I am a big boy. When I did my review of my Greek Table, I admitted that I had only read half of it. It was the salads, sauces, breads and appetizers section of the book. I was not really inspired and didn’t want to invest more. But, with our meeting coming up tomorrow, I had to make an effort to try something.
This last weekend, it was nasty. My wife had been gone all weekend and I wanted to do have a nice dinner prepared for Sunday night. I picked out a few recipes to prepare a Greek dinner. While it was raining buckets, it seemed like a stew night to me. The picture below is the beginnings of Greek Beef Stew.
What you see is fennel and red onion being sauteed together. Beside the beef it had red wine, cinnamon, thyme, rosemary, carrots, allspice, molasses, honey, tomato paste and prunes. What else have you got? I have to say that it wasn’t my favorite but it was definitely hearty and unique.
I made the stew to go with what I really wanted to make. That was a squash pie in-between some phyllo. We have had several packages of that hanging out since the failed phyllo pizza experiment. This recipe had a phyllo sandwiched with walnuts. The filling was made with butternut squash, raisins, ricotta cheese, cinnamon, clove and onion. There was phyllo placed on top and baked. It kind of came out as like a mild pumpkin pie.
Finally, I made a spinach salad for the second time. It has feta, Olives, spinach, red onion, oranges dressed with Olive oil and lemon juice. Clearly I liked it if I have made it twice now. We had to toast with some Ouzo I bought for some future recipes and a Pinot Noir that paired beautifully.
All of the recipes call for things like Greek olive Oil, Greek Wine and Greek molasses. Where I am at, I would be lucky to have a few choices but Greek is certainly not likely. So, I made do with what I could find. It is hard for me to imagine a better pairing of Oregon Pinot with these exotic recipes.
This meal was some work. Besides having to go to the store for ingredients that I don’t normally keep around like fennel I started at one and most of the cooking was done by four. I wasn’t completely done until six which included doing most of the dishes and setting the table. So, it wasn’t a meal for a weeknight.
So, I probably judged the book and a cuisine prematurely. I really didn’t get into the heart of Greek food even with my experimentation. The seafood and the small plates. I sure went through a lot of olive oil on this dinner, about a quart. My next attempt will probably include spanakopita and some sort of fish. I have got to find something to put Ouzo in.
End Your Programming Routine: I guess the lesson here is that you can’t judge a book by the cover. I didn’t think that I was going to like it, but because I was forced by necessity to try, I found the silver lining. That is an experience that can span a lot of different genres and activities. Ultimately, I don’t think that I am ever going to crave Greek food, but I can probably find something intriguing to try.
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