Experiments in the Test Kitchen! It is absolutely my favorite laboratory environment =) This weekend I hung out with Friend and his wife and made a 4 course Greek dinner. We’re doing a huge dinner party in October – Mediterranean cuisine. There will be four chefs; Friend, the wife, the wife’s brother-in-law, and myself. Each of us will prepare 4 dishes from countries of the Mediterranean. I’ve been systematically going through the countries that I’m interested in cooking from and testing out recipes on them. This week was Greece!
I made:
-- Spanakopita (Greek spinach pie)
-- Greek meatballs in red sauce
--Chickpea balls
--Date and Walnut Phyllo Rolls in Greek yogurt and Honey
I had a minor timing issue with the Spanakopita but overall everything came out deliciously. I’m taking their word about the meatballs since I’m strict vegetarian. I stuck close to the recipes for everything except the Spanakopita. That recipe is entirely my own.
I also picked up some random cheeses as well:
-- French yogurt cheese with sundried tomato (France) – interesting, a touch bitter but nicely balanced and very smooth.
--Roomkas Gouda (Netherlands)– nice and creamy with an almost cheddar taste
--Caciocavallo (Puglia/Italy) – hard cheese, akin to parmesan but not quite as intense
--Arina (Aged Goat Gouda of Holland) – I used this in the Spanakopita along with Feta and Ricotta. Then we just ate the rest of it. Soo, soo delicious. I really flavorful take on gouda.
I love being in the kitchen. Cue barefoot jokes. For the record, I wear heels.
Greek is my FAVORITE all time food. I LOVE greek food. My mom's ex was greek so I grew up eating traditionally prepared greek food yummy.. have you ever tried stuffed grape leaves? i could live off those and the feta cheese pies. I don't particularly like spinach but if they are made right I will eat them but I prefer the cheese ones. so it's settled if i ever paddle across you're cooking greek lol I will bring the cheese.. the feta overseas is orgasmic compared to what you get in the states yea you may have ended my constipation lol (read my post so that makes sense)
ReplyDelete::laughs:: Excellent. It's a deal. I'll even figure out how to make the cheese pies just for you =) I made this really amazing dessert a couple weeks back, Galaktoboureko, have you ever had it? It's like a semolina custard, honey, phyllo dessert. To die for.
ReplyDelete::goes over to your blog::
I am sure I have but names and me don't get along too well. I know what things are when I see/taste them mostly because I grew up eating this food as "normal" and we just made up our own names for stuff so I never really learned the proper names of things because the proper names were just too difficult to pronounce lol
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