Tyropita

I've noticed that you mostly like my postings on Greek cuisine. I'm really happy I can share my recipes with you and I always post food we actually eat in my family. Nothing fancy or cut out of magazines. Simple homefood.
Today, I have another traditional Greek recipe for you: tyropita. It is something like bread with feta cheese.A super easy snack. All you need, is to mix the following simple ingredients together and bake it!

You will need:
2 eggs
2 cups of lukewarm milk

3 cups of all purpose flour
9gr dried yeast 

350-400 gr feta cheese in crumbles
1-2 pinches of salt (the feta is salty, so, use salt to taste)
pepper
olive oil
fresh thyme οr oregano or rosemary

• Preheat the oven at 108-200 C.
• Mix the flour and the yeast. 
• In another ball beat the eggs with the milk and pour it in the flour mixture. Mix well.
• Add the feta and the seasoning.
• Brush olive oil in a baking tray and pour in the mixture. Drizzle olive oil and thyme on top.
• Leave it to rest for 30' .

Then, bake for 20-30', until golden.  

Enjoy!

tip 1: as you see in the picture above I have used all three kinds of herbs on different parts of the pie, leaving one plain.

tip 2: you can add chopped olives on top and have an olive and feta kind of bread

tip 3: you can add onion slices on top

Pumpkin Cake with olive oil

Last weekend I made a pumpkin cake and small ones for my friend's girls. It's a moist, rich in flavour cake, quite versitile with  the option to add dried fruit, such as raisins, or any nuts you like, such as walnuts. I love the fact that instead of butter, it's made entirely of olive oil! 

I drizzled a simple lemon frosting and lemon zest on top, which truly make a difference....and here it is!

Simone has asked for the recipe, so, here it is :

250g pumpkin, grated
1 1/2 cups of sugar
3 cups of self raising flour
1 tsp of salt
1 tsp of soda
1tsp lemon zest
1tbsp cinammon

1 cup of olive oil
2 eggs

Mix all the dry ingredients.
Beat the eggs in another bowl, then add the olive oil.
Pour the liquid mixture into the dry one, mixing with a spoon. The end product should be dry, something like a soft dough.
Pour in a tin (no need to butter it) and bake at 180 C, for an hour, until baked inside.

Pour over the icing, made with icing sugar and lemon juice.

GOOD LUCK!

My 10' spagghetti

This is what I cook when I have a craving for pasta and no time at all to prepare a sauce: spagghetti with feta cheese. It is a pasta dish we cook in my family (I don't know if there are many families that make it, I know some for sure though) and you only need spagghetti, feta cheese and olive oil:

1. We boil the spagghetti for 8' and drain it . 

2.We put olive oil on the pan and when it sizzles, we add the drained spagghetti and some crumbled feta cheese. 

3.We give it a stir and we serve. 

That's it! 10'  tops!Talk about fast food!

However, to make this dish more 'gourmet', I have added two more ingredients to the basic recipe- if one can call it 'recipe': mushrooms and spring onions.They really make a difference.

Here is what I do:

When the spagghetti is ready and drained, I put 2-3 tbsp olive oil, the spring onions and the mushrooms in slices in the pan for a few minutes. 

 

I add the drained spagghetti and some feta cheese in crumbles. 

I stir until the cheese melts and I serve with fresh, ground pepper. 

You should give it a go!

There is still time to enter my TWO GIVEAWAYS! 

Here are the links:

 olive oil giveaway 

 earbud pouch giveaway

Looking forward to your entries!

 

Koulourakia with olive oil and orange

In my previous olive picking and a giveaway posting I mentioned that in Greece we use olive oil in baking, too, apart from cooking. This caused some interesting reactions by readers who'd like to learn more about it.
I have already posted two Greek traditional dessert recipes (loukoumades and fanouropita) that olive oil is a basic ingredient, however, I'm going to present a new one, especially since Michelle  has asked for it. So, I'm going to show you how to make Greek orange koulourakia. 

 As in almost every Greek recipe, the ingredients are simple, basic and few. 

 ORANGE KOULOURAKIA

(makes 25-27)

60 grams olive oil

60 grams orange juice

200 grams all-purpose flour

70 grams icing sugar

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1tsp  orange zest 

The process is equally dead simple:

1. Put the dry ingredients in a bowl. Add the liquids. Mix with a spoon in a soft but not sticky dough.

          tip:  Don't overmix, just enough to combine the ingredients. If the dough gets sticky on your fingers, just add 1-2 tbsp of flour, and simply mix again.They should be enough. If you add too much flour and you mix too much koulourakia will be hard instead of crunchy. 

2. Cool for 30-60' in the fridge.

3. Roll the dough into koulourakia as seen in the picture above and place them on a baking tray covered with baking paper.

tip: don't put too close together, as they double in size

4.Bake at 170-180 C, for about 15-20', until golden.

They're perfect for a cup of tea, a healthy snack for kids (we always give koulouria to kids in Greece throughout the day), or even good to go with a cup of milk. And don't let me even mention the wonderful orangey smell that the house gets filled with while baking!I really hope you try it out and I'm looking forward to your feedback!

  

And remember my giveaway! 

The deadline is on the 10th February.

In this posting you can find all the details on how to enter!

Looking forward to your comments!

Olive picking and a GIVEAWAY

The heart of winter. 

It's the time of year that olives are ready.

Can I describe it? Certainly. 
I have just two words for you: tough work.

As romantic as it may seem, olive picking is not. 
Yes, we practically 'live' in the olive grove as we go early in the morning and leave just before sunset.However, there are hardly the perfect weather conditions for it: cold, rain, frost and wind are no friends to olive pickers. Of course there are times when there is sun and it's warm, in which case it's a feast! You can only hear the birds, bells of sheep that are gazing or even the distant voices of olive pickers in nearby groves. Sometimes it's so quiet that even insects can be heard.It's the time that the sun makes this rare silver green colour of the olive tree leaves shine in the breeze. It's then that I take my camera and start picking photos instead...

Our olive grove. What a striking difference of the grass green and the olive green...

Olive picking is really hard work. When I get back home after a day's work my body aches aaaall over. Imagine how this is when it goes on everyday for weeks. On top, olive pickers are always in stress since they need to make the best use of the weather and the short ammount of hours during winter daytime.

After the olives are picked, we make sure we leave no twigs or bad olives that will inevidably destroy the oil's flavour.  It's quite time consuming, but it's worhtwhile. I like dipping my hand in this pile! The feeling is awsome!

Not only is it hard, but a dangerous work, too! During the olive picking period the hospitals get filled with people who have accidents. The most common is that they fall off  ladders and they break legs, hands, or backs. Unfortunately, I  had this experience with my father falling off the ladder and ending up with his both hands broken- nothing romantic about it. I can assure you!

Peacefulness...

Yet, all this pain, effort and exhaustion simply dissapear the moment the first golden drops of the new olive oil that have just come home from 'liotrivi' (the place where olives are pressed) touch a slice of homemade toasted bread.It's the highest reward an olive picker can get. Not to mention the best snack to take with them to the grove the next day!

The healthiest snack

 How does fresh olive oil taste like? Heavenly!
 It has got a light greenish colour and as it matures, it gets clearer and turns yellow. Of course it's flavour also changes getting deeper and it loses these fresh, fruity tones to an extent.

This year our oil was of an amazing quality (not every year is the same, as the weather conditions greatly affect it)! It has the most subtle fruity taste and I just can't stop dipping chunks of bread in a bowl with olives and olive oil- it's my favourite lunch and supper these days. 

Another version I like is bread, a pinch of salt, olive olive and fresh thyme: an explosion of flavours in my mouth!
 

 My dad has a spoonful of olive oil everyday before breakfast: a bomb of vitamines! And of course all kind of food gets more exciting drizzled with olive oil. In Greece olive oil is in our everyday diet and we use it everywhere. There is no salad dressing without olive oil in it, it's the most basic ingredient! We always use it in cooking, in baking, even in desserts, practically everywhere!

A green river of olive trees flows into the blue sea in my father's village

So, to celebrate this year's harvest,
I'm happy to announce a giveaway!!!!!!!!
A small bottle of our fresh olive oil along with ideas how to enjoy it, will be sent over to you!

What do you need to do to enter?
2 options:

1. Just leave a comment on this posting and become a follower 
 of my blog (in the case that you aren't already)

If you would like to double your chances to win:

  2. Spread the news to other bloggers either by linking to this posting  or by reffering to it in one of your postings 
(in which cases make sure to let me know)

The giveaway will be open until 10th February.
The winner will be announced on the 13th February.

Hoping that I challenged your appettite enough!
Looking forward to your entries!

Loukoumades

My cold persists. I woke up with a bonus: sore throat. So, my only comfort today was my breakfast. To help it go away, I had to eat some honey. So I thought, why eat it plain? The occassion calls for honey puffs (loukoumades). And honey puffs it was!

Yummy! Done in 1/2 hour!

250gr plain flour

2gr dried yeast

a pinch of salt

warm water
plenty of olive oil for deep frying

Just mix them well until you have a thick consistency as in the photo. Leave it for 1/2 hour in a warm place to rise. In a pan put plenty of good olive oil. When it's really hot, deep fry spoonfulls of the mixture until golden. Dry on kitchen paper twice and serve with honey, groung walnuts, and cinammon. 

This traditional Greek sweet is usually made in winter, where the extra calories are more appreciated and the indredients are in abundance. Honey, walnuts and cinammon are great for our health. My grandma used to make it when she baked bread. She would keep some of the mixture to make loukoumades. I hope you try the recipe.

Enjoy!

Black pearls

It's the time of year that my good friend Sophia gives me organic Vostizza currants, or as I prefer to see them, black pearls.

I can't describe their sweetness and flavour!!!!!!

Having so much quantity, I try to think of ways I can use them. And the best way I find, is to make traditional Greek pastries. It's such a pity, that, although there are so many traditional recipes, very few people nowadays make them, and certainly not people of my age. In the past, our grandmothers used Vostizza currants to sweeten the sweets in lack of sugar. In modern times,where traditional recipes have been replaced with ones from other cuisines, I find putting old recipes back on the menu is actually gourmet. 

 

Not to say healthy as these recipies contain ingredients regularly used in Greek cousine such as: olive oil, orange juice, cinammon, nuts and currants. 

I mostly make three basic recipes with these currants. The one I'm presenting today, Fanouropita- a kind of moisty cake made in honour of Saint Fanourios (I honour him very regularly, I must say ;), having replaced buttery cakes with it in my everyday diet ), apple pie and koulouria (cookies).

I can't tell you how well they complement autumn chilly afternoons as well as fill in the house with a sweet, cozy, autumny smell. 

Here is the recipe, easy and quick!

Just combine the following in a bowl:

 3 1/2 cups of self raising flour
1 cup of sugar
3/4 cups of olive oil
1 cup of orange juice
1tsp baking soda
1/2 cup of chopped walnuts
1 cup of vostizza currants
3 tbsp of brandy
1 1/2 tbsp cinammon 

Empty in a buttered (or brushed with oil) baking tin.
 Bake at 180 C until dry, for about 45'(like a cake).

And if you do try the recipe, let me know how it went!