbsp. sweet paprika

1 tsp. cayenne pepper

1 tsp. black pepper

1/2 tsp. dried thyme

1/2 tsp. dried sage

1/2 tsp. dried rosemary

approx. 2 cups buttermilk

2-3 Tbsp. Sriracha (or your favourite hot sauce)

oil for frying

handful of fresh thyme, fresh sage and rosemary

Place your chicken pieces in a bowl and enough enough water to cover by 1/2 inch. Remove chicken pieces and add salt and stir until dissolved. Now add back the chicken, coveer and place in your fridge overnight.
The next day, drain your chicken and pat-dry. In a large bowl add the flour and seasonings and stir with a fork. In another bowl add the buttermilk and Sriracha and stir until blended.
Dredge your chicken in the flour then dip in the buttermilk and dip once again in the flour then reserve while you heat your oil. Add about 1 1/2 inches of oil in a deep skillet or cast iron pan and bring up to a temperature of 350F.
Gently place about 3-4 pieces of chicken into the hot oil and fry for about 7 minutes per side then reserve on a cooling rack (important to do this so that the coating doesn’t soften). Fry the remaining pieces of chicken in batches and finally fry-off your fresh herbs until just crisp and serve alongside/on top of your fried chicken with some lemon wedges.
Ina Garten’s cornbread is a perfect accompaniment to this southern fried delight.

Next up: may try Thomas Keller’s fried chicken recipe from his Ad Hoc book.

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Greek Food Gazette 06/05/2012

Peter Minakis — Sun, 06 May 2012 13:19:40 +0000

A Frenchman, a Greek and a Turk rate some of the market’s leading yogurt brands
This article may help you decide which Greek island to visit this summer
Discover Greektown on the Danforth, a walking tour of one of North America’s most vibrant Greek neighborhoods
Santorini, the “jewel of the Mediterranean” appears to be avoiding the “Greek crisis”
Bargains galore to be found on mainland Greece, Thessaloniki, Athens or Peloponnese
An interview with Taxim (of Chicago) Chef David Schneider

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